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“Go East, Young Man!” Landrush is Very Strong!

DotAsia’s First Day of Landrush
By Chuck Kisselburg

I recently had a brief chat with Edmon Chung, CEO of DotAsia regarding DotAsia’s first day of Landrush. There was no doubt why Edmon was upbeat as DotAsia reported 266,663 applications received on the first day of DotAsia’s Landrush program. 266,663!!!! That is double what Edmon was expecting! This brings the total of applications received for domain names since Pre-Sunrise, Sunrise, the Pioneer Programs and the first day of Landrush up to 298,861 applications received.

Since fall of last year I have been hearing a small but persistent undercurrent from the domainer community that the domains will mainly be from North America and Europe, thus “basically” nullifying the true reason of DotAsia; being a gTLD that will happen to foster business and development within the rather expansive and diverse Asian region. While 40% came from North America and 24% came from Europe, over 35% of the applications came from Asia. Rough calculations show that over 93,000 applications were received from Asia alone – ON THE FIRST DAY! With respect to that small amount of skepticism, my thought is imagine the number of Asia-region-based applications that would have arrived had IDNs been in use. As mentioned in a previous blog post of mine, “.asia” IS a social networking goldmine; especially with the eventual rollout of IDNs.

So my congratulations to continued success of the DotAsia team. You can read more about DotAsia’s first day of Landrush through their recent press release.

Add comment February 25th, 2008

What IDNs Mean to DotAsia: A Conversation with Edmon Chung of DotAsia.

by Chuck Kisselburg

Edmon Chung, CEO of DotAsia, and his staff have been working at developing community around the new .Asia TLD. With the .Asia community encompassing a varied collection of countries and cultures, I felt Edmon’s insight towards IDNs would prove to be a valuable discussion. It should also be noted that today is the first day of DotAsia’’s Land Rush program. What follows is my discussion with Edmon.

What does having IDNs mean to you?
Being a pioneer of IDN technologies and having been promoting its adoption since before the turn of the millennium, having IDN means a lot. It means the end of a long struggle and the beginning of a truly global Internet. Direct navigation is still the most consistent method for surfing the web. IDN makes the Internet accessible and associable for the rest of the world. Domain names today are no longer simply a command line on the technical infrastructure of the Internet, but also part of the social and identity fabric of the online world. Having IDN become a natural part of the Internet is a vision me and many of my colleagues who have worked very hard on the issue over the years have.

Will IDNs have an impact in your area?
Yes. Asia is probably the region that will benefit the most from the full deployment of IDN. Many languages in Asia are not expressed in the Latin script (i.e. ASCII), IDN will allow for a native experience on the Internet. Imagine perhaps that the Russians invented the Internet and we all have to learn Cyrillic to navigate to different websites, how inconvenient it would be. That is the reality for the majority of the online population today.

What impact will it have in your area?
I believe that it will open a new era of Internet usage in Asia. IDN will be a platform that will bring corporations, shops and local stores online. For the first time, these operations will find its own voice and identity online. The Internet is as much about global communications as facilitation of local communities. IDN will allow Asia’’s local communities to further flourish in cyberspace and to find linkage around the world through Asians overseas.

How might IDNs help your geographic region?
As mentioned, Asia will probably be the region that will benefit the most from IDN. From the Arabic west Asia, the Sino east Asia to the Indic South Asia and other South East Asia languages, IDN would help different language communities find their voice on the Internet. IDN is not content, but neither is it simply a command line. IDN provides a platform for development of the Internet in Asia.

How might IDNs hinder your geographic region?
Development on the Internet will be hindered without the full deployment of IDN.

How might IDNs help businesses in your geographic region?
IDN will give businesses, especially local and small and medium sized enterprises the opportunity to represent themselves the way they are known to their customers. The value of a name and brand is clear to understand. Being able to reflect that online means facilitation of business.

How might IDNs affect the people in your geographic region?
IDN will allow for a native experience for navigating the Internet.

Which group will benefit most from IDNs in your area and why?
Ultimately, end users will benefit the most from IDN.

Do you foresee any challenges with which applications will be able to support IDNs?
As we have seen through the nearing ten years of work on IDN, there will be many challenges as applications deploy IDNs. Phishing issues, policy issues, languages issues and forward and backward compatibility issues are just a collection of a few of them. Nevertheless, I do not believe any of these should be prohibitive for the full deployment of IDN. Another important area that requires our continued hardwork is email addresses.

What do you foresee as the negative aspect to IDNs?
There has been talk about IDN causing problem for anglo-centric or Latin-based language users to be unable to connect to parts of the Internet. I do not think the characterization of such situation is correct. As the non-English speaking community today navigates through the Internet utilizing search or clicking on links for which mean little to them, in the future, those not speaking a particular language will still be able to search and click to IDN sites and content. Similarly, today there is already a significant amount of content on the Internet that is non-English, does that mean that content causes the fracturing of the Internet for its legacy users?

How do you hope IDNs are NOT used?
I hope IDN will not be un-used.

What is your biggest hope for IDNs to accomplish?
My biggest hope, then when I first started working on IDN technologies as now, is for IDN to eventually become a natural part of the Internet and a taken-for-granted part of Internet navigation. When people do not consider IDNs “IDN” is when IDN is truly successful. Perhaps then people would not believe that in the beginning domain names were only acceptable in English alphanumeric characters.

2 comments February 20th, 2008

IDNs on the…. “Fast Track”?

By Chuck Kisselburg

With ICANN’’s conference in New Delhi behind us now (February 10th – 15th) the topic of IDNs was one of the hot topics of this conference. In fact, New Delhi was a great place to showcase the progress of IDNs for several reasons.

