Comments on: IDNA and its impact on the global web

By: OmegaVector

OmegaVector — Fri, 11 May 2007 03:52:16 +0000

IDNA is going to work perfectly with the prototype OLED keyboards http://news.com.com/8301-10784_3-5817486-7.html?tag=blog.2 That will hopefully make it to production and widespread distribution. This will open up the web for a whole lot more people, I will be able to learn some new languages by using them everyday, and I’ll finally get to try out that Dvorak keyboard I’ve always read about, but never have forked over the bucks for. Now if they would just make an USB OLED version of the Data Hands Pro II, and I will be a happy keyboarder.

By: Allan Leinwand

Allan Leinwand — Thu, 10 May 2007 14:18:19 +0000

Ravi – thanks for the link, I’ll check it out.

By: Ravi Venkatraman

Ravi Venkatraman — Thu, 10 May 2007 03:56:49 +0000

Allan, Check this link http://babelplex.com/googleajaxhp

Someone has already build it using google search API

By: David Wrixon (aks Rubber Duck)

David Wrixon (aks Rubber Duck) — Wed, 09 May 2007 20:03:53 +0000

Seth, you know not what you are talking about. Unless somebody else has rights over a name then anyone is entitled to register what they like. It is only squatting if you regiter a name which infringes the Intellectual Property rights of others.

By: Seth Wagoner

Seth Wagoner — Wed, 09 May 2007 09:54:17 +0000

Does anyone else resent squatters like Rhys and Sam boasting about their ill gotten gains in public like it’s something to be proud of? No better than spammers in my book (Seth hurls rotten tomatoes)

By: W

Wed, 09 May 2007 08:15:11 +0000

I am a Chinese. Domain in Chinese language is the way to go for me. I use Chinese everyday. I can type Chinese as fast as you type English. Most Chinese people do not remember English domain names (except few giant domains eg google, yahoo etc), therefore the number domains are so pupular in China (163.com etc). Once we have Chinese domains (字.com etc) we can remember the address permanently. Many Chinese businesses will love Chinese domains.

By: Bill

Bill — Tue, 08 May 2007 22:25:04 +0000

QUOTE FROM KYLE: "But after realizing the global implications, it’s not possible or functional to be implemented". END QUOTE

This genie is way out of the bottle... IDNs have been in development for nearly a decade, and they are online and in use today around the world. The holdup "was" the lack of browser support which has finally been resolved with rollout of Microsoft IE7 and Vista which will handle translating unicode (native languages) to punycode (a-z, 0-9 and -) which allow the IDN system to function within the existing DNS.

As a sidenote, 80% of the world doesn't speak English and internet users will enjoy searching for URLs in their own native languages. Advertising agencies around the world are going to have an absolute field day!

By: rhys

rhys — Tue, 08 May 2007 22:14:47 +0000

It’s interesting to read all the comments from folks here who are unaware of just how far along IDNs really are. There are thousands and thousands of IDN websites up and running today. I should know. My portfolio of 1000+ IDNs in Japanese, Thai, Hindi, etc pay for themselves right now with the traffic they bring in. Couple of specific points: 1. Kyle – you can’t stop the train. Think about it, you cannot keep the world in ASCII slavery forever. They world will just break off and create their own separate internet without you. Would you rather have that? Didn’t think so. 2.The end of DNS – I think that is truly wishful thinking in the short and medium terms. If it’s going to happen before 2015, I’d be curious to hear more about dynamic hash tables. Anyway, I don’t care how many anecdotes people bring up about how Search Engines have killed type-in traffic that is just clearly not the case. People who speak english definitely type-in on the order of what looks like 15% of all search queries and they even add the .com. That’s just a fact of life and no amount of intellectualizing or generalizing your own behavior is going to change it.

By: Yuvamani

Yuvamani — Tue, 08 May 2007 21:20:40 +0000

As for the lookup issues, I use google as a dns anyway (in firefox type a word into the address bar which isnt a url and hit enter. it goes to the googles first hit on search results aka I am feeling lucky)

I will continue to do this if sina.com becomes a chinese language specific domain name it still would be the first hit on a google search for sina !

Surprisingly SINA being ambigous does not lead to sina.com through google

However you do get the picture ... Victor is right, In lots of ways domain names are extinct ... I had to search for delicious for the first few times i visited the site .. I think search based addressing is what people will be using anyway !

By: IDNebook.com

IDNebook.com — Tue, 08 May 2007 21:05:53 +0000

Man the ignorance i read makes me LMAO , but its really sad.

I will just say to Kyle many big company's already own there names in different languages. ie : Akia , Wal-Mart , Yahoo , Google ect. Its not going anywhere buddy please read up !

By: Jerry

Jerry — Tue, 08 May 2007 21:02:50 +0000

You guys don’t get it, do you? Why force the rest of the world to use ascii domains when that is not their language? Here’s a riddle? How do Japanese find ascii domains? Search engines and bookmarks. Not everyone needs ascii on this planet. If you ever decided to look for a Chinese bakery in China, you could search for it (SE). But why would you do that if you didn’t have a Chinese keyboard?

By: Sam

Sam — Tue, 08 May 2007 20:56:10 +0000

I've bought hundreds of these "IDNs." If you guys could see the traffic increase in terms of percentages from October of 2006 compared to April 2007... it might just give someone a stroke.

Lets just say I'm sitting pretty right now.

By: Vishu Gupta

Vishu Gupta — Tue, 08 May 2007 19:48:01 +0000

Correction to previous comment:

For example, a website with chinese URL will be concerned with people not knowing how to type chinese.

For example, a website with only a chinese hostname will probably not be concerned with people not knowing how to type chinese.

By: Pankaj Narula

Pankaj Narula — Tue, 08 May 2007 19:44:50 +0000

How many times do I use the URL for going to a website. For me personally it would be google.com, bloglines.com etc. Most of the time I google it. But yes IDNA would be helpful as browsers will have better support for URLs containing unicode chars. Consider two similar URLs below

http://ms.pnarula.com/200704/%e0%a4%ae%e0%a5%87%e0%a4%b0%e0%a5%80-%e0%a4%9a%e0%a4%be%e0%a4%af-%e0%a4%b2%e0%a5%88%e0%a4%ac/

http://ms.pnarula.com/200704/मेरी-चाय-लैब/

Both of them point to same page.

Pankaj

By: Vishu Gupta

Vishu Gupta — Tue, 08 May 2007 19:42:39 +0000

Allan, as you noted briefly in your post, the primary motivation of the current IDNA design (use of punycode) is that no plan to support international domain names would have succeeded if it required changes to the DNS servers all over the world.

As far as typing xn--* in the browser is concerned, whether a website uses an international hostname or not will depend on the market it is catering to. For example, a website with chinese URL will be concerned with people not knowing how to type chinese. I expect that websites which have both chinese and non-chinese users will continue to have ASCII URLs, and with IDNA support in browsers have the option to have an additional chinese url for people who only understand chinese.

For phishing all the browsers have adopted interesting and different strategies to combat that problem. How it works out in the long run is still to be seen.

My views...

-Vishu

By: P

Tue, 08 May 2007 19:03:02 +0000

great news for phishers… who’ll be first to register

http://www.e“bay.com etc etc.