Dot INFO - Fall from Grace

[Smith]

So are you saying that the 1% of total web content served by dot info is mainly Spam? This gets worse!

Best Regards
Dave Wrixon

That would be very conservative in my opinion.

 

[Rubber DuckRubber Duck is verified member.]

Wouldn't that require 2 new gTLDs?
.M‘§ & .î•ñ

And couldn't ICANN just award two new similiar .com addresses in which case wouldn't the current IDN.info's and IDN.com's be superceeded?

Sorry my squiggles were not as neat as yours :huh:

No, I have been following the published working papers from ICANN. There are literally hundreds of languages that will be supported. They have no intention of duplicating registries for each of these of each gTLD, not least because the "g" just wouldn't be applicable and it would cause confusion if dot com etc where not only duplicated but replicated dozens of times. Not only that it still wouldn't solve the problem as if email goes from Greece to Japan for instance the representation in Greek would mean anything when it got to the other end.

Instead for gTLDs there needs to be a lookup table. Doing this at DNS level is not only techinically difficult, it is not the best solution. Just because a person is located in China doesn't mean they speak Chinese. Similarly in a country like India the language could not be deduced by the country and it would certainly be inappropriate for everything to be in English. India is infact pressing for about 10 IDN ccTLDs as it has quite a few major language groups. The solution is for the user to set his langauge in the Browser and access the look-up table from there. Updating look-ups is still an issue as the number of supported languages and gTLDs increases, but this should not be insurmountable.

Best Regards
Dave Wrixon

 

[DryHeat]

Instead for gTLDs there needs to be a lookup table. Doing this at DNS level is not only techinically difficult, it is not the best solution. Just because a person is located in China doesn't mean they speak Chinese. Similarly in a country like India the language could not be deduced by the country and it would certainly be inappropriate for everything to be in English. India is infact pressing for about 10 IDN ccTLDs as it has quite a few major language groups. The solution is for the user to set his langauge in the Browser and access the look-up table from there. Updating look-ups is still an issue as the number of supported languages and gTLDs increases, but this should not be insurmountable.

I do hope that this thing works out and those who've speculated in it get handsome ROI....but at the same time, its hard to imagine the adoption and success of a system that sounds far too complex even for an average western internet user...if I read it correctly its primarily intended for the masses in developing countries...wow!!

Its actually quite interesting to view this technical solution for IDNs in a context where folks argue that the new tlds are doomed for failure because public/businesses are way too much in the habit of older tlds to make a change....which is not really a change but just awareness that there's internet beyond .com...an awareness that would be much simpler to have as compared to the mastery of this complex schema for IDNs.

 

[Rubber DuckRubber Duck is verified member.]

I do hope that this thing works out and those who've speculated in it get handsome ROI....but at the same time, its hard to imagine the adoption and success of a system that sounds far too complex even for an average western internet user...if I read it correctly its primarily intended for the masses in developing countries...wow!!

Its actually quite interesting to view this technical solution for IDNs in a context where folks argue that the new tlds are doomed for failure because public/businesses are way too much in the habit of older tlds to make a change....which is not really a change but just awareness that there's internet beyond .com...an awareness that would be much simpler to have as compared to the mastery of this complex schema for IDNs.

Well, the major corporates understand the issues here very well. Even Coke, Pepsi and MacDonalds are not global brands in the sense that they have the same manifestation in every part of the world. Yes, they are global brands but they are represented in Local Characters everywhere they go.

Individuals in Countries with non-Romanic text are not entirely in the developing category. I think the Japanese for example would find that a little condescending and whilst Russia is not the power it used to be, I don't think they would accept the term either.

For existing English users, only those with a global perspective need worry about the intricasies of this. For companies and people with a global reach then it will be essential. It is now, but just not available. These groups should not need to have the benefits explained to them. If they do then they have serious problems which have nothing to do with ICANN or the Internet.

From individuals in developing countries, this system is designed to facilitate access. Most will just take it for granted without ever knowing that the DNS doesn't process non-ASCII characters. There net experience will be similar to yours, except they won't need to speak English to have that experience.

Best Regards
Dave Wrixon

That's what I love about this thread -- people seriously arguing about whether something is success after it as PROVEN to be successful.

Success implies that Criteria have been established and met. It would seem that in your individual case that is true. Others on this thread, probably the majority, have yet to determine what these criteria for success are and furthermore are trying to establish, to the extent those criteria have been established, whether or not they have been met.

Best Regards
Dave Wrixon

 

[Gregoire]

[...]
I was surprised the other day when challenged on another thread, how much they [IDNs] are actually used in France!
[...]

Best Regards
Dave Wrixon

Here is the thread :

http://www.dnforum.com/f4/vendee-com-108847.html

Wanted to post that when I read the other thread, but I'll post it here :

I confirm that IDNs are not used at all in France and that the examples you gave are not relevant.

Nevertheless, I think that IDNs have value and maybe future (who knows?), specially when they receive traffic.

Concerning .info :

My best sale was a dotinfo, even a free dotinfo. I won't renew most of my dotinfo but I'm still regging/buying some, and I love them. It's my favorite gTLD after dotcom.

