Rod Beckstrom answers your questions

ICANN has been criticized in the past for paying too little attention to end users. Now the agency’s CEO, Rod Beckstrom, has decided to give Joe the Plumber an ear and an eye by answering a few questions submitted by readers at Guardian.co.uk.

Here is a summary of the questions and answers:

Question 1: Shouldn’t more emphasis by placed on introducing IDNs rather than gTLDs?
Beckstrom: Both projects are moving along at a good pace. IDNs are more popular, while there has been some controversy over gTLDs. However, we wish to create competition and “are moving forward with an aggressive time frame.”
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Bulgaria's .bg domain now available in Cyrillic

Well ahead of ICANN’s planned implementation of IDNs, Bulgaria’s official domain registry, Register.bg, has announced the availability of .bg domains in Cyrillic. This makes the Balkan country one of the first to support a non-Latin alphabet.

There are some caveats, however. Most notably, only one Cyrillic character can be used and at least one Latin letter must be included. The registration requirements and fees for the new names are the same as Latin names, though the .bg extension must be used (there is no Cyrillic extension).

The introduction of internationalized domain names is predicted to greatly increase the number of web users. Currently, one has to have knowledge of the Latin alphabet used in Engish to access the web– a major hurdle to people in developing countries. By allowing individuals to use their native language online, one more barrier to Internet access has been removed.

Source | Novinite.com

Photo | Flickr