June 2009 Archives

The iWantMyName team is about to head to Australia to attend the 35th ICANN meeting in Sydney next week. ICANN is the governing body of the internet and the acronym for "Internet Corporation For Assigned Names And Numbers". It's crucial for us to follow what's happening in the domain business and ICANN meetings are always a perfect place to mingle with industry experts, other domain registrars and registries.

The most discussed topic at ICANN Sydney will be the so-called "new gTLD program" which plans to extend the current system of 20 generic top-level domains such as .COM, .NET or .ORG with new domain name extensions. However, it will not be possible for everybody to have its own domain extension in a way you can register a domain name at the moment. There are still financial and technical requirements to be fullfilled. If you're interested to read more about the process we recommend Michele Neylon's "New TLDs for Dummies (sort of)" and ICANN's "So where are we up to with these new internet extensions?".

There were a lot of new gTLD initiatives popping up lately and there will be many more in the coming months with some of them being revealed in Sydney next week. This is a list of new domain name extensions that we have found so far (in alphabetical order):

• .AFRICA, .AFRICA (African community)
  
• .ARAB (Arabic language)
  
• .ARTIST (For artists)
• .BAY (The Bay Area, US)
  
• .BAYERN (Bavaria, Germany)
• .BCN (Barcelona, Spain)
• .BERLIN (Berlin, Germany)
• .BLOG
  
• .BZH (Brittany, France)
• .CAR
  
• .CYM (Wales, United Kingdom)
• .DELOITTE
  
• .ECO, .ECO (Ecological)
• .ENG (England)
• .EUS (Basque)
• .FAM, .FAM (Family)
• .FOOD
  
• .FRA (French Language)
  
• .GAL (Galicia, Spain)
• .GAY
• .GEO (Geographical locations)
• .GREEN (Ecological)
• .HAMBURG (Hamburg, Germany)
  
• .HEALTH
• .HOTEL
• .HOMES
  
• .INDIGI (For indigenous people)
• .KER (Cornwall, United Kingdom)
• .KÖLN (Cologne, Germany)
• .LAT (Latin American Region)
• .LLI (Leonese Language / Culture)
• .LONDON, .LONDON (London, United Kingdom)
  
• .MAIL (For emails and to control spam)
• .MED (Mediterranean)
• .MUNICH (Munich, Germany)
• .MUSIC
  
• .MONEY
  
• .MOVIE
• .NYC (New York City, USA)
• .PARIS (Paris, France)
  
• .PDX (Portland, Oregon, USA)
• .PHONE
  
• .POST
• .QUEBEC (Province Quebec, Canada)
  
• .RADIO
  
• .REAL
• .ROMA (Rome, Italy)
  
• .SCOT (Scotland)
  
• .SELL
• .SHOP
  
• .SPORT, .SPORT
  
• .SURF
• .TEAM
• .TOKYO (Japan)
  
• .VEN (Venetian Community, Italy)
  
• .VIDEOS
  
• .VIN (Wine community)
  
• .VLA (Flanders, Belgium)
• .WEB, .WEB
  
• .WIKI
  
• .XXX
• .YKS (Yorkshire)

While this is already an impressive list, there are still many initiatives which haven't been announced yet. We will definitely see more City top-level domains (maybe a .SYDNEY next week?), IDN (Internationalised Domain Names) TLDs in non-latin alphabets and also brand extensions such as .NIKE, .APPLE etc.

Ok, it's time to get ready and pack our suitcases. We will keep you updated about new top-level domains on a regular basis. See you in Sydney!

Sources:
http://www.robbiebirkner.info/2009/05/26/new-tlds-emerging/
http://www.mindsandmachines.com/2009/03/new-gtlds-sightings/
http://citytld.com/
http://twitter.com/ntlds

Update 1: Added .BAY, .BLOG, .CAR, .DELOITTE, .FOOD, .ROMA, .SHOP, .SURF

There's a lot of buzz around the Facebook Vanity URL launch this weekend where you will be able to register your username such as facebook.com/username instead of having a long profile address. Of course it will be nice to have your name on Facebook, we will try and get our names too. But not everybody is excited and the whole story shows the dilemma that people are facing when it comes to owning who you are online. Do you really want Facebook (or MySpace, Twitter, etc.) to be your primary address identifier for other people? All these services are currently battling over your identity but what if you don't like Facebook anymore in 2 years, the Twitpocalypse is upon us or MySpace mysteriously vanishes?

The answer to these questions is simple: Own your personal domain name!

Domains are around since 25 years (!) now and there's no sign that they will go away anytime soon. A domain name is the only address that you can really own and control. You register it, you pay for it and you use it the way you want. It's as simple as that. And even if you are not planning to use it right now, it's really a must have for every internet user.

Special Offer

We have the best domain extensions for owning your online identity on special! All new .COM, .NET, .ORG, .NAME, .INFO domain registrations are only $9.90 USD, .IM (I am) & .TEL domains at $14.90 USD and .ME for $19 USD - valid until June 30th, 2009.

See our complete list of domain extensions for more details.

Having total DNS control has been one of the most requested features of our power users. DNS is not only the underlying technology for our Domains for Apps but also probably the most overlooked cloud service. Hence we are pleased now to offer a low-level DNS editor which gives you full control over your domains and lets you manage DNS records completely in real-time.

The new DNS editor supports A, CNAME, MX, AAAA, TXT & SRV records. Have a look at this shiny new tool: