UrbanBrain Inc.

SO Registry Announces Launch Date for .SO

Jacob Williams — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 07:17:58 +0000

The Registry operator for the ccTLD (Country Code Top Level Domain) for the Republic of Somalia, .so (dot SO) has announced a launch date to begin registrations. According to the SO Registry, the ccTLD was re-delegated to the Ministry of Post and Telecommunications this past April by ICANN. We first caught a glimpse of the SO Registry at the ICANN International meeting which was held in Brussels, Belgium this past June when GMO Registry promoted the extension.

ICANN Publishes Draft Agreement for .XXX

Jacob Williams — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 04:15:04 +0000

ICANN posted a revision of its Proposed Registry Agreement with ICM Registry on its website today for the public to evaluate. ICM Registry, the applicant behind the .xxx top level domain, has been working towards obtaining the TLD since it first applied in 2004 in answer to ICANN’s call for Sponsored New gTLD proposals. The ICANN board rejected previous versions of the Proposed Registry Agreement, but after and independent review panel declared the rejection of the previous proposals as flawed, ICANN began to move forward in negotiating with ICM Registry.

The Proposed Registry Agreement is available for a thirty day public comment period which began August 24th, 2010 (19:00 UTC) and will run until September 23rd, 2010 (18:59 UTC). The current revision is based on the 2007 Proposed Registry Agreement. ICANN lists the major changes of the agreement as the following:

Iron Mountain and UrbanBrain Create Program to Support New gTLD Applicants

Jacob Williams — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 04:20:24 +0000

Aug 11th, 2010 – UrbanBrain Inc. and Iron Mountain Incorporated, the industry’s premier registry escrow services provider, have announced a co-referral program to benefit applicants for new generic top-level domains (gTLDs).

UrbanBrain New gTLD Consulting

Jacob Williams — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 07:24:12 +0000

Internet Revolution

In 2010 the Internet will change in a major way. ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers), the non-profit organization that oversees the Internets domain name system, plans to open it’s doors to new gTLD (generic top-level domain) applications. UrbanBrain can help you take advantage of this opportunity.

dotSiTE

Jacob Williams — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 07:23:06 +0000

UrbanBrain Introduces dotSiTE

dotSITE is new generic top-level domain (gTLD). Stay tuned to find out what you can do with your SiTE!

Learn More

Partnerships

Jacob Williams — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 07:22:08 +0000

Iron Mountain

UrbanBrain Inc. and Iron Mountain Incorporated, the industry’s premier registry escrow services provider, announce co-referral program to benefit applicants for new generic top-level domains (gTLDs).

Learn More

IDN ccTLD Fast Track Update – August 2010

Jacob Williams — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 07:30:43 +0000

The IDN (Internationalized Domain Name) ccTLD Fast Track Program was approved October 2009 in order to allow the inclusion of characters other than the traditional ASCII characters used in Country Code Top-Level Domains (ccTLDs). The implementation of IDN top-level domains has been in the works for several years, seven in the ICANN community alone. ICANN, the organization which oversees the Internet’s name space calls the implementation of IDN TLDs the biggest change to the underlying structure on the Internet since its inception.

IDNs at the second level (names on the left side of the (.) have been available for some time, but were always problematic because users would often need to switch keyboard settings to type out the final “.com” or “.co.jp.” IDNs at the second level are one step closer to creating a better user experience for non-English speaking users, however, those whose native language is written right to left (ex. Hebrew or Arabic) have found the system very cumbersome.

World Domain Cup Winner Announced!

Jacob Williams — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 07:54:44 +0000

Interlink Co. Ltd Announces Winner in World Domain Cup

Japanese Internet Service Provider, Interlink Co. Ltd., published the final results of the World Domain Cup (WDC) today.

The World Domain Cup, the only contest of its kind, officially kicked off in June 2009 and throughout the course of the contest over 11,000 entries with nearly 4,000 unique strings were submitted by Internet users from all over the world including Japan, USA, UK, Germany, France, China and South Korea.

The strings submitted by the users were eventually narrowed down to the final 15 by a group of panelists. Once the final cut was made, open voting began and over 7,500 unique votes were received throughout the period.

Internet users around the world were overwhelmingly in favor of .earth, which accounted for around 44% of votes. The runners up were .inc and .free.

The final results are published on the official World Domain Cup site. A copy of the official press release (pdf) is available here in Japanese.

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New Internet Extensions. But How Soon?

Jacob Williams — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 01:47:28 +0000

New Internet Extensions. But How Soon?

ICANN 38 – Opening Day

Jacob Williams — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 11:44:33 +0000

After missing the Nairobi meeting due to ICANNs assessment of possible security issues, we were very eager to kick things off with the Welcome Ceremony Monday here in Brussels, Belgium. Unfortunately, we weren’t greeted with the same exciting cultural performances we were able to catch only brief glimpses of during our remote participation and live blogging during the Nairobi meeting.

The Welcome Ceremony featured some very distinguished guest speakers:

Read more on ICANN 38 – Opening Day…

DAGv4 – Quick Look

Jacob Williams — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 09:32:02 +0000

As briefly discussed in our blog yesterday, the ICANN New gTLD Applicant Guidebook has been delivered to the public and is open for public comment until the 21st of July, 2010. We weren’t expecting the guidebook to be released for at least another week but the release of the guidebook this early is good for the ICANN community because it allows the community a thorough read before the 38th ICANN Public Meeting in Brussels later this month. Perhaps it sets up ICANN to complete the final draft in early Fall 2010 (just a “glass half full” thought) or delay the final draft in favor of a version 5 (“glass half empty” thought) — I just can’t help it, I’m an optimist.

After getting some quality reading time in, I wanted to share some of the contents of DAG v4. Other than the description of the cross-ownership summary posted yesterday, a few simple changes that’ll affect most applicants (albeit just a little) are included in the draft. These include an applicant background check, a deposit for submitting an application, additional details on TLDs which make use of geographical names.

DAGv4 – First Glance

Jacob Williams — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 13:06:41 +0000

The New gTLD Applicant Guidebook, Version 4.0 was released to the public today. Upon first glance, it appears to contain quite a bit of additional material to help guide perspective New gTLD applicants through the application process.

UrbanBrain Introduces dotSiTE

Jacob Williams — Tue, 25 May 2010 01:23:26 +0000

May 24th, 2010 – UrbanBrain Inc. announced its intention to apply for the New generic top-level domain, dotSiTE.

dotSiTE is an easily identifiable internet extension for all Internet users.

For more information about dotSiTE, visit www.dotsite.org.

First IDN ccTLDs Go Live

Jacob Williams — Thu, 06 May 2010 10:29:52 +0000

Just a few short weeks after ICANN approved the first IDN top-level domain name delegations at its Meeting of the Board on April 22nd, the first strings, Egypt, UAE, and Saudi Arabia have been entered into the DNS root zone. The three strings were added to the root today (May 5th PST / May 6th JST), making the IDN strings officially operational.

Read more on First IDN ccTLDs Go Live…

IDN ccTLD Fast Track is Rolling

Jacob Williams — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 11:45:57 +0000

Exciting buzz among IDN advocates and watchers was created this week when ICANN CEO Rod Beckstrom Tweeted the following from the special ICANN Meeting of the Board on April 22nd (PST): “ICANN board approves Internet top level int’l domain name (IDN) delegations for Russia, Egypt, UAE & Saudi Arabia.”