Grégoire.

 

[Domagon]

Speaking of complexity ... multiple IDNs can potentially map to the same domain - such behavior of IDNs goes against the one of the important concepts of the DNS system - domain name resolution is not intended to be a best guess proposition, but rather was designed so that such resolution would be exact ...

My prediction is that firewall programs will eventually, if not already, include the ability to red-flag / block out IDNs...

And for email ... well, with IDNs, one might as well not even bother relying on them for email, since IDNs will likely be filtered / blocked by many MTAs; not for the reasons one may expect though - most likely motivation will be to reduce spoofing / confusion by recipients.

.INFO is already mostly a wasteland ... combining IDNs with .INFO is a sure way to kill the TLD for sure LOL!

Ron

 

[Rubber DuckRubber Duck is verified member.]

Speaking of complexity ... multiple IDNs can potentially map to the same domain - such behavior of IDNs goes against the one of the important concepts of the DNS system - domain name resolution is not intended to be a best guess proposition, but rather was designed so that such resolution would be exact ...

My prediction is that firewall programs will eventually, if not already, include the ability to red-flag / block out IDNs...

And for email ... well, with IDNs, one might as well not even bother relying on them for email, since IDNs will likely be filtered / blocked by many MTAs; not for the reasons one may expect though - most likely motivation will be to reduce spoofing / confusion by recipients.

.INFO is already mostly a wasteland ... combining IDNs with .INFO is a sure way to kill the TLD for sure LOL!

Ron

No there is no multiplicity about the domains being proposed. They will have a single entry in the dot com register. All it will mean is that if one chooses for them to be represented in character set in which your one's own language is written by an adjustment on one's browser, one will have that choice. Obvioulsy, you would select English, so it wouldn't make a blind bit of difference to you.

Yes, I am sure the facility to block IDN will emerge. The point is that most people who are likely to use them won't want to. Happily, it won't make much difference to the world economy if you switch them off!

Best Regards
Dave Wrixon

 

[Wot]

I like .info

 

[Rubber DuckRubber Duck is verified member.]

Put simply an IDN is a domain whose route is an encoded character string, that enables the domain to be entered and read in Local Characters, such as the Arabic alphabet or Japananese Kanji. To do this all languages have first had to be transcribed in to unicode. It is only a short time ago all Arabic and Chinese websites displayed characters as bit maps. Now almost all searches on Google and Yahoo and others from these locations is done in local characters. Google now displays the domain in the URL in its search results in local characters. The main search engines have now all indexed the main languages of the Far East and some have done Arabic, Russian and Hindi.

This is actually important as in a recent survey, less than 50% of the Chinese respondents could actually spell Google. From an SEO standpoint IDN will become essential. There is no realistic way that local character searches can be matched to URLs with an English domain name. High Search Rankings will depend on an IDN address.

Of course to those that believe the US economy is the only one of any significance, this all a complete waste of time!

If you wish to learn more please visit www.IDNForums.com where membership is currently free.

Best Regards
Dave Wrixon

Wot's an IDN - I don't know ?

I like .info

 

[Rubber DuckRubber Duck is verified member.]

Looking at the reg stats this week, it woud seem that much predicted drop in the number of dot info registrations is already underway. This is likely to accelerate as the renewals for unsolicited free domains come due.

Glad I am not heavily invested. This is going to leave a bad taste!

Best Regards
Dave Wrixon

Further to initial posting has anyone noticed todays Registration Statistics.

Over 270,000 dot infos wiped out in a single day! Can that be right?

http://www.whois.sc/internet-statistics/

Best Regards
Dave Wrixon

 

[daddypi]

Put simply an IDN is a domain whose route is an encoded character string, that enables the domain to be entered and read in Local Characters, such as the Arabic alphabet or Japananese Kanji. To do this all languages have first had to be transcribed in to unicode. It is only a short time ago all Arabic and Chinese websites displayed characters as bit maps. Now almost all searches on Google and Yahoo and others from these locations is done in local characters. Google now displays the domain in the URL in its search results in local characters. The main search engines have now all indexed the main languages of the Far East and some have done Arabic, Russian and Hindi.

This is actually important as in a recent survey, less than 50% of the Chinese respondents could actually spell Google. From an SEO standpoint IDN will become essential. There is no realistic way that local character searches can be matched to URLs with an English domain name. High Search Rankings will depend on an IDN address.

Of course to those that believe the US economy is the only one of any significance, this all a complete waste of time!

If you wish to learn more please visit www.IDNForums.com where membership is currently free.

Best Regards
Dave Wrixon

He was being sarcastic.. Wot's a long term veteran in this industry, I'm sure he knows what an IDN is.

Further to initial posting has anyone noticed todays Registration Statistics.

Over 270,000 dot infos wiped out in a single day! Can that be right?

http://www.whois.sc/internet-statistics/

Best Regards
Dave Wrixon

You're continually missing the point. Those "unsolicited .info registrations" play no role in relation to the .info's end user and even reseller value.

 

[gpmgroup]

Further to initial posting has anyone noticed todays Registration Statistics.

