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I'll start off with a link to an article [feer.com] about the confusion that seems to be just around the corner with various companies offering to register domain names in native languages that may not talking to each other.
The Chinese have a saying, "May you live in interesting times"; and they certainly will be interesting in this case.
Onya
Woz
VeriSign offers software plug-ins from i-DNS.net International and Walid that convert non-English character domain names into ASCII equivalents for transmission over the Internet.So far, use of these plug-ins has been limited. Walid Director Doug Hawkins says less than 100,000 people - a small fraction of Internet users - have downloaded its free software to access internationalized domain names.
[edited by: bill at 1:52 am (utc) on Oct. 6, 2004]
I really do not think the talk of foreign language domain names, at least as relating to Asia, is going to happen.
Is anyone offering a translator that will translate domain names that do not use the roman alphabet, such as Thai, Chinese, Korean or Japanese?
Until this happens the vast majority of Asian languages will be inaccessable to the West and use of domain names in these languages will not translate.
Is anyone offering a translator that will translate domain names that do not use the roman alphabet, such as Thai, Chinese, Korean or Japanese?i-DNS.net [i-dns.net] is offering a plug-in that will allow your double byte domain name to resolve correctly. It's not unlike the problem that New.net [webmasterworld.com] are having with their unsanctioned domain names. Users either have to use a plug-in on their browsers, or all of the DNS servers have to use some sort of software...I discussed some of my travails with Chinese character domain names in this thread [webmasterworld.com].
[edited by: bill at 1:53 am (utc) on Oct. 6, 2004]
A plan to allow the Internet domain Name System to recognize languages other than English is being criticized as creating more problems than it solves, by either overloading existing routers or splitting sections off so they can't be reached by everyone.
[edited by: bill at 1:53 am (utc) on Oct. 6, 2004]
IETF wraps up foreign-language domain name effort [nwfusion.com]
According to this article, Internationalized Domain Names (IDN) rely on a scheme for converting foreign-language characters into US ASCII equivalents for transmission over the Internet's Domain Name System. Also, like I've mentioned before, everyone is going to have to use a special software for these names to work i.e., it won't be transparent.
Despite its promise, the IETF's IDN technology will leave some Internet users unsatisfied. For example, it doesn't help Chinese Internet users cope with the translation between traditional and simplified character sets in their language. Nor does it address Chinese, Korean and Japanese characters that look the same but have different meanings.These Asian language problems stem from Unicode, a computer industry standard for representing language characters that was developed with the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). The IETF's IDN technology uses Unicode.
To quote from the article,
"Chinese experts are cautioning the Internet's main standards-setting body against hastily approving a controversial set of specifications on internationalized domain names."
"For example, Tsinghua University, China's leading university in science and engineering, would have to register at least four Chinese domain names as it can be written in various forms with traditional, simplified and the combination of traditional and simplified characters."
This could be a serious mistake if the Internationalized Domain Names system does not cater for all possible languages. Otherwise, we could end up with a number splinter networks which is something the Chinese have hinted at already.
As they Chinese would say, we live in interesting times.
BTW, check out some discussions on this topics from the European point of view over here [webmasterworld.com].
Onya
Woz
Japanese language domain names are gaining little popularity here. The leading domain name firm like GMO
[onamae.com...]
has been trying see it like crazy but I've heard no success so far. The same for Realnames. Instead seems a domain like (alphabets).jp is gaining much more popularity.
I do believe one of the major reasons for this is that it's simply difficult for most Japanese to type in Japanese characters in the address area of the browser. The same might applly to other Asian languages.
Actually a unique phenomena here is many Japanese go to a search engine like google 1st and then type the company / service name since most Japanese cannot figure out how to spell the domain name of the site they're looking for. I assume more English speakers try to type URL directory in the address area of the browser before getting a help from search engine.
For instance my friend uses Hotmail Japanese everyday but she always 1st goes to google to type "hotmail" in Japanese to find the URL...
