Alex Reid

The Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) has announced that it will start allowing French characters in domain names.

Starting January 13th, 2013, Canadians can start registering domain names with the characters û, à, ç, and ë, allowing for domain names to be in both of Canada’s official languages.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) developed the New generic Top-Level Domain Program, offering companies the chance to apply for their own domain name extension.

Right now there are 22 common domain extensions like dot-com, dot-net and dot-org, and 280 country code top-level domain (ccTLD) is an Internet top-level domain generally used or reserved for a country, like dot-ca for Canada or dot-fr for France.

The new program expects to see companies like Pepsi to apply for the right to manage the domain name extension dot-pepsi (Pepsi didn’t apply). Companies that applied would be allowed exclusive use of the domain along with the ability to sell the rights to the domain name extension. If a domain name extension was popular with new website owners, like dot-tv, it could garner a lot of money for the domain name extension applicant.

ICANN started the application process in January 2012, ending it on May 30th, 2012, in hopes of “increasing competition and choice.”

Today, ICANN revealed the 1,409 applications made, showing insight to the companies behind the applications.

There were redundant applications for common words. For example, Symantec, Amazon and Google were among the seven organizations that applied for the .cloud domain name extension. OpenSRS (Tucows) applied for four domain name extensions: .group, .marketing, .media and .online; all of which were also applied for by other domain name registrars.

Donuts.co in partnership with Demand Media – a content media company behind eHow, Livestrong.com and Cracked.com – applied for a whopping 307 domain name extensions, using $100 million in venture capital funds via separate corporations. The domain names they applied for are common words and variations like dot-photography, dot-photo and dot-photos.

The top five most common domain name extension applications were: dot-app (11); dot-home (11); dot-inc (11); dot-art (10); and dot-blog (9).

Full ICANN Reveal Day List of Domain name extensions applications.

After the election was official this past weekend, canada.votes2011.ca went live, gathering up steam on Facebook and Twitter. It’s a project that I’ve been somewhat busy with for the past ten weeks, in anticipation of the five provincial elections coming up this fall.

The site is built around using the new functionality of WordPress’ Multi-site network, and a subtle domain hack. I’m still adding to the site, and recruiting writers to add content over the next five weeks, and again closer to the five provincial elections in October.

After ten years, CIRA (Canadian Internet Registration Authority) is finally pushing forward with some new policy changes to bring it in line with how other top-level domains are handled.

CIRA is the government-mandated organization under Industry Canada that manages the dot-ca country code top-level domain and has been doing such since December 2000, but it’s been using the same system for ten years and it needs to be updated – badly.

The old system was also designed to suit roughly one million dot-ca domains but currently there are 1.5 million dot-ca domains. It reached the one million mark in April 2008. Largely CIRA has acknowledged that it needs to update its policies to be more in line with other top-level domains.

So starting today, for the next week, CIRA is locking down their system. Specifically, dot-ca domain name holders will not be able to change settings. Domain name renewals and new registrations will be allowed during the transition.

The result of these changes is simply to make it easier to manage dot-ca domain names and to keep this in line with how other top-level domain names are managed. More specifically:

• Transfers of dot-ca domain names will no longer require an annual renewal fee. It will simply be a change of contact information.
• The domain life cycle will be changed to bring it in line with industry standards and more like generic top-level domains (gTLDs). Changes include moving to a similar renewal grace period, redemption period, and the use of authorization codes for transfers.
• CIRA Registrant profiles and passwords will be eliminated and domains will be managed at the Registrar level, with no further confirmations required (currently Registrants have a separated CIRA profile to approve some management functions).
• Third- and fourth-level domains will no longer be available for registration. It will still be possible to manage and renew any existing third- and fourth-level domains through OpenSRS.
• WHOIS privacy will be managed at the Registrar level (currently it is managed at the CIRA website).
• Registrar-to-registrar transfers will allowed only after the domain is registered for 60 days (currently 30 days).

Yet another top level domain (TLD) is being rolled out: .tel.

The purpose of the .tel domain is an “unified contact directory services as text-based alternative to fragmented communications solutions” or in other words an one-shop-stop of all your web sites, phone numbers and other contact information. No private hosting is required for the .tel domain as the usage of the domain name is simply a one-page information portal.

No photos, no html, no web stats, no design options and no associated email – however what is interesting is that clicking on a phone number will activate a “click to call” feature.

The .tel domain name may challenge directory services as it intent is for companies and individuals to offer a compilation of their contact info when they want as they want, while most telcos only update their directory listings once a year as their data is tied into the annual printings of their paper directories. The .tel template is also designed to appear on mobile devices like Blackberry and iPhone.

The TLD will launch on December 3, 2008, when domains will be available only to trademark owners costing a few hundred dollars per domain. On February 3, .tel will be more widely available, sold at premium prices for minimum three year terms. After March 24, they will be available to the general public for a regular price and a one year term.