Over 270,000 dot infos wiped out in a single day! Can that be right?

http://www.whois.sc/internet-statistics/

Best Regards
Dave Wrixon

I think its likely to be much higher I believe the zonefile is now below 3,000,000. If I remember correctly, Sipence registered around 1,000,000 domains in 3 days, so I would expect loads more opportunities to gasp in horror can that possibly be right?

What it does illustrate is the number of registrations often bears no indication to TLD usage. A better measure maybe to take the number of pages the major search engines feel are worthy of inclusion in their indices. (Given on the whole they are TLD agnostic)

By looking at the differentials between TLDs you can get a better feel for the success or otherwise of individual TLDs.

 

[Rubber DuckRubber Duck is verified member.]

I think its likely to be much higher I believe the zonefile is now below 3,000,000. If I remember correctly, Sipence registered around 1,000,000 domains in 3 days, so I would expect loads more opportunities to gasp in horror can that possibly be right?

What it does illustrate is the number of registrations often bears no indication to TLD usage. A better measure maybe to take the number of pages the major search engines feel are worthy of inclusion in their indices. (Given on the whole they are TLD agnostic)

By looking at the differentials between TLDs you can get a better feel for the success or otherwise of individual TLDs.

Whois Source. Another 326,661 deleted today. They now have total registrations of 3,003,687. At this rate it is not going to stabilise above 2M.

Best Regards
Dave Wrixon

 

[carlton]

... Therefore it goes to show that much of the existing dot info registry is just empty space, nothing but speculation filled with nothing!

Regards
Dave Wrixon

Whew! Do you feel better? You're not going to attack the lampshade are you?

 

[Rubber DuckRubber Duck is verified member.]

Whew! Do you feel better? You're not going to attack the lampshade are you?

It not me that is cracking up! Yesterday was another grim one for the dot Info registry with 128,149 drops. The total of Active registrations is now down to 2,870,937 almost a million behind dot org, which it once briefly overtook.

http://www.whois.sc/internet-statistics/

Best Regards
Dave Wrixon

 

[zouzas]

whats up with newyork.info now listed at sedo?????????

 

[Rubber DuckRubber Duck is verified member.]

whats up with newyork.info now listed at sedo?????????

Apparently nothing except it is not pointed at a site and therefore not providing any information. Valuable domain though. I bought the IDN for Tokyo in Japanese as a dot net. These kinds of domains are very valuable because they can be used as portals for a whole range of goods and services in a single geographical location.

Best Regards
Dave Wrixon

 

[DryHeat]

It not me that is cracking up! Yesterday was another grim one for the dot Info registry with 128,149 drops. The total of Active registrations is now down to 2,870,937 almost a million behind dot org, which it once briefly overtook.

http://www.whois.sc/internet-statistics/

Best Regards
Dave Wrixon

Wonder why you're as much emotionally invested in .info's failure as you're in IDNs future success....I mean why this animosity against this extension?

 

[seeker]

I also can not understand Dave's passion against .info nor his passion for what I consider the biggest flop on the net which are IDNs

 

[Rubber DuckRubber Duck is verified member.]

I also can not understand Dave's passion against .info nor his passion for what I consider the biggest flop on the net which are IDNs

I refer you to:

http://dnjournal.com/domainsales.htm

Défiscalisation.com
(French for "tax reduction") £10,000 = $17,669 Sedo

Top reported dot info this week:

Cryptography.info $3,100 SnapNames

Of course European IDN are a side show compared with what will soon come about in the far east. There is no lack of enthusiasm for IDN in the Far East. Really just waiting for ICANN and Microsoft to make it a reality. They are a bit slow, and ICANN even admits as much, but they are now both commited.

As far as Japan is concerned, all elements are now in place apart from IE 7.0.
We have the means to park at Sedo, we have the facility to use Japanese keywords. We have very high scores, some in the 1M plus category, on local overture. We have local Google that presents Adwords on the basis of Geographical location. We have a good population of Adwords. All we lack is the traffic.

The reason that we lack the traffic, is that uptake of alternative browsers and download plug-ins has been neglible. As EI 7.0 will update with automatically with XP Service Pack 2 on launch, this should be fastest roll-out of a browser in history.

The only question is, will the Japanese want to type into the address bar in Japanese in the same way that they type into Search. I have no doubts!

This is the biggest thing going down this year and this forum wants to discuss is MillionDollarHomePage.com. How pathetic is that?

Best Regards
Dave Wrixon

Wonder why you're as much emotionally invested in .info's failure as you're in IDNs future success....I mean why this animosity against this extension?

I have nothing against the concept of INFO as an extension.

What I do detest is hype. Dot Info domains have been hyped to death on here. Dot Info fans even expect us to accept rumours of unconfirmed sales as comparison with established sales in other extentions. To that I would say either put up or shut up!

There were daily reports on how the extension was catching up dot org and then overtaking it. No, protests then. The fact that dot Info is going through the biggest registry contraction in history is a matter of general interest and a suitable subject for debate. The fact that this thread has been visited 1700 times says as much.

I should for example like to know why the contraction appears to be faster than the expansion, which one would have thought impossible, in view of the fact that domains are normally registered for yearly intervals?

Best Regards
Dave Wrixon