And for the IDN doubting Thomases.

[Rubber Duck]

"Opportunities for Growth" from Versign

Read Section on "Opportunities for Growth" from the Versign's August 2006 Domain Industry Brief:

http://www.verisign.com/static/039111.pdf

 

[Rubber Duck]

You'd be surprised at the growing economy in China. Many people in fact do have their own pc's.

Santana, maybe its good to stay in the newbie forum for a while. I don't mean to be rude but your posts seem to me that you're totally clueless. According to this post http://www.namepros.com/parking-and-traffic-monetization/239934-the-next-evolution-of-ppc.html you have just discovered "CPA" advertising which has been around for years.

Ditto

 

[Fundraiser]

DNWizardX9 and Rubber Duck,

I had the opportunity to do business with the government in China recently in another area of the economy but I am unfamiliar with the computer and Internet sector there.

I would have to say that most of us would be considered "newbies" when it comes to Internet usage in China, the number of homes with a computer and Internet access in China and the cultural realities of web surfers in China.

Can anyone actually cite other sources for the information they are presenting so that we can all learn the truth? I will say that the rudeness of your posts only diminishes your credibility at this point in the thread. It would be much better if it was educational instead of confrontational.

Thanks for any additional information.

 

[Rubber Duck]

Well personally, I consider the forwarding of totally ill informed unresearched negative comment worse than rude. I must have heard the same rubbish for ASCII domainers several hundred times over the last couple of years. Always the same arrogant opinions based on zero research. Unfortunately, in terms of provide a lot of factual information on IDN this forum and DNF are still pretty much square 1. If you need to now more go to IDNF or getter gotidn.com which is where things are now happening with some momentum.

In terms of credibility, with whom am I actually seeking it? I don't actually need credibility although my mailbox is constantly full of enquires.

RD

DNWizardX9 and Rubber Duck,

I had the opportunity to do business with the government in China recently in another area of the economy but I am unfamiliar with the computer and Internet sector there.

I would have to say that most of us would be considered "newbies" when it comes to Internet usage in China, the number of homes with a computer and Internet access in China and the cultural realities of web surfers in China.

Can anyone actually cite other sources for the information they are presenting so that we can all learn the truth? I will say that the rudeness of your posts only diminishes your credibility at this point in the thread. It would be much better if it was educational instead of confrontational.

Thanks for any additional information.

 

[DNWizardX9]

All it takes is a few minutes of research. This much be the tenth time I have posted this.

The Chinese economy will overlap that of the U.S. within our lifetime.
Chinese domains are already getting tons of traffic.
More and more chinese advertisers are signing up with baidu etc.

 

[Fundraiser]

For those who want to know and from the information published August 31, 2006 - at the end of 2005 in China, 20% of households had a computer at home, 9% of households had Internet access and 7% of individuals in China had used the Internet. Here's the source which is a PDF of a slide presentation: http://www.itu.int/osg/spu/digitalb...ch="households with internet access in china"

 

[DNWizardX9]

I think I would believe the CNNIC over the stats you provided

Even at 10% that is well over 100 million people which is a significant number. Thats bigger than some asian countries like South Korea etc.

Also 2005 was a long time ago in terms of the Internet. The percentages have gone up significantly in China with those accessing the Internet.

This "report" if I shall call it a report doesn't even show references to the numbers it gives.

 

[Fundraiser]

I think I would believe the CNNIC over the stats you provided

Even at 10% that is well over 100 million people which is a significant number. Thats bigger than some asian countries like South Korea etc.

Also 2005 was a long time ago in terms of the Internet. The percentages have gone up significantly in China with those accessing the Internet.

This "report" if I shall call it a report doesn't even show references to the numbers it gives.

Did you take the time to review the source of the report, where it is published and whom they serve? http://www.itu.int/home/index.html

I publish a source of information and I do not offer an opinion of whether the numbers support any given position regarding IDNs and the first thing you do is try to poke holes in credibility of the data again without providing any of your own.

 

[DNWizardX9]

I have posted the info many times. Must I post it for the tenth time? http://www.cnnic.net.cn/en/index/index.htm has all the info.

Do I really care what you have to say? Your answers are uneducated assumptions. If you took time to read the appropriate material you'd have a better view of whats really going on.

