International Domain Names-What’s in it for the Caribbean?

By Suzette Gardner

Starting Monday, October 15, 2007 at least 4 billion netizens will be able to log on to the internet through URLs that will be in their own native script according to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the U.S. based organization responsible for the global coordination of the Internet’s system of unique identifiers such as domain names.

Arabic, Persian, Chinese (simplified and traditional), Russian, Hindi, Greek, Korean, Yiddish, Japanese and Tamil are the first languages will begin this journey away from English, the Latin based script that has controlled programming and limited accessibility for billions around the world. Finally, speakers of the above languages can say bye-bye to typing .com, .net, .org, .biz or any of the other English based domain extensions and start using extensions written in their own script.

So what’s in it for the Caribbean? For starters, the more we have to sell, the more we have to gain. Our multi-ethnic communities, tourist and music industries will certainly find new audiences and connections among the new flow of surfers this development will bring. The change will bring about new ideas in taxonomy, programming (basic and complex) and Web development. Hopefully in the midst of all of this Caribbean developers will feel empowered to jump in and add their unique genius to charting the new directions with everybody else.

“ICANN needs the assistance of users and application developers to make this evaluation a success. When the evaluation pages come online next week, we need everyone to get in there and see how the addresses display and see how links to IDNs work in their programs. In short, we need them to get in and push it to its limits.”

-Dr Paul Twomey, ICANN CEO and President

Caribbean marketers will have a lot of work on their hands connecting their clients with new the opportunities International Domain Names will present. Are you ready?