Catalans obtain their own special domain

[mole]

Unnoticed by most people the major net address zones such as .com, .net, .org and .info have gained an addition to the family: .cat was entered into the DNS root zone and is thus from now on accessible on the Internet. Catalan addresses will be able to appear under this top-level domain in future. According to the FAQ, which are so far available only in Catalan, registration will commence next year. Anzeige

http://www.heise.de/english/newsticker/news/67763

[Rubber Duck]

Yes, this is the small end of a very big wedge and very complexed issue.

It is a recognition than Language and Culture are actually more important from a marketing perspective than National Borders.

The problem is that whilst languages that wander apparently aimlessly across international boundaries need their own culturally relevant domains, the establishment of registries specific to those domains requires political leadership and consensus. Where do you go with languages like Urdu, when although the Official Language of Pakistan, actually has more users in India, and is only the mother tongue of 8% of Pakistanis.

The use of IDN will in many instances be a better route for copeing with these needs. Just type in what you want in the language that you want with dot com or other gTLD extension and Bingo you are in the correct linguistic context.

Best Regards
Dave Wrixon

[Domagon]

I agree with you about IDNs being the better way for dealing with such issues.

It's unbelievable that .CAT is actually registered, and even crazier it resolves ... ICANN is way off its rocker!

If more "obscure", poorly thought-through TLDs like .CAT come into being, it will likely lead to a bifurcation in the domain name space; already has happened to a limited extent in China.

Widespread TLD duplication will result in real trouble, and will greatly reduce confidence in using non-legacy TLDs for anything important.

Ron

[Focus]

www.nic.cat but I can't read it! resolves pretty quick too...not like some IDN's

[VisualDigits]

who will grab the gem pussy.cat?

[Rubber Duck]

www.nic.cat but I can't read it! resolves pretty quick too...not like some IDN's

Do you actually know something about IDN? IDNs resolve through the DNS in the exact the same way as other domains. The real issues with getting a site up are more to do with the locality and capability of the Hosting. Conventional dot coms that are hosted in Asia can be very slow, especially, if you are located in Europe or North America. I imagine response From hosts within China is much more rapid than those that are external.

[Focus]

Thanks for useful info!

[touchring]

Windows PC could only support English not too long ago - not many people thought that it was possible to display Chinese or Japanese on computers, and anything other than 'abc' was unimaginable.

But computers were designed to serve people, and if people in Japan prefer to use Kanji or Kana, someone will come out with the software that can do it. If Microsoft doesn't do it, IBM will do it, and today, people in Asia will be using OS/2 instead of Windows.

Of cos, today, if IE doesn't support IDN, Google will do it with it's Firefox partner, and then slowly take Microsoft's market share in the non-latin speaking world. Few people realize that Microsoft's OS monopoly is pivotal on this small and "seemingly insignificant" IDN technology.

[Rubber Duck]

Yes, unfortunately there are a bunch of xenophobic pea brains on here that are petrified that their computer will get infected with such characters.

[touchring]

I'm not worried, especially given the stakes involved, virus, phishing, whatever, they got to do it even if it means getting scolding by everyone and issuing another 10 more security patches for IDN - the alternative is letting Google put half a foot into the non-latin OS market.

That half foot in will mean a change of fortune for the first time in 30 years. If Microsoft loses total control of the OS in certain parts of the world, it will fall like dominos - one business after another will fall, from word processing to video, to whatever, and talented people will start to get demoralized, leave the company and join Google - vicious cycle continues.

Now, everyone is looking at whether Microsoft is still the "invincible".

[Rubber Duck]

I don't think there is a problem, Microsoft seem to have recognised it as an issue. They are clearly struggling to keep up, but at least they have entered the struggle.

The problem here though is that you are contributing on a Forum that has done nothing to recognise, the cultural, geographical or lingustic diversity of the market. Most of the contributors on this Forum haven't and probably don't know how to install fonts so they can actual see Chinese and Arabic characters, so all they see are little squares.

