IDN Traffic

First IDN cctlds in the Root

epsilon — Thu, 06 May 2010 12:58:33 +0000

Today marks the introduction of the first IDN cctlds in the DNS root.

The first three non-latin country code top level domains to go live in the root according to ICANN’s blog, are:

السعودية (“Al-Saudiah” – Saudi Arabia), امارات. ( “Emarat” – UAE) and مصر. (“Misr” – Egypt)

You can view a functioning, full IDN website (Egypt Ministry of Communications) at this address

Congrats to the first three countries to go fully IDN, we’ll certainly be keeping an eye out for the ones to follow and, most importantly, we’ll be anxiously awaiting for the internationalization of the gtlds to signal the completion of the true multilingual internet.

Jordan idn cctld application passes string evaluation

epsilon — Sun, 25 Apr 2010 16:45:22 +0000

While Russia, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the U.A.E. receive delegation approval for their applied icctlds, Jordan is next on the growing list of countries to pass the ICANN string evaluation process.

The cctld applied for is

الاردن

[xn--mgbayh7gpa]

IDN domain investors have been wondering where Japan is during all this. Somewhere on the other side of the Pacific, I suppose [depending on where you live].

The Russian Minister of Communications announced that he expects to see Cyrillic domains in the top level .рф sometime in Septemebr 2010.

Meanwhile, Verisign are keeping to themselves. Mum’s the word…

Three more countries pass string evaluation

epsilon — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 16:50:19 +0000

Taiwan, Thailand and Tunisia are in the second batch of countries passing the string evaluation process and are now eligible for string delegation.

Taiwan’s primary strings are

xn--kpry57d
台灣

xn--kprw13d
台湾

Thailand’s is

xn--o3cw4h
ไทย

and Tunisia’s is

xn--pgbs0dh
تونس

According to ICANN, these three countries are free to enter the third part of the IDN Fast Track process, which is string delegation.

Glad to see more countries coming out of the gate. Hopefully we’ll see more in the next few days since it was mentioned that there were 15 applications in the cue for evaluation.

Added.

China, Hong Kong, Palestinian Territory, Qatar and Sri Lanka added to the list of countries/territories to pass string evaluation.

IDN History in the making First 4 IDN cctlds pass evaluation process

epsilon — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 21:10:13 +0000

Today marks an important IDN Historic event as four countries pass the evaluation process of the IDN cctld Fast Track.

The first four countries/territories to have passed the evaluation process [ awaiting delegation ] are:

Saudi Arabia with primary string:

xn--mgberp4a5d4ar

السعودية

and variant strings:

xn--mgberp4a5d4a87g
السعودیة

xn--mgbqly7c0a67fbc
السعودیۃ

xn--mgbqly7cvafr
السعوديه

Egypt with string:

xn--wgbh1c
مصر

United Arab Emirates with string:

xn--mgbaam7a8h
امارات

and Russia with string:

xn--p1ai

рф

Our congratulations first to the first four countries on the list, a big Thanks to ICANN, Tina Dam and her IDN crew, and a pat on the back to ourselves for patiently waiting for this moment in IDN History.

Time to take a moment, reflect in the events of the past few years, look forward and GET READY TO RUMBLE.

Let the Games begin.

More details on this story at the ICANN site.

Nice showing of IDNs on DNJ domain sales report

epsilon — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 04:16:12 +0000

It was refreshing to see a nice list of IDNs on DNJournal’s reported domains sale list.

Not surprisingly, all of them were from Sedo’s idn .eu domain auction in December 2009 after it managed to snag a good portion of sought-after domains when the IDN dot eu landrush started on December 10th.

Here’s what made the list on this week’s sales charts.

Südtirol.eu      €9,900 = $14,355
Möbel.eu      €9,100 = $13,195
Müller.eu      €6,600 = $9,570

jobbörse.de     $3,118
öl.eu    $3,118
homöopathie.eu     $2,465
motorräder.eu     $2,406
antiquitäten.eu     $1,391
wörterbuch.eu     $1,378
póker.eu     $1,376
universität.eu     $1,308
kindermöbel.eu     $1,305
währung.eu     $1,199
schönheitschirurgie.eu     $1,037
polstermöbel.eu     $1,030

All German except for Hungarian póker.eu

Google to review the feasibility of their business operations in China

epsilon — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 02:27:31 +0000

The latest post on the official Google blog mentions infiltration attacks to their corporate infrastructure, mainly the accessing of Chinese Human Rights activists’ Gmail accounts by third parties. As a result, Google is planning to review their business operations in China.

