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Libya cracking down on .ly domain names, reportedly yanking them at will
Ruh roh. It looks as if current owners of .ly domain names may need to be on high alert -- you know, in case the Libyan government decides to yank your URL from the face of the internet. According to a thorough report from Ben Metcalfe, that's exactly what's happening. Vb.ly was recently pulled because the content on the site (read: not the domain) was found to be "obscene, offensive and illegal," presumably based on what would be expected under Libyan Islamic / Sharia Law. More concerning still is that Libya seems to be dictating the pulls on their own, even if the site content isn't in violation of that law. 'Course, it's all pretty vague to begin with, making it even easier to toss under said umbrella and call it a day. We're also hearing that .ly domain names with less than four letters are now being reserved for local Libyans only, and we're guessing that a continued fallout is upon us. Bit.ly, Ow.ly, Ad.ly -- you guys still with us, or what?
First non-Latin domain name goes live, trips out browsers
ICANN decided late last year that URLs would finally be allowed with non-Latin characters, but it wasn't until this week that the first one was set free onto the world wide web. The new hot place to visit is http://موقع.وزارة-الأتصالات.مصر/, and while you'll need to know a bit of Arabic to actually pronounce it, you don't have to have any foreign language skills to click the link and see what happens. As of now, the site loads as http://xn--4gbrim.xn----rmckbbajlc6dj7bxne2c.xn--wgbh1c/ in pretty much every browser we've tried here in the US, but all of the site content seems to populate just fine. Remember that URL gold rush from last century? Round two is officially on.
ATX proposes .car TLD for expected influx of in-car internet users
With the ability to surf the web in-car inevitably coming to more and more motorcars, ATX Group, the self-proclaimed "largest independent telematics services provider to the automotive industry," has announced an initiative with the Connected Vehicle Trade Association to "convene an international work group to address how to safely access internet content through embedded and nomadic devices in vehicles." Aside from that, it's also proposing a generic top-level domain -- .car -- that would presumably dumb down websites for use in the vehicle. Of course, you won't find us cheering on a movement to generate yet another worthless TLD, but we'd certainly be down with text-to-speech software that read the latest gadget headlines (just an example, is all) aloud as you cruised the freeway.
dotMobi is more than just a top level domain name
Although the experience of browsing the web on a mobile phone has improved greatly over the last couple of days five years or so, there are still sites out there that refuse to load or function as smoothly as they would on a personal computer. A possible solution to this problem comes in the form of yesterday's launch of dotMobi: or if you prefer it cold and impersonal, the new .mobi top level domain name. Yeah, so you're thinking "how's another domain name gonna improve things?" Well, unlike other domain names, dotMobi has a relatively stringent style guide for anyone wishing to register a .mobi domain: mandatory rules for registrants include the requirement that the site can be loaded without typing "www." (a pain on a numerical keypad), and a complete ban on cellphone-browser busting frames. Time will tell whether or not the bar of entry has been set high enough, as all of the tips in the "Highly Recommended" section of the style guide are optional: for example, registrants don't even have to test their website on a mobile device. A giant leap for cellular mankind this is not, but it's certainly a step in the right direction.
