This list is out of date - it contains strings that have already been withdrawn by the applicant. The accurate list, including status, and the prioritization order (the order they'll be added if successful), is at:
Which is great. I'd prefer http://ajf./ over http://ajf.me./, and it looks like soon enough I might be able to get it, considering how this is destroying the market for 2nd-level domains, hence making it likely we might do away with them altogether.
They are pretty much killing the idea of using regexes to linkify URLs without the scheme in plain text. Given that Chrome has moved to dropping the `http://` from its address bar, and many people already skip it, they are probably going to break a lot of linkification code in comment forms and the like. Sure, people "should" know to type the `http://`, but many people just don't know about that or don't remember, and there's a lot of encouragement not to.
I'm just confused. Why on earth would you go to .blockbuster? What domain would they use? "movies.blockbuster" ? It's so strange - some of these are extremely long.
It's not working for me right now, but there were a couple of ccTLDs that has WWW services running on the IP addresses assigned to the FQDN for their ccTLD. I seem to remember it was http://uz. and a couple of others... maybe http://io. ?
Offtopic, but has anybody used name.com for domain registration? I recently found out that namecheap bans the word "hacker" (you have to contact them to get a domain manually approved if it contains that word).
That rubs me the wrong way, and I'd rather not give my money to a company that thinks "hackers" are all criminals.
I use them and I think they are very good (though I don't know for sure that they don't have some kind of word blacklist too). Linode uses name.com as their registrar which I think is a pretty good endorsement.
Edit: I got as far as checkout with a domain containing "hacker" so it looks OK on that front.
I use name.com, and will never register another domain with them, nor recommend them to anyone. It's barely acceptable for a mostly unused vanity domain, but if I were using the domain in any serious way I'd transfer it away in a heartbeat.
The problem: If you use their name servers, they install a wildcard record for the domain pointing at a crummy adspam page. You can override the wildcard record with your own, but not disable it completely, which is completely unacceptable.
Their explicitly stated reason for fucking over their customers is "we make more money this way". Which would be fine, but there's actually no way they'd be making even pennies on my domain, and they are actively reducing its utility by a much larger amount.
Oh please. While I agree that's undesirable, it's a problem with their DNS hosting service (which is free) and not their registrar service (which you pay for). By all means warn people away from their free DNS hosting, but it's not fair to trash the whole company.
That's a very strange view. It's clearly not a free service, but part of what you pay for. In fact is a large part of what you pay for -- very few organizations are going to be hosting their own name servers these days.
But more importantly, I don't see how this can possibly be an unfair criticism. They are providing a uniquely crappy service, and have shown what I consider to be a flagrant disregard for their customers by degrading their service for no benefit at all to name.com. It's stupid, it's evil, and it's bad business. Why in the world would I trust or recommend them?
(Just to be clear: I'm not complaining that there's a wildcard DNS record by default. Parking domains by default seems to be how everyone in the business works. I'm complaining about the fact that the wildcard DNS record stays in effect even after you configure the comain, and can only be disabled by defining your own bogus wildcard record instead. Basically it turns every user of their service into an unintentional typosquatter.)
I have several domains with them and have never had a problem. I had to contact their customer support about a .IO domain and they were really helpful.
Name.com has been my default registrar for a while, and is pretty decent. Recently while renewing a domain, the anonymous registration stuff didn't apply right (paid for 2 years, got 13 months instead. no biggie). Their support fixed it over email in a few minutes, and I was on my way.
I hope that ICANN accepts a small amount of these. Isn't this the point of subdomains? Why can't ABC just use foo.abc.com (or foo.abc.go.com) instead of foo.abc? The new TLDs are confusing and I'm sure many people will just type in .com as well.
Then again, ICANN has nothing to lose by encouraging many applicants, they get an awful lot of money from the applications (about 357 million [1]). They may be non-profit, but they still need money to keep running.
On the other hand, getting a big company their own TLD can be easier to maintain. For VW, having everything under the .volkswagen TLD means they don't need to have 100 different domains for each country (like volkswagen.com, volkswagen.co.uk, volkswagen.fr, and so on), each of them with different terms (in some countries you have to pay a yearly fee, in others you don't).
On the other hand, the new TLD only means just another name to maintain, as I don't think anyone will actually remove the ".com" domain when they get their own TLD. One of them will be redirected to the other, and for 99% of the time the custom one will be redirected to the older.
But wouldn't Volkswagen still want to maintain all of those domains? I highly doubt they're going to give those all up for either competitors or domain squatters to snatch up.
So really in the end, a custom TLD is just /more/ money they need to shell out for protecting their name online.
How about golf.volkswagen for the VW page with information on the VW Golf, and mygolf.volkswagen for a community site dedicated to customized or modified VW Golfs? That would differentiate the car club from say, augusta.golf (which would represent the golf course Augusta National).
I believe the rules state that a registrar selling these domains (which VW would then be) must give equal access to everyone (or something along those lines).
that said, ICANN's process has not inspired confidence that these sorts of requirements will survive. that someone wouldn't sell you a name under a new gTLD (e.g. under .apple, .google, .volkswagen, etc) is one of the problems they are trying to get rid of. why people applied for .brand names when the guidelines and FAQ suggest they'll be forbidden tells me one thing: they expect the rulebook to be thrown out. in the end, it's a cheap gamble.
the whole process, beginning to now, has inflamed a lot of ICANN watchers, and while i'm normally understanding and supportive of ICANN i tend to agree. this is careening to a cluster f---.
I'm a little worried how these TLD's will be handled by some carriers. Is there any concern that there will be a fragmentation of the web by carriers or nations that will try to block access to the .gay or .sex or .xxx or similar TLD's?
We're way beyond that point; countries that want to block stuff are already blocking stuff. But yes, the porn industry did complain that they didn't want to be herded into the .xxx ghetto.
http://gtldresult.icann.org/application-result/applicationst...