First, I believe there’s much more to this than what they let appear on that post. They’re just playing nice.

Then, this

…over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all.

could mean that they likely pull out of China all together, if things didn’t work out.

My personal take is that they won’t [BS detector is going haywire]. The Chinese online market is huge and only in its baby steps; they can’t afford to leave. I believe Google is using the publicity of this event to further negotiate their place within China as well as try to get the Chinese government to ease up on their favoritism towards Baidu, among other things. The blog post is carefully worded as to not directly point the finger to the Chinese government, but hey, who are we kidding.

Big G doesn’t want to lose. They’re frustrated but won’t do the ebay thing. They know they can’t go head to head with the Chinese to get what they want, so they’ll be using this as a bargaining chip on the table over the next few weeks. Google is playing sneaky and they will eventually get what they want. If they don’t, I’ll eat my hat.

All this, in addition to the recent decision by CCNIC to not accept .cn domain registrations except from registered businesses within China [ including businesses outside of China but with delays ] due to recent government regulations, does not paint a rosy picture about China’s business environment, at least for now.

IDN dot EU

epsilon — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 01:52:52 +0000

The IDN.EU Sedo auction is over with mostly German, Polish and Russian…err…Bulgarian names bringing in the higher end results. Too bad they are not all being reported simultaneously at DNJ to create the effect I was hoping for, which was to slap some sense into some domain investors who have been reluctant to delve into the IDN domain market.

Either way, besides last week’s news about Gartenmöbel.de sale, bringing in a hefty €150,000, this week’s reported IDN sales were:

münzen.eu (coins in German) at $4,948

nieruchomości.eu (Real Estate in Polish) at $3,918

słownik.eu (Dictionary in Polish) at $1,517

интернет.eu (Internet in Russian) at $1,431

goldmünzen.eu (Gold coins in German) at $1,077

Maybe Sedo is saving reporting the rest of the .eu IDN auction results for next year , to start things with a bang.

Having said that, Happy New Year everyone. May your IDN domains and earnings grow ten-fold this year.

Büromöbel.de €69,000

epsilon — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 01:29:27 +0000

The IDN domain sales on DNJ keep piling up with the latest being…

Büromöbel.de €69,000 [office furniture in German] which is also the highest reported IDN sale on DnJournal.

The following were the sideshow.
整形美容.com $3,304 plastic surgery in Chinese
Eisbär.de $2,920 polar bear in German
Olivenöl.org €4,500 = $6,570 Olive oil in German

[Olivenöl.eu currently on Sedo auction sitting at 375 Euro with less than 14hrs to go]

Nice to see a .com and .org up there besides the usual .de

It seems the IDN domain market is picking up some steam as of late, and it’s sure to heat up by tomorrow with all the newly registered .eu IDNs on auction at Sedo. As of this writing most of the auctions will be ending in the next 12 to 15 hours. It looks like that the ‘cursed’ and often downplayed extension [along with the IDN-auction-challenged Sedo], might give the IDN domain after-market the boost it needed all this time.

Won’t be long now…

Latest IDN sales

epsilon — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 22:32:07 +0000

According to DN Journal’s report, the only IDN which showed up on the reported sales list is möbelfachhandel.de which went for $3,675, meaning furniture dealers in German.

No surprises there in regards to German IDN sales being on top of the list [as far as IDN are concerned] The sales venue was, not surprisingly, Sedo. The surprise is that the .eu version is taken while all other extensions are open. Even the .info, an extension which is favored by Germans after .de and .com

Let’s see how long that one stays un-regged.

Russia.com sells for 1,5 Mil. USD

epsilon — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 16:48:07 +0000

It was on the front page of sedo dot com, under recent sales. Even though an ascii, I thought it was relevant to post here, since the latest news on the IDN front is about Cyrillic IDN domains.

A bit on the cheap side considering that a decent apartment in Moscow will cost you about that much.

We also have the recent purchase of the IDN Россия.com for xxx,xxx by veteran IDN investor M.S.