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.BAIRES, .MUNICH, .ARAB… real TLD initiatives or just rumours?
Tuesday, June 30. 2009
.SELL, .WIKI… new gTLDs on alternative roots or just another scam?
Monday, June 29. 2009
Interviewed by CircleID in Sydney
Thursday, June 25. 2009
New gTLDs active by end 2010
Wednesday, June 24. 2009
The GNSO Council meeting in Sydney.
Kurt Pritz, Senior Vice President of Services at ICANN, gave details on the projected timeline for the rollout of new gTLDs during the GNSO Council's meeting in Sydney today.
He also spoke on the ccTLD IDN fast-track process which is running parallel.
It now seems that process will come to fruition first. The ICANN Board is set to approve it at the Seoul meeting in October. If this is done, those countries that are ready to launch their IDN ccTLD (China and Russia are said to be anxious to do so) can then expect to do so mid 2010.
Kurt Pritz then gave his own personal estimate of when the first of the new gTLDs might come online. Expectations are for validation to take between 4 and 5 months. As the Board would then have to sign off on applications, the whole process could take up to 7 months.
As ICANN is currently working to open the first application cycle in February 2010, that would then mean that the earliest of the new gTLDs could be active on the Internet by the end of 2010.
Private enterprise push for .ROMA
Tuesday, June 23. 2009
.ROMA TLD slogan says "the eternal city deserves its web domain".
Italian capital Rome is the latest major city to declare an interest in its own Top Level Domain. The .ROMA initiative is actually not an official push by the city's government, but the result of efforts by a Roman entrepreneur to get his hometown on the CityTLD map.
Massimo Ralli has set up Roma TLD Srl to champion the request for a .ROMA. Massimo is known within the domain industry as cofounder of the Italian domain analysis company Domainsbot. I discussed the .ROMA initiative with one of his associates during the Sydney ICANN meeting and learned that although a .ROME had also been considered and that it may be the way the city is known by many internationally, it was inconceivable for Romans to refer to anything other than "Roma" as the name of their city.
Massimo is currently working to get the Rome mayor's endorsement.
Shaq wants a Dot Basketball
Tuesday, June 23. 2009
Basketball superstar Shaquille O'Neal is endorsing a request for the creation of a .BASKETBALL TLD. In a video being shown by Minds And Machines, Shaq, who describes himself as an avid Internet, Facebook and Twitter user, says .BASKETBALL would be the ideal TLD for both fans of the sport to follow their favourite players and for those players to keep in touch with their fan base.
Goodbye Jon Nevett, welcome Mason Cole
Tuesday, June 23. 2009
The Registrars Constituency has a new Chair starting at this meeting. Welcome and good luck to Mason Cole. I'm sure Mason will be an excellent chair. Talking of excellent chairs, maximum kudos to Jon Nevett, our previous chair, who turned up at today's meeting sporting the appropriate attire (photo).
Breakfast with Rod Beckstrom
Monday, June 22. 2009
Was invited to breakfast this morning with the man who may very well become the next ICANN CEO at the conclusion of the 35th ICANN meeting currently going on in Sydney.
Rod Beckstrom at the Sydney ICANN meeting. Photo SVG.
Let me stress that when I write "may very well" become the next CEO, I'm not being funny. As the man himself said this morning: "if I'm lucky enough to be offered this position, and if I'm crazy enough to accept…" In other words, although discussions are in their final stages, until the ICANN Board takes a definitive vote during their meeting on Friday, Paul Twomey's successor has yet to be chosen.
There's also the question of will Beckstrom himself want the job? You'd be forgiven for thinking that if he's come this far, his mind is already made up. But this morning, I got the feeling that this may not necessarily be so and that he was taking a very close, long and hard look at the way the ICANN community works through the prism of this Sydney meeting. And let's be frank, the "ICANN circus" as I've heard some people call it would be enough to put anybody off
Anyway, if Rod Beckstrom does get the Board's vote and if he does decide to say yes, he will officially start his new job next Wednesday, July 1st, at noon California time.
So who will we be getting? An American with considerable private sector entrepreneurship experience, whom most recently worked inside the US government, has lived in four different countries, knows Europe very well, was an exchange student in Germany and went to University in Switzerland.
