Recently in New domain extensions Category

ICANN, the internet's governing body, yesterday officially announced the introduction of Internationalized Domain Name (IDN) extensions for nations and territories. This means that a full web address including the domain suffix can contain non-Latin characters such as Chinese, Arabic, Hebrew or Greek in the future.

"The coming introduction of non-Latin characters represents the biggest technical change to the Internet since it was created four decades ago," said ICANN chairman Peter Dengate Thrush. "Right now Internet address endings are limited to Latin characters - A to Z. But the Fast Track Process is the first step in bringing the 100,000 characters of the languages of the world online for domain names."

Watch the video with people from around the world explaining how localized domain names will help them using the internet in their native language:

The introduction of internationalized country domains is an important step towards a global internet and we would like to congratulate ICANN and everybody involved in achieving this long-awaited milestone.

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

.TEL is now available to the public and is already gaining momentum. Yesterday a CNET article brought a record number of visitors to our site after mentioning the possibility of registering a .TEL domain via the iPhone using our our DomainApp. Thanks for that!

We've uploaded a new .TEL video to our Youtube channel. Hope you like it ;)

As of today we're adding two new country code top-level domains (ccTLDs) to our list of international extensions:

• .HT - the Haitian domain and
• .COM.SB - the web address of Solomon Islands

Both .HT and .COM.SB domains can also be transferred to iWantMyName.

We are also working on the implementation of the new .TEL domain extension which will be available on our site from March 24th 2009. For more information about .TEL please visit the official registry Telnic.

We're welcoming the new year 2009 with the activation of domain transfers to iWantMyName.

Transfers are available in the following extensions:

.COM, .NET, .ORG, .INFO, .NAME, .ME, .TV, .BIZ, .MOBI, .ASIA

and

.AE.ORG, .AG, .AR.COM, .BR.COM, .BZ, .CC, .DE.COM, .EU.COM, .GB.COM, .HN, .HU.COM, .IN, .JPN.COM, .KR.COM, .LA, .MN, .MU, .NO.COM, .QC.COM, .SA.COM, .SE.COM, .TL, .US, .US.COM, .UY.COM, .VC, .WS, .ZA.COM

This means you can move your existing domains to iWantMyName and start using our free features such as the easy setup for Google Apps with Gmail for your email or your personal domain in MobileMe.