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2010 preview: The polyglot web - nest0r - 2009-12-24
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20427395.800-2010-preview-the-polygot-web.html
"Imagine what browsing the web would be like if you had to type out addresses in characters you don't recognise, from a language you don't speak. It's a nightmare that will end for hundreds of millions of people in 2010, when the first web addresses written entirely in non-Latin characters come online.
Net regulator ICANN - the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers - conceded in October that more than half of the 1.6 billion people online use languages with scripts not fully compatible with the Latin alphabet. It is now accepting applications for the first non-Latin top level domains (TLDs) - the part of an address after the final "dot". The first national domains, counterparts of .uk or .au, should go live in early 2010. So far, 12 nations, using six different scripts, have applied and some have proudly revealed their desired TLD and given a preview of what the future web will look like."
Some background: http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB119204776102055002-mcBcLO94Mv6voPIrNpXs0YNMxe0_20071109.html?mod=tff_main_tff_top
More: (Post and many interesting comments on Japans's Ads + Keywords, QR Code, ICANN, kanji, etc.) - http://www.japaninc.com/node/4018
2010 preview: The polyglot web - unauthorized - 2009-12-24
I remember reading something about this on /. some time ago. It makes me wish they would allow the cyrillic TLD "сом", but alas, ambiguous TLD names will not be permitted.
Personally, I see no problem with this. If you can't even speak the language of the website, you probably aren't going able want to write the URL in the first place. About time domain names left ASCII in history where it belongs.
2010 preview: The polyglot web - nest0r - 2009-12-24
unauthorized Wrote:I remember reading something about this on /. some time ago. It makes me wish they would allow the cyrillic TLD "сом", but alas, ambiguous TLD names will not be permitted.I'm surprised it took them so long. Well, not really, my illusions about the neutrality and democracy of the Web evaporated in the late '90s. Glad to see it's moving forward in this way.
Personally, I see no problem with this. If you can't even speak the language of the website, you probably aren't going able want to write the URL in the first place. About time domain names left ASCII in history where it belongs.