All good prerequisites for dealing with the complexities of the ICANN ecosystem. So the ICANN Board may have a good candidate on their hands. But whether Rod Beckstrom's tenure is a success or not will depend a lot on what the Board asks of him and how he can address two very difficult issues: new gTLDs and the JPA.
Probable new ICANN CEO Rod Beckstrom is in Sydney
Sunday, June 21. 2009
Former Director of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's National Cybersecurity Center Rod Beckstrom is in Sydney attending ICANN's 35th international meeting.
Although Beckstrom hasn't yet been confirmed as ICANN's new CEO, contract negotiations between him and his future employer are known to be in the final stages. Barring any last-minute disaster, Beckstrom should be confirmed as new CEO, possibly as early as the ICANN Board meeting scheduled for this coming Friday (June 26th).
Beckstrom has so far kept his presence in Sydney very low-key. He will spend the week getting to know members of the ICANN staff and community in private meetings and won't appear in any public capacity before being officially named as CEO.
Beckstrom is an avid user of the latest Internet technologies. He runs a blog and a Twitter page.
How many .ECOs are there?
Wednesday, June 17. 2009
I'm still wondering...
I've just been made aware of a second .ECO initiative. I've talked before about Dot Eco LLC's project, which scored a major coup when it got former US vice president Al Gore to support it.
The second .ECO is championed by a for-profit Canadian company called Big Room Inc. Although the three founders aren't ICANN regulars, they are backed by at least 2 domain industry insiders: the inevitable Laga/Deloitte and Afilias.
So 2 .ECOs, plus the other eco friendly TLD project .GREEN, that's a lot of people vying for the same seat! You could almost be forgiven for thinking that being green is all the rage at the moment…
ICANN confirms global new gTLD consultations
Monday, June 15. 2009
An enlightened survey on new gTLDs? ICANN doesn't think so!
Wednesday, June 10. 2009
ICANN's new CEO expected to attend Sydney meeting
Wednesday, June 10. 2009
ICANN's replacement for current CEO Paul Twomey (pictured) should be in attendance at the Sydney meeting, at the end of June. Photo SVG.
Well, you'll probably now read it in lots of other places, but you read it here first folks! Paul Twomey's replacement should be in attendance at the next ICANN meeting, happening in Sydney (Australia) from June 21 to June 26.
Twomey's current contract ends on June 30th and it had been expected that ICANN's new CEO would be "phased in" after Sydney, starting in July with some "meet and greet" sessions with the ICANN staff.
Well it now seems that timetable has been shortened and that the new CEO should not only be named during the Sydney meeting, but actually there.
And that then begs the obvious question: who is he? Sorry, not even my promises of a lifelong supply of French baguettes to my sources had them willing to let me in on that well guarded secret. So all I can tell you is that the lucky finalist apparently hails from the American business community, and is an ICANN outsider.
I guess we'll know more in a couple of weeks.
P.S.: This just in: the IGP blog has former Director of US Homeland Security's National Cybersecurity Center Rob Beckstrom as Twomey's replacement, with former Disney CEO Michael Eisner a finalist as well...
New York City consults on .NYC Top Level Domain
Monday, June 8. 2009
Should the City of New York launch a .NYC Internet domain? To try and answer that question, the City issued a Request For Information (RFI) in April through its Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications (DoITT).
The RFI was just that: a call for help in determining whether the City should work on a .NYC project and if so, what the TLD should be. Contrary to what people normally expect from these RFIs, it was not a call for vendors to detail and offer their prospective services.
The City was quite clear in its call, explaining that "no contract will be awarded pursuant to this RFI and that responding to, or not responding to, this RFI will neither increase nor decrease any vendor’s chance of being awarded a contract from a subsequent solicitation issued by the City, if any, for relevant services."
DoITT invited several companies to respond to their RFI by the end of May. INDOM was the only non-US company to get the call and to respond to it. From what we know, the City received 5 others responses, all from US companies. Long-time proponents of .NYC Connecting.nyc and dotNYC both responded, as did Neustar, Verisign and New York based Name.Space.
We responded in the hope that our experience on .PARIS and other TLD projects may help the City of New York plan for a .NYC. We believe that sharing information like this can only help the City TLD cause in general. As more and more major cities like New York get on the City TLD bandwagon, this particular type of TLD is fast emerging as a standalone new category. One that can only increase the pressure on ICANN to launch the new gTLD program sooner rather than later.