The same happens in the English speaking world. People just don't realise how their browsers work.
I think one of the reasons why the Japanese language domain names are not popular in Japan is that there is a huge number of Netscape 4.x users leftover...I don't have any stats for this offhand, it's just my general impression...a lot of people use Netscape Mail still and just can't be motivated to switch to another browser. The Japanese version of Netscape was a real market leader for e-mail software in the mid-90s. I've seen a lot of this. Many companies purchased Netscape Gold licenses (back before Netscape was free) and a lot of people have stuck with it. They upgraded up through the Communicator series, but when development seemingly stopped at Netscape people just hunkered down and continued to use what their company gave them.
The solution that I mentioned above relies on IE, and probably won't work on NN4.x. I've never tried to resolve a Japanese language domain name on a Japanese version of NN4.x, so I can't say whether this is the case.
Does my theory hold up in your experience?
>I think one of the reasons why the Japanese language domain names are not popular in Japan is that there is a huge number of Netscape 4.x users leftover...
I do personally own one of the most popular sites in Japan (generating over 200,000 hits from search engines alone). Its January stats, only 1.93% of the total users are using Netscape. 1.87% are using Mac IE ver ##. These stats may not prove your theory...but then its traffic is heavily depending on search engines, so mine isn't perfect to deny your theory.
There was a huge debate among Japanse Internet marketers whether Japanese language domain becomes popular, but most thought it would not. The main reason, again, is simply the difficulty of typing... Also, as you may know there are a variety of ways to type Japanese names in Japanese characters (whether you use Hiragana-only, Kanji, or Katakana, etc.). So I guess more companies thought it'd be better to just stick with English alphabets. Or they were just too conservative to try something new... So far it seems there aren't too much demand both from users and businesses.
I do personally own one of the most popular sites in Japan (generating over 200,000 hits from search engines alone).
Its January stats, only 1.93% of the total users are using Netscape.
I think the lack of popularity of Japanese language domain names stems from the basic fact that it's only functional now through a technological kludge (for lack of a better term). You have to apply a plug in or upgrade your software for it to work. This "solution" also doesn't work well on non-Japanese systems. I'd guess that all of these Japanese companies on the net would like to have their sites accessible from anywhere in the world, just like any other URL. At this stage, a Japanese language domain name is a liability, not an asset.
Are you seeing any Japanese language URLs showing up in the Japanese SEs? None of the stuff I follow on a regular basis uses a Japanese language domain name, and I can't recall seeing any on these ranking well in the SEs.
>Are you seeing any Japanese language URLs showing up in the Japanese SEs?
This is not happening at all. I should've mentioned this before. My understanding is that Japanese language domains are not yet available to access yet, although I'm unsure of the technical detail. I wonder what'll happen when it comes out...
My understanding is that Japanese language domains are not yet available to access yet, although I'm unsure of the technical detail.
This article [nic.ad.jp] states that as of August 27, 2001, IE 5.x users can access Japanese language domain names using a technology developed and operated by RealNames.
After trying to enter some Japanese language domain names again this morning I once again realized why you mentioned that they were difficult to input. It is extremely difficult to input these names...I really doubt this system will catch on as it is now. The technology is just too cumbersome now.
Maybe now they will seriously reconsider where the market for these names is heading and how they will implement it more seriously.
The Chinese stateowned registry CNNIC and a Japanese registry both have systems built on Realnames working.
Looks like there's some pressure building on Asian MS branches.
That will certainly create havoc for the various internationalized domain name systems. I can almost hear the heated discussions from here. Wonder what will happen, and what system will rise out of the ashes if the Realnames Support is really pulled from the IDNs. Interesting Times!
Onya
Woz
I've been following this for a while and my impression was that very few people were actually registering these multilingual names. At this point we may be seeing the last ditch efforts of a dying company to lash out at Microsoft. It does make for interesting reading, if anything ;)