 

[Olney]

How about this for info
Eachnic.com
Chinese Domaining community
http://www.eachnic.com/club/
Has 37805 members which makes it the world's 2nd largest domain forum.(That I know of)

I'd assume that since they are all Chinese, there must be quite a lot of Chinese using computers.

 

[namegame]

Is there value to .cn names in English such as china.cn or beijingtravel.cn? Would those domains be mostly used outside China or inside as well? If beijingtravel.cn were registered could someone also register the same name using Chinese characters?

 

[Fundraiser]

I have posted the info many times. Must I post it for the tenth time? http://www.cnnic.net.cn/en/index/index.htm has all the info.

Do I really care what you have to say? Your answers are uneducated assumptions. If you took time to read the appropriate material you'd have a better view of whats really going on.

LOL - Appropriate material? That's really funny. I took a completely neutral position. OK, you win. You have all the answers so good luck with your pursuits.

 

[rhys]

Wow - lots of heat on this thread. No offense taken sanatana - I know you are just trying to figure it out. Although this declarative from you is rather bold as it is erroneous:

"I'm sure that all other things being equal, the Chinese would prefer to type in their own characters.

However, the reality is that isn't an option for them.

Firstly, the QWERTY is commonplace throughout China. As such, using it is virtually a must."

My retort would be that the QUERTY keyboard is commonplace throughout Japan as well and oddly enough it doesn't stop them from typing very quickly in chinese characters as well as Hiragana, Katakana, and ASCII. It's odd to me that the Chinese by your description must be too dull to do what the Japanese can do in their sleep. I somehow doubt it. At the end of the day, let's face it, traffic happens ALREADY in IDN domains. And like it or not, Chinese and Japanese people can type in Chinese characters very fluidly with a QUERTY keyboard.

 

[RJ]

Just a heads-up from DomainFest LA. A speaker from ICANN hosted a session about IDN's. One of the things they want to do is open the door to internationalized TLDs. This may mean future landrushes for yet to be created IDN namespaces.

 

[Ben]

Another heads-up: i-dns.net, "Over 50 million Chinese users already enabled!" Looks like ICANN has some strong competition in China.

There was a long thread about this on DomainState, not sure if I'm allowed to link to it.

 

[primacomputer]

The argument that IDNs will take off as China's economy grows doesn't hold much water. Japan has a strong economy, a non-English speaking population, high levels of usage of their ccTLD, high per capita income, and all sorts of other things that should make it a prime candidate for IDNs. So where are all these IDNs they should be using? Clearly there are other factors holding up the widespread adoption of IDNs.

The main problem with IDNs is that very few applications support them. Oh yes, I know IE7 will change the world! Yeah, right. I'm sorry, but until every major browser, email client, and other Internet application supports IDNs they aren't going to take off. Without a lot of IDNs in use the incentive to add this support to an application is low. Chicken & Egg.

It's likely we'll get there eventually. We'll reach some point of critical mass where they just take off. Hopefully within my lifetime. Hopefully before the DNS system becomes obsolete.

If Chinas economy can continue growing at the current rate for 50 years it will indeed surpass that of the US. Of course by then, all life on earth will have been extinguished by their toxic cloud and the weather forecast for the forbidden city on Christmas day will be a balmy 100 degrees centigrade with a chance of sulphuric acid showers. IDNs won't be worth much of anything then, so lets not count on China's economy to drive IDN values

 

[ekal]

RJ raises a good point - I find it hard to believe that IDNs will gain traction without IDN TLDs. The current situation is a poor mish-mash that doesn't solve the problem of having to type and remember names in ASCII.

 

[ThaiIDNs]

RJ raises a good point - I find it hard to believe that IDNs will gain traction without IDN TLDs. The current situation is a poor mish-mash that doesn't solve the problem of having to type and remember names in ASCII.

That depends very much on the country in question. In my country, .co.th requires a company registration and hence .com is dominant instead. So IDN TLDs are not important here, .com is.

The argument that IDNs will take off as China's economy grows doesn't hold much water. Japan has a strong economy, a non-English speaking population, high levels of usage of their ccTLD, high per capita income, and all sorts of other things that should make it a prime candidate for IDNs. So where are all these IDNs they should be using? Clearly there are other factors holding up the widespread adoption of IDNs.

