Landrush for short and numeric-only .tel domains starts
Two-character and numeric-only domains in .tel domain became available recently. After the premium-priced landrush registration period, which lasted two weeks, the second landrush phase began, enabling anyone to register any remaining short and numeric-only .TEL names at regular registration prices. As with the previous Landrush period, some strings remain unavailable for registration. These are all one-letter and single-digit domains (e.g. a.tel, o.tel, 9.tel, 1.tel), all two-character country code top level domain lookalikes (such as ru.tel, uk.tel), and all digit-only or digit-hyphen strings that contain eight or more characters (for example, 12345678.tel or 123-5678.tel).
All registrations will be on a first-come, first served basis. As with existing .tel domain name registrations, the price tag is to be provided by ICANN-accredited registrars as well as their resellers, but it is expected to be similar to current .tel domain name costs. Anyone can secure their domain name in .tel for the period of one to ten years.
Who needs privacy when there are social networks
Facebook revealed its facial recognition software recently, allowing tagging your friends and colleagues in photos uploaded to the social networking site. This, in turn, raised a lot of security concerns from security industry players and EU regulators alike; Electronic Frontiers Foundation retaliated with video showing how to opt-out.
Though facial recognition exists in many useful products (e.g. Apple's iPhoto), it has never been 'in the wild' before: Google has moved away from this trend, being afraid of legislative charges. The question raised by Facebook making this step toward user privacy is, however, bigger than just facial recognition — it is about making the privacy visible, as CircleID's author suggests. In other words, Facebook and other social services should raise user awareness instead of silently turning on the feature with users unaware of the consequences.
Meanwhile, a similar privacy case here in Russia has been largely left unnoticed by English-speaking press: one of the largest Russian social networks, VKontakte, pushed one of its privacy features away just recently. Previously, users were able to hide their friends list; now only 15 friends of user's choice could be hidden, while others would still appear in user's profile. The case raised many objections too, while Pavel Durov, owner of the social network in question, says the management is open for public comment. Quite strangely, Durov is asking for comments on his Facebook page.
Japan plans to apply for two new gTLDs
Business Ralliart, a Japanese-based technology company, has announced its plans to apply for two geographic top-level domains covering the prefecture of Okinawa. Two proposed gTLDs are .okinawa and .ryukyu (the second one being the name of the islands). The investors of the project are of particular interest: they are a car rental company and a restaurant chain. As Kevin Murphy of Domainincite.com thinks, the investor-registry link seems quite interesting in this context. 'I’m expecting to see quite a few of these kinds of relationships emerging in the first round of new TLD applications – getting an investor and an anchor tenant on board in one deal makes good sense for a limited community or geographic TLD,' Murphy notes.
Governments to block names in .xxx
ICANN's GAC had a meeting today during ICANN's Singapore conference. Earlier, ICM Registry, the .xxx owner, asked GAC to provide lists of names they don't want to see in .xxx domain zone. The discussion should be around the said block-list, and the final list will be including strings that would not be available for registration. Governments, unlike trademark holders, will not be required to pay a fee, and it is expected that strings in non-Latin will be submitted anyway, just for future reference. It seems that ICM has decided to take the safe path — given that some governments were discussing the plan to block the whole domain at their national borders, it's better to discuss the matter than to be sorry.