The whole point is though that progress is being made without them. When I started IDN we were astonished that we could get Chinese domains that produced xxM Google searches. At that point there was no Overture to my knowledge. Arabic didn't even produce any significant Google Searches, as the Arabic content was very low and there had only been half hearted attempts at doing any indexing.

Over a two year period things have changed dramatically, domains we have registered have keywords in Arabic that produce millions of Google searches and very healthy Overture in view of Yahoo's very late entry into the Arabic Market, and that fact that Overture probably only records Arabic searches made in the US.

In the South Asian languages they are now following the same pattern. Google scores are doubling and tripling within a month and languages like Punjabi and Kannada are actually producing Overture, which is incredible as the Unicode points on these scripts have only recently been established.

The use of local languages appears to require little or no marketing. It seems to spread like a virus. I have been amazed at the rate the Internet in places like Thailand has taken off. I have half a dozen Thai terms that already get 4 figure Overture scores and Google scores are already in the millions.

Best Regards
Dave Wrixon

[touchring]

I don't think there is a problem, Microsoft seem to have recognised it as an issue. They are clearly struggling to keep up, but at least they have entered the struggle.

The problem here though is that you are contributing on a Forum that has done nothing to recognise, the cultural, geographical or lingustic diversity of the market. Most of the contributors on this Forum haven't and probably don't know how to install fonts so they can actual see Chinese and Arabic characters, so all they see are little squares.

The whole point is though that progress is being made without them. When I started IDN we were astonished that we could get Chinese domains that produced xxM Google searches. At that point there was no Overture to my knowledge. Arabic didn't even produce any significant Google Searches, as the Arabic content was very low and there had only been half hearted attempts at doing any indexing.

Over a two year period things have changed dramatically, domains we have registered have keywords in Arabic that produce millions of Google searches and very healthy Overture in view of Yahoo's very late entry into the Arabic Market, and that fact that Overture probably only records Arabic searches made in the US.

In the South Asian languages they are now following the same pattern. Google scores are doubling and tripling within a month and languages like Punjabi and Kannada are actually producing Overture, which is incredible as the Unicode points on these scripts have only recently been established.

The use of local languages appears to require little or no marketing. It seems to spread like a virus. I have been amazed at the rate the Internet in places like Thailand has taken off. I have half a dozen Thai terms that already get 4 figure Overture scores and Google scores are already in the millions.

Best Regards
Dave Wrixon

Everyone knows the cultural aspect, what people are not convinced is whether it will be implemented on IE "permanently" and without changes in the punycode, and also people want to see if there is an active secondary market for IDNs - which is why i have been selling IDNs in bulk - to facilitate this secondary market.

This secondary market will come, since almost all generic IDNs have traffic - which you have mentioned, and i have discovered recently from parking (despite having 90% of it not reaching the parking site due to lack of browser support). In comparison, .us has developed a secondary market even without visible traffic for unused domains.

[Rubber Duck]

Everyone knows the cultural aspect, what people are not convinced is whether it will be implemented on IE "permanently", and also people want to see if there is an active secondary market for IDNs - which is why i have been selling IDNs in bulk - to facilitate this secondary market.

Well, if Microsoft are now implementing this in a very sophisticated way after sitting on their hands for two to three years, with the view to possibly withdrawing it again, then they must have serious corporate leadership problems!

No, once this arrives it will be here to stay. Perhaps, Microsoft appreciated the serious implications of a potential retrogressive step, which is may be why they have delayed for so long.

Best Regards
Dave Wrixon.

[movil]

Very usefull info!
I like Catalunya and I think in terms of culture and design Barcelona can be one of the most powerfull cities in Europe. Don't forget about 7.000.000 people speak Catalan, spreaded in more than 7 european countries.
I applaud them to achieve this. Welcome to the DNS root zone .CAT.

One very important thing: The contents should be in Catalan (Or at least translated to)