1). India has 22 “official” languages.
2). India is part of a dynamic region, a region with MANY languages (portions of the Middle East, Southern Asia as well as Southeast Asia.). Not only does this region support a large number of varied languages, it has an even greater number of diverse cultures.

Being that IDNs will prove to have a significant impact to the whole global Internet community, my next couple of posts will focus around IDNs and what it means to members of the ICANN “community”. As such I have asked a couple of members of our “community” about their thoughts on the subject.

Through my previous writings you know that I am keenly in favor of IDNs since I see the value this can bring to the local “community”. In other words, I see IDNs bringing a whole new social aspect to users of the Internet, helping to increase this global community. While some feel IDNs are a way for registrars, and ICANN, finding a way to obtain more money, and others feel IDNs dilute the very reason of the Internet, that being bringing people together, what I appreciate most about IDNs is the impact this will have in preserving cultures. Who better to be aware of the many cultures of this globe than this community of ours?

Then there are applications. Will applications be IDN “aware”? For more information on this, please visit my previous blog post on practical implications of IDNs.

I approached my first ICANN conference in LA with great enthusiasm about IDNs. I had a great time meeting members of this global community and enjoyed listening to what they had to say. When it came to IDNs, however, it is an understatement to say I received an ear full, especially when talking about IDNs being on ICANN’s “fast track”.

The topic of IDNs is not new. In fact, this is something people within our global community have been working towards for years. There is no doubt that much needs to be considered when moving forward with IDNs, but on the “fast track”? At the LA conference ICANN was demoing concepts of how IDNs can work. This is not a fast track?

As mentioned earlier, when I talked with people at the conference (regular attendees as well as sitting committee members) I received an earful about the topic of “IDNs” and “fast track”. It seems the same word kept coming up in each conversation: “China”.

What I learned was China has been working on an initiative to bring Internet connectivity to as many residents of China as possible – even down to the small towns throughout the country. When you think of China’s population, our global online community will thus be expanding at an unprecedented rate. What impact would this have on the stability of the root servers? Hmmmmm…… In fact, as I continued to listen to those at the LA conference, China was moving forward, even if it meant they would manage and own their own root servers, with or without ICANN’s involvement. So it appears that what “fast track” movement on IDNs we have seen from ICANN appears to be due to China’s initiative and progress. If China moves forward on its own with its own root server(s) would it send today’s root servers into a state of imbalance? What if China refuses to sign ICANN’s “Mutual Responsibilities Agreement” outlining mutual responsibilities on the operation of root servers; as ICANN recently entered into with the Internet Systems Consortium? What impact would this have on ICANN if China moved forward on its own and operated a version of the Internet that was not under the authority of ICANN? What would this do to ICANN and mean for the current global online community?

2 comments February 19th, 2008

ICANNWiki.org – The Future is Today!

By Chuck Kisselburg

I am excited to take this opportunity to share with you the future of ICANNWiki.org. In fact much of the future is hear, Today!

In our efforts to create for an easier, more interactive involvement from our growing community, while still preserving aspects over which people have voiced appreciation, the wiki has been restructured. Not only will this allow people to navigate the wiki and find information easier, it sets the foundation for allowing greater growth and participation.

Is this “the way it is”? Not at all. In fact I look at it as “this is only the beginning”!

The wiki will now sport destinations where members of our diverse ICANNWiki.org community can communicate, debate and discuss with like- twisted minded individuals. Such “Targeted Interest Groups” will cater to those whose interest deals with the Domainer community. Another group will cater to those whose interest is in Policy and Governance. I expect other groups to evolve as the wiki continues to evolve.

Also, in keeping with our support of the Open Source community, you will have a greater, and easier way to view AND contribute to the pulse of the community. To do so I have brought in “Pibb” and “Jyte”, both technologies developed by JanRain.

Jyte allows you to make a claim for others to easily approve or disapprove, thus allowing the community to express their opinion. You will find Jyte sprinkled throughout the wiki. Also, Jyte is open to others outside of the wiki. So if you wish to get the pulse on your claims, not only will your claims be seen by those on ICANNWiki, but the entire Jyte community. You may learn more about “claims” by visiting http://icannwiki.org/Community_claim.

Also sprinkled throughout the wiki are various channels of Pibb. Pibb allows for an easy way to have an ongoing conversation with the ICANNWiki community. Pibb channels have been set up to cater to specific topics.

To move forward you will need to use your OpenID to utilize Jyte and Pibb. OpenID is the next, evolutionary step for single sign-ons. In other words, the OpenID you use to log into ICANNWiki can also be used by any other site that supports OpenID. While ICANNWiki has supported OpenID for quite some time, other organizations, such as Yahoo, Google, AOL, Microsoft, among others, are working to add support for OpenID. You may learn more about OpenID by going to http://icannwiki.org/AboutOpenID.

iNames is the more secure aspect of the OpenID movement. Through compliments of Neustar and 1id, ICANNWiki is pleased to provide you with your own ICANNWiki Community iName. If you do not yet have an OpenID, secure either your personal iName or your complimentary ICANNWiki community iName today by going to http://icannwiki.org/Iname. Remember, you will be able to use your iName where ever OpenID is supported.

In the short time that I have been with ICANNWiki, I continue to hear how valuable ICANNWiki.org is for general networking. I am pleased to begin moving ICANNWiki to the next level for the ICANN “community”.

This is only the beginning!

I continue welcoming your feedback and ideas as it is through your participation, use of and sponsorship that we, together as a community, bring this resource to you.

Add comment February 3rd, 2008