The main problem with IDNs is that very few applications support them. Oh yes, I know IE7 will change the world! Yeah, right. I'm sorry, but until every major browser, email client, and other Internet application supports IDNs they aren't going to take off. Without a lot of IDNs in use the incentive to add this support to an application is low. Chicken & Egg.

It's likely we'll get there eventually. We'll reach some point of critical mass where they just take off. Hopefully within my lifetime. Hopefully before the DNS system becomes obsolete.

If Chinas economy can continue growing at the current rate for 50 years it will indeed surpass that of the US. Of course by then, all life on earth will have been extinguished by their toxic cloud and the weather forecast for the forbidden city on Christmas day will be a balmy 100 degrees centigrade with a chance of sulphuric acid showers. IDNs won't be worth much of anything then, so lets not count on China's economy to drive IDN values

In Asia, use of IE is typically 95% plus, so it is hardly surprising that "normal folks" aren't registering and using IDNs. Why indeed would you attempt to use something that is only accessibly by 5% (max) of your users. But yes, once IE7 is launched, that will be *all* major browsers supporting IDNs. So the game starts. I do agree the process will not be "instant", the world isn't going to change suddenly when IE7 is released in Asia, but the process will begin.

As for email, its a "nice to have" but not a "must have" for site developers. Major websites in Asia don't tend to use the email address of the website. There is far too much spam for that.

IDNs will happen in Asian countries, and sooner rather than later. Thais want to use Thai domain names. Everything else they do on the web is in Thai, why should domains be any different. Once the browser app. is finally ready, Thais will switch to IDNs very quickly. They are very sick of being forced to label their websites in a foreign language.

 

[bocanames]

RJ raises a good point - I find it hard to believe that IDNs will gain traction without IDN TLDs. The current situation is a poor mish-mash that doesn't solve the problem of having to type and remember names in ASCII.

I think IDNs will gain traction whether or not ICANN ever implements IDN TLDs. Some languages (like Vietnamese I believe) you can even type the domains in the native character set and continue to type ASCII .com without even switching settings (no extra keystrokes) since only part of the keyboard is mapped. Clever people will come up with innovations anyway if needed.

Good thing too, since waiting for the IDN TLDs may take some time. There are policy decisions and technical difficulties there around things like whether or not to ensure if I own xyz.com (I wish) that I own the equivalent in ANY variation of .com

 

[DNWizardX9]

Just a heads-up from DomainFest LA. A speaker from ICANN hosted a session about IDN's. One of the things they want to do is open the door to internationalized TLDs. This may mean future landrushes for yet to be created IDN namespaces.

We had one of our members at this conference. They were referring to DNAME. Mapping .com to the native equivalent. We are all safe. The big registrars like this as its more money in their pocket as they already are able to run .com registries. (network solutions etc)

The argument that IDNs will take off as China's economy grows doesn't hold much water. Japan has a strong economy, a non-English speaking population, high levels of usage of their ccTLD, high per capita income, and all sorts of other things that should make it a prime candidate for IDNs. So where are all these IDNs they should be using? Clearly there are other factors holding up the widespread adoption of IDNs.

The main problem with IDNs is that very few applications support them. Oh yes, I know IE7 will change the world! Yeah, right. I'm sorry, but until every major browser, email client, and other Internet application supports IDNs they aren't going to take off. Without a lot of IDNs in use the incentive to add this support to an application is low. Chicken & Egg.

It's likely we'll get there eventually. We'll reach some point of critical mass where they just take off. Hopefully within my lifetime. Hopefully before the DNS system becomes obsolete.

If Chinas economy can continue growing at the current rate for 50 years it will indeed surpass that of the US. Of course by then, all life on earth will have been extinguished by their toxic cloud and the weather forecast for the forbidden city on Christmas day will be a balmy 100 degrees centigrade with a chance of sulphuric acid showers. IDNs won't be worth much of anything then, so lets not count on China's economy to drive IDN values

Very uneducated on the subject. I will give you a D-........

