IDN demystified

I read the forums, blogs and newsletters out there in domainville, and it’s fair to say that most of what has been going on for the last few years relating to IDN has been largely flown under the radar, or buried deep in a forum somewhere.

So my goal here is to separate the wheat from the chaff and organise this information (past, current and future); while trying to keep a balance between being a boring historian and keeping focus on the stuff that matters.

I’ve believe that forums serve their purpose, but there are 2 downsides a) for a newcomer or occasional visitor it can become an impossible task to keep up with every posting just in case it has that nugget of info; b) I’ve always said that the juicy stuff happens off-forum (more to come on this )

So what’s to come?

I’ve got many tales to tell; some trivial, some amusing, some that will certainly raise an eyebrow. I’ll be putting-to-bed rumours and no doubt starting a few new ones of my own.

In no particular order: I will try to do justice to some of the history, so an idn101 is on the cards, complete with timeline, tips/tricks, tools and resources etc. By the way, I’m a typical Brit, I only speak English (unless you count Cockney as a language) – so I’ll be chatting about the challenges for a non-native speaker.

I’ll be following the money trail and shedding light on some big transactions I’ve been involved with that exceed 2m USD, and also talking about traffic & typein that IDN receive today, and which languages are bringing home the bacon, and more importantly – why some and not others.

I’ll be talking about who’s-who in the IDN world, both public and those that are not so public.

There are opportunites in IDN, but equally there are threats too – so I’ll be candidly laying this out, sugar coating not included.

On the functional side, expect topics such as country firewalls, alternate roots, quirky browsers, variants, cctlds vs gtlds vs new extensions, “what are we waiting for”, IDN.IDN and why it’s important – equally not so important for some extension/country/language combo’s.. and tons more no doubt.

The drop game, and some dirty tricks played by some.

Some people have described IDN’s as “the 90’s all over again”; others as hyped crap, I’ll be laying out the case of whether investing in IDN as an end user or domainer makes sense; including native opinions on IDN. Live examples of developed sites, commercials depicting an IDN url, and large scale development projects I’m aware of.

…and anything else I’ve neglected to mention, or am prompted to cover.

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