Late in the afternoon of Tuesday, August 5th, Google announced a long-awaited and highly anticipated change that took place today with Gmail, which will surely be remembered as one of the most important milestones in the history of internet email: The “client-side” implementation of non-Latin, character-based email. To say this announcement is “huge” is putting it lightly. While the world’s relevant standards-setting body, the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) has had a ratified standard for non-English email since 2012, not a single provider of email services – not Google, not Yahoo, not Hotmail, not Microsoft’s Outlook, not any of the Chinese providers – actually supported the IETF standard. Before today, this meant that while you could get an email address for your non English domain name – say, 夏明@域通联达。在线 (translated: simon@tldregistry.online in Chinese), nobody could actually send you emails to that address! Today, thanks to Google, this English-specific email address barrier has been broken, and will now allow non-English speaking email users to email in their native language, making the process of emailing faster, easier, and more efficient. And that’s the way the internet should be for everyone, regardless of what language you speak. In the announcement, Software Engineer Pedro Chaparro Monferrer states, “Less than half of the world’s population has a mother tongue that uses the Latin alphabet. And even fewer people use only the letters A-Z.” Testing IDN Email in Gmail Within minutes of learning about Gmail’s new multi-lingual capabilities, we tested the system. In the screenshot below, we have addressed a new standard Gmail message to an IDN Email address. Note that we used the “Chinese dot” (。) rather than the ASCII/English dot (.) which is what a typical Chinese user would do when typing a Chinese email address. Then we hit send. The message was accepted by Google’s email server, and the message was on its way! In the screenshot below, you can see that Gmail was particularly nice and converted the Chinese dot to an ASCII dot, so as to not break the IETF standard for IDN email. Nice touch, Gmail! Today, the internet changed for the better for around half of Earth’s internet users Google understands that the number of people around the world that experience difficulty using email simply because of what language they speak, is exponentially high. Thanks to Google, the confusion, hassle, and inconvenience of using English-only email addresses is now considerably diminished, and will eventually be completely dissolved. We applaud Google and are very excited that our many owners of Chinese domain names can finally use email. As the first email client technology provider in the world to support the IETF standard, the company has taken a big step...

Late this afternoon (Tuesday, August 5th, 2014), Google announced a long-awaited and highly anticipated change that took place today with Gmail, which will surely be remembered as one of the most important milestones in the history of internet email: The “client-side” implementation of non-Latin, character-based Internationalized Domain Name (IDN) email. To say this announcement is “huge” is putting it lightly. While the world’s relevant standards-setting body, the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) has had a ratified standard for non-English email since 2012, not a single provider of email services – not Google, not Yahoo, not Hotmail, not Microsoft’s Outlook, not any of the Chinese providers – actually supported the IETF standard. Before today, this meant that while you could get an "IDN email" address for your non English domain name – say, 夏明@域通联达。在线 (translated: simon@tldregistry.online in Chinese), nobody could actually send you emails to that address! Today, thanks to Google, this English-specific email address barrier has been broken, and will now allow non-English speaking email users to email in their native language, making the process of emailing faster, easier, and more efficient. And that’s the way the internet should be for everyone, regardless of what language you speak. In the announcement, Software Engineer Pedro Chaparro Monferrer states, “Less than half of the world’s population has a mother tongue that uses the Latin alphabet. And even fewer people use only the letters A-Z.” Testing IDN Email in Gmail Within minutes of learning about Gmail’s new multi-lingual capabilities, we tested the system. In the screenshot below, we have addressed a new standard Gmail message to an IDN Email address. Note that we used the “Chinese dot” (。) rather than the ASCII/English dot (.) which is what a typical Chinese user would do when typing a Chinese email address. Then we hit send. The message was accepted by Google’s email server, and the message was on its way! In the screenshot below, you can see that Gmail was particularly nice and converted the Chinese dot to an ASCII dot, so as to not break the IETF standard for IDN email. Nice touch, Gmail!   Today, the internet changed for the better for around half of Earth’s internet users Google understands that the number of people around the world that experience difficulty using email simply because of what language they speak, is exponentially high. Thanks to Google, the confusion, hassle, and inconvenience of using English-only email addresses is now considerably diminished, and will eventually be completely dissolved. We applaud Google and are very excited that our many owners of Chinese domain names can finally use email. As the first email client technology provider in the world to support the IETF standard, the company has...

We are excited to announce that TLD Registry’s CEO Arto Isokoski and CMO Simon Cousins will be highlighted guest speakers at India's inaugural World Domain Day. To be staged in Hyderabad, India on August 24th, Arto and Simon will build upon TLD Registry’s already well-established résumé as the world's leading experts on Chinese domain names. Increasing numbers of bloggers, domain name investors, governments, enterprises and even new Chinese parents are realizing the immense value and opportunity that Dot Chinese Online (.在线) and Dot Chinese Website (.中文网) have to offer the internet. The fact that both Arto and Simon will be championing the world's leading Internationalized Domain Names to India's most influential domain name investors will provide increased support for growth of the Chinese domains under management. World Domain Day India provides a unique opportunity for TLD Registry to further highlight its successful and exciting new business platform to an audience of those involved in the domaining sector specific to India. Conversely, Indian investors also have a unique opportunity to network with TLD Registry and connect with a market that may be extremely valuable in terms of achieving their business goals. An important part of the TLD Registry presentation at World Domain Day India will be to focus on the excellent opportunities to register valuable "category killer" Chinese domains, using the company's new tool ChineseLandrush.com. ChineseLandrush.com offers ordinary domain investors the expert support to register great Chinese domains without knowing a word of Chinese. We are confident that Arto and Simon will perpetuate the major benefits Dot Chinese Online and Dot Chinese Website have, and how important those IDNs will be for the domaining and consumer market world as ASCII is slowly, yet progressively, escorted out the door. By doing this, we are opening the door to the best of the best IDNs, and have the chance to make that known to people at one of the newest domain name conferences of the year. Along with Arto and Simon, several other guest speakers will be in attendance at World Domain Day, including .CLUB's Jeffrey Sass, Dr. Ajay Kumar, Vikram Ahuja, James Wester, and many more. Arto and Simon will be speaking in the afternoon -- World Domain Day's venue is the the main auditorium of the five-star Avasa Hotel in Hyderabad. For more information about World Domain Day, please visit worlddomainday.com. Mitch Watkins, TLD...

According to an ICANN announcement released on Thursday July 24 , Chinese NASDAQ-listed internet hosting company 21Vianet and ICANN have jointly installed an important upgrade to the global Domain Name System (DNS) in Beijing. The DNS is the master database matching all domain names (such as internetregistry.info or 域名.在线) to the IP addresses for their web-servers. The upgrade, known as a "L-Root instance" or "node" is the world's latest authorative DNS server. The server is running live in 21Vianet's Beijing datacenter now, and according to TLD Registry's CTO Raymond Li, is "an important and valuable new contributor to the global internet's resiliance." According toICANN, the new Beijing L-Root node will increase “the Domain Name System’s (DNS) overall fault tolerance and its resilience against certain types of cyber threats, such as Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks.” Beijing is just one of many eventual cities in China to receive a new L-Root installation. TLD Registry would like to publicly congratulate the efforts and productivity of ICANN, as well as 21Vianet’s CEO Mr. Josh Sheng Chen and our friend, 21Vianet Vice President James Seng for their community-spirited efforts to making the internet a progressively better tool. Considered as one of the pioneers of the internet in Singapore, James Seng contributed immensely to the invention and evolution of Chinese domain names (or, "IDNs" in the industry parlance), so it’s no surprise that his involvement and professional expertise was one of the driving forces behind the installation of the L-Root node in China. Arto Isokoski, TLD Registry...

TLD Registry’s Dot Chinese Online (.在线) and Dot Chinese Website (.中文网) are garnering more attention in the blogosphere, as demonstrated by a flattering new FairWinds Partners blog post today. FairWinds’ Founding Partner, Phil Lodico, mentions several business, social and cultural benefits that registrants enjoy with fully-Chinese domain names. One of the benefits raised by Mr. Lodico includes the fact that businesses will be exposed to the massive Chinese internet user population and consumer market. “Chinese-character TLDs offer Western businesses a way to tap into the vast Chinese consumer market in an organic and culturally adaptive way,” Lodico wrote. “It’s time for American businesses to take notice, and consider if they should have a presence in this space.” Another benefit mentioned by Mr. Lodico is that these businesses have the chance to be in the front of the line to invest in brand new, unused Chinese-language TLDs. “It makes sense for businesses to register their brand names first in the Chinese IDNs,” Lodico wrote. We are delighted that Mr Lodico’s internationally-respected internet strategy consultancy has independently arrived at the same conclusions as we did six long years ago, when we first applied for Dot Chinese Online and Dot Chinese Website. Given the TLDs market-leading position (no other non-English new gTLD is ranked higher, in terms of domains registered, than our two Chinese TLDs), we congratulate FairWinds on their conclusions and recommendations! We believe that it is time to kiss your ASCII goodbye. As more attention is given highlighting the value of IDN’s, particularly Dot Chinese Online and Dot Chinese Website, the English-character (“ASCII”) dominance of domain names will come to an end. This will make the internet world more clear, concise, and straightforward for the people in non-Chinese language user communities – very definitely including China’s 650 million internet users. And that’s the way it should be. “If a brand has or desires a presence in Chinese markets, new IDN TLDs are worth serious consideration,” Lodico advises. We couldn’t agree more. Mr. Lodico’s post is has appeared across the web, and is sourced from China’s Changing Internet Domain Name Landscape. Mitch Watkins, TLD...