Have you even read the posts here? IE 6 and below do not support IDN. Check overture on alot of the major japanese words with .com afterwards. The word w/ ext is there. There will be typing. There will be advertising $. I geuss my namedrive stats are from ghosts clicking my links.

Also for those that didn't know. ITSYOURDOMAIN, a registry(TDC) currently owns 30,000 IDNS themselves. Register.com also owns many IDNS. I think we are in a safe position.

 

[thefabfive]

There are policy decisions and technical difficulties there around things like whether or not to ensure if I own xyz.com (I wish) that I own the equivalent in ANY variation of .com

This is never going to happen. Would the owner of car.com expect to be given coche.com? Would the owner of game.com be given juego.com or jeu.com? Never going to happen.

 

[Bramiozo]

Considering what NP41215 had written before I think it should be clear that you should seperate input method and representation method. The input method will not be affected by idn's but now the chinese user will be able to use the phonetic converter directly in the browser ánd see the chinese characters he was thinking about. Provided their is integrated browser support for phonetic conversion this removes any need for pinyin domains since the input method will be equal to the input method for idn's.

NP41215 is correct when he speaks of high typing speeds in Pinyin. The method itself is called Wubi which stands for “five stroke input method”. Wubi maps major components of Chinese characters into Roman letters. The Chinese character components are inputted in the order in which they would be written by hand.

Wubi is used primarily by speed typists and those who use a keyboard a great deal, because it is fast. However, it requires special training and ongoing practice and its learning curve is quite steep. Most Chinese do not believe that it is worth the investment in time that learning the Wubi method requires.

Rubber Duck: I really have no problem with our having a difference of viewpoint. I would appreciate it if you could be a bit more respectful toward a fellow member when you disagree. I beleive that you are very well versed, but I doubt that you have an absolute monopoly on the truth.

That having been said, the following is my understanding and you are most welcome to correct it:

Using standardized software in conjunction with the English language QWERTY keyboard, a Chinese can type in the word yuming (Pinyin) and 域名 gets put into the document.

To accomplish this, they need to switch typing methods at least twice. For instance, to type 域名.com into the address blank, they need to:

Switch to Chinese typing mode by using "Ctrl+Shift" at least once, sometimes more.

Type Pinyin yuming , select 域名 from a list of choices that appears for yuming, then

Switch back to English typing mode by using "Ctrl+Shift" or "Ctrl+Blank" , type .com, and then they’re done. Is that correct?

Too, the China Internet Network Information Center reports that as of 6/06, there were 788,400 Chinese websites. Can you point me to where you learned there were hundreds of millions of pages?

Also, I'd like to see where it is well documented that Hanzi is preferred over Pinyin. It isn't that way by the Chinese I know.

Thanks for helping me learn.

S

 

[thefabfive]

Just a heads-up from DomainFest LA. A speaker from ICANN hosted a session about IDN's. One of the things they want to do is open the door to internationalized TLDs. This may mean future landrushes for yet to be created IDN namespaces.

I gave a full report of this presentation elsewhere.

This not news. IDN TLDs is all that ICANN wants to do. That is their mandate. Whether it be through DNAME or new NS records. Most likely they'll institute both.

However, I don't believe Verisign would allow tons of .com clones to pop up when they can have the whole pie with DNAME.

 

[Bramiozo]

I think he meant blabla.com transliterated to english would maybe hold rights over the unicode version. This is a very relevant concern, if jurisprudence piles up in favor of these translatired names we are basically stuck with worthless names. There was a udrp in germany against the owner of an umlaut-domain, started by the owner of the ascii-version, the udrp was decided in favor of the defendant.

This is never going to happen. Would the owner of car.com expect to be given coche.com? Would the owner of game.com be given juego.com or jeu.com? Never going to happen.

 

[bocanames]

This is never going to happen. Would the owner of car.com expect to be given coche.com? Would the owner of game.com be given juego.com or jeu.com? Never going to happen.

No I meant that coche.com owner would not have to worry about coche.[IDN version of com]

 

[thefabfive]

No I meant that coche.com owner would not have to worry about coche.[IDN version of com]

This will on depend on what system the GNSO decides to go with, DNAME or NS records. A decision probably will not be made until next year from what I heard.