Internet addresses set for change
’bout time. All hail unicode.
UPDATE: This is wrong. It’s long been possible to have domain names like the one in the subject (which is my name in Japanese Katakana, BTW). The technical method that allows this (a ToASCII conversion algorithm) has been around for several years. I had the impression that this was becoming an official ICANN implementation at the root name servers. Not so. It’s been official for a long time. But only for certain top level domains. The only thing that is changing is now non-Roman alpabet TLDs (top level domains like com, net, edu, org, jp and so on may be created. They were already possible in theory using the ToASCII method but ICANN had never approved any for actual use.
In short, this is a pretty boring story but the details of IDN implementation are pretty interesting. As usual, the Wikipedia page provides the best overview.
So, カークサミュエルソン.com is NOT possible but カークサミュエルソン.jp most certainly is. Not only that, it’s still available.
Tags: internet, web development
