A new way of writing internet addresses has been approved
Oct.31.2009 
A new way of writing internet addresses has been approved, described as the net’s “biggest technical change” since it was created 40 years ago.
Non-Latin characters are to be used in future
The organisation that oversees them has backed the use of non-Latin characters from languages like Arabic, Chinese, Hebrew, Hindi and Korean.
Up to now, addresses have been limited to the 26 characters in the Latin alphabet used in English (A-Z) as well as 10 numbers and the hyphen.
That has meant internet users with little or no knowledge of English may still have to type in Latin characters to access their country’s web pages.
But now, web addresses using characters from different languages will be available by mid-2010, including TLDs (top-level domains such as “.com”)
Their use has been approved by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) board at a meeting in Seoul, South Korea.
Nations and territories will be able to apply for internet address endings reflecting their name and using their national language from November 16, when ICANN’s Internationalised Domain Name (IDN) fast track process begins.
Major shake-up of web addresses planned
If the applications meet certain criteria, including government and community support and a stability evaluation, the applicants will be approved to start accepting registrations for domain names.
More than half the world’s internet users do not use English or a Latin-based language as their first language and this move will see around 100,000 new characters available for use in IDNs.
Peter Dengate Thrush, chairman of ICANN, said: “The coming introduction of non-Latin characters represents the biggest technical change to the internet since it was created four decades ago.”
Here at Insta Host we believe that a review after the first wave of applicants will give an early indication of how this change may change the evolution of the Internet, giving a glimpse of the type of TLDs which may come into use. Whilst it may seem sound business strategy for a company to run or register a domain TLD such as “.host” the real question is whether the public will trust and use the new domains – this will be the true indicator of how “exciting” this change may be!.
Free xmas tools for webmasters
Christmas is only 55 days away which means you should be well on your way to having your website ready to target those researching and hunting for Christmas gifts online. With more people than ever expected to do their Christmas shopping online this year, it is an opportunity not to be missed. However, if you haven’t started yet, or you are still thinking about what to do, below are links to some great Christmas related tools and resources to help save you time…
Don’t forget, from 99p. Eco Friendly, carbon neutral hosting from Instahost.co.uk
Christmas icons
1. http://www.clevericons.com/icon/christmas06/
2. http://www.webdesignerwall.com/general/free-christmas-icons-for-you/
3. http://www.iconarchive.com/category/christmas/christmas-icons-by-zeusbox.html
4. http://www.standard-icons.com/stock-icons/standard-christmas-icons.htm
5. http://dryicons.com/free-icons/preview/christmas-surprise-four-in-one/
Christmas photographic images (free)
6. http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=christmas&l=4
7. http://freedigitalphotos.net/images/search.php?search=christmas&match_type=any
8. http://morguefile.com/archive/browse/#/?qury=christmas&terms_all=christmas
9. http://www.sxc.hu/browse.phtml?f=search&txt=christmas&w=1&x=8&y=9
Christmas WordPress themes
10. http://www.devlounge.net/extras/iceburgg
11. http://wpthemes.amazing-christmas-ideas.com/cg/
12. http://www.simplywp.net/2008/11/19/hello-snowman-christmas-theme-for-wordpress/
13. http://www.blogger-template.info/blue-christmas-theme
14. http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/12/24/christmas-wordpress-theme/
Christmas CSS templates
15. http://www.free-css.com/free-css-templates/page76/happy-holidays.php#bookmarks
16. http://www.templatemo.com/preview/templatemo_045_christmas
17. http://www.entheosweb.com/photoshop_templates/christmas.asp
18. http://www.dreamweaverresources.com/holiday-templates/index.htm
Let us know of any other you would like to share!!! by leaving a comment below
Twitter, the flawed genius? You decide
Twitter is becoming part of the fabric of search
Deals announced in the past couple of days will soon see status updates/ tweets added to the search results of both Microsoft’s Bing and Google search result pages (SERP). The sheer volume of information being entered in to twitter every minute has long been eyed up by the likes of Microsoft and Google as it offers them ‘real time’ search through topic trends, an area that even Google has publicly admitted it is lagging behind. This deal with twitter will give them access to instant and constantly evolving information their spiders could never hope to compete with, and it gives twitter its first major source of revenue!
It has its own eco-system
An entire eco-system has sprung up using the twitter platform such as twitter alerts, tweet scheduling, back tweet analysis, polls, group tweets, pictures, backgrounds, advertising… the list goes on. The more developers that come on board to create new tools and applications based upon Twitter’s platform the more likely people are going to find a use for it.
The sheer size of its user base
When it comes down to it, the number of people who use Twitter is massive! Although growth has started to slow down, it still pulls in close to 25 million unique visitors from the USA alone, as shown by compete.com’s unique visitor statistics.
Should you be on Twitter?
A lot of webmasters and business have jumped on board Twitter without really asking why? As with any form of marketing, be it newspapers, Email marketing, or paid search, Twitter is not suitable for everyone. But the reasons why you should not be on Twitter should be based upon those factors and not because you think it will have gone by 2010. It is important to understand Twitter is now firmly established as a major source of traffic for websites, a revenue generator for supporting businesses and is soon to become a vital source of data for the search engines so any question of whether it is simply a short term fad should be dismissed.
Or Is It?
Too bad the real story of the company is one of top-to-bottom incompetence.
‘Twas always thus. Twitter