The Internet's primary governing body today approved the expansion of new top-level domains--one of the most dramatic changes in the Internet's history.
During a special meeting in Singapore, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) voted to dramatically increase the number of domain endings from the current 22, which includes the well-established .com, .net, and .org. The move will allow domains to end in almost any word, allowing companies to turn their brands into Internet extensions.
"ICANN has opened the Internet's naming system to unleash the global human imagination," Rod Beckstrom, president and chief executive officer of ICANN, said in a statement. "Today's decision respects the rights of groups to create new Top Level Domains in any language or script. We hope this allows the domain name system to better serve all of mankind."
Peter Dengate Thrush, chairman of ICANN's board of directors, said the "decision will usher in a new Internet age. We have provided a platform for the next generation of creativity and inspiration."
ICANN said it would soon begin a global campaign to educate people about the changes and opportunities they afford. Applications for new generic top-level domains will be accepted from January 12, 2012, to April 12, 2012, and the estimated evaluation fee is $185,000. (Click here to see ICANN's fact sheet on the new GTLDs (PDF).)
Hundreds of applications for these suffixes are expected, including .car, .love, .movie, .web, and .gay.
The battle over new top-level domains has been long and often contentious. Earlier this year, a rift developed between national governments and the nonprofit organization over how much influence government officials, and to a lesser extent trademark owners, will enjoy over the process of creating new domain suffixes.
Also, a U.S. proposal that would have given it and other governments the power to veto future top-level domain names failed to win approval. A group of nations rejected the proposal, concluding instead that governments can offer nonbinding "advice" about controversial suffixes but would not receive actual veto power. Proposed domain suffixes like .gay are likely to prove contentious among more conservative nations
Monday 20 June 2011
Wednesday 9 March 2011
Joys of Joomla!
So as I blogged in the past, I wanted to use Joomla! for future projects to give my clients more flexibility with their websites and give them that extra edge on their competitors by updating their website with the click of a button and without lengthy and costly intervention.
I'm inherently lazy, and so I find are most of the IT professionals - that's why we're in IT. We make shortcuts all day every day, making things to make our lives easier and simpler in the future. Though I'm sure I'm not the first to realise we're not getting there as fast as we'd like!
So, for my latest project I've decided to use Joomla! At first it seemed quite daunting with all the different configuration options, along with the talk of modules and plugins which I had nightmares about being really difficult to understand the concept. After a morning of playing and tinkering, I ended up with a working site as well as a customised template all of my own. OK, it wasn't very pretty, but the concepts there and I'm happy I could build something customised for a client within a reasonable timeframe.
The great thing I've found, which I was sceptical on at first, is that you can create a simple HTML/CSS site to start with as your template then add in all the Joomla! stuff afterwards. Plug in all the modules and content areas you want, and with a little more CSS tinkering you've got a pretty decent site.
My thanks to Norm at Teaching Joomla! for his expertise in getting me started.
Go on, give Joomla! a go
I'm inherently lazy, and so I find are most of the IT professionals - that's why we're in IT. We make shortcuts all day every day, making things to make our lives easier and simpler in the future. Though I'm sure I'm not the first to realise we're not getting there as fast as we'd like!
So, for my latest project I've decided to use Joomla! At first it seemed quite daunting with all the different configuration options, along with the talk of modules and plugins which I had nightmares about being really difficult to understand the concept. After a morning of playing and tinkering, I ended up with a working site as well as a customised template all of my own. OK, it wasn't very pretty, but the concepts there and I'm happy I could build something customised for a client within a reasonable timeframe.
The great thing I've found, which I was sceptical on at first, is that you can create a simple HTML/CSS site to start with as your template then add in all the Joomla! stuff afterwards. Plug in all the modules and content areas you want, and with a little more CSS tinkering you've got a pretty decent site.
My thanks to Norm at Teaching Joomla! for his expertise in getting me started.
Go on, give Joomla! a go
Saturday 29 January 2011
Social media for your business
In a world full of Facebook and Twitter social networking it's only natural that businesses want to get in on the action and promote their business. But it's a fine line between informative reading and updates to your "followers" to full-out spamming and quickly giving yourself a bad name.
The terms “Social media,” “Web 2.0,” “Twitter” and “Facebook” are saturating the media, and clogging our spam filters. How many emails or ads have you seen that said something like “Millions of people use Facebook every day. Don’t miss out on the advertising opportunity and get left behind?” In fact I regularly get inquiry from clients asking whether or not they should be on Facebook or Twitter.
The basic strategy for marketing using social media, such as Facebook or Twitter, is to build an appropriate network of fellow users. Once you have that network setup you can post messages that will show up on the homepage of all those you are linked to. This can drive traffic to your main website, build your reputation, or just spread the word about your business.
For example an estate agent could post something like “I have a 4bdrm house in London for 500K” and then have a link to the listing on their website. You’d assume people following an estate agent would be looking for a house, so that’s a convenient way of getting the word out for listings, and driving traffic to the main website.
The use for promoting professional services is a little less straightforward. If you just spam your contacts with business promotion, it isn't going to be long before you are unfriended. The use for this type of business is generally going to be creating Tweets on Twitter or posts on Facebook that point to a blog article. That blog article would need to contain useful information and then cross-sell your services. The Twitter stream could be posted automatically to Facebook, or you could create a similar Facebook posting manually, or you could included the blog’s RSS feed in your Facebook account. Which way you use will depend on how much control you want over the individual postings.
If you are selling products, again you would need to write some kind of useful content on a blog, and then cross-sell your product on the article page.
The utility of using Facebook or Twitter to promote most businesses is overemphasized, primarily by SEOs or marketers who see it as a new angle to get some money from unsuspecting business people. The media hype surrounding Twitter and Facebook makes their proposals seem plausible, but in the end, it can end up being a big waste of time.
The terms “Social media,” “Web 2.0,” “Twitter” and “Facebook” are saturating the media, and clogging our spam filters. How many emails or ads have you seen that said something like “Millions of people use Facebook every day. Don’t miss out on the advertising opportunity and get left behind?” In fact I regularly get inquiry from clients asking whether or not they should be on Facebook or Twitter.
The basic strategy for marketing using social media, such as Facebook or Twitter, is to build an appropriate network of fellow users. Once you have that network setup you can post messages that will show up on the homepage of all those you are linked to. This can drive traffic to your main website, build your reputation, or just spread the word about your business.
For example an estate agent could post something like “I have a 4bdrm house in London for 500K” and then have a link to the listing on their website. You’d assume people following an estate agent would be looking for a house, so that’s a convenient way of getting the word out for listings, and driving traffic to the main website.
The use for promoting professional services is a little less straightforward. If you just spam your contacts with business promotion, it isn't going to be long before you are unfriended. The use for this type of business is generally going to be creating Tweets on Twitter or posts on Facebook that point to a blog article. That blog article would need to contain useful information and then cross-sell your services. The Twitter stream could be posted automatically to Facebook, or you could create a similar Facebook posting manually, or you could included the blog’s RSS feed in your Facebook account. Which way you use will depend on how much control you want over the individual postings.
If you are selling products, again you would need to write some kind of useful content on a blog, and then cross-sell your product on the article page.
The utility of using Facebook or Twitter to promote most businesses is overemphasized, primarily by SEOs or marketers who see it as a new angle to get some money from unsuspecting business people. The media hype surrounding Twitter and Facebook makes their proposals seem plausible, but in the end, it can end up being a big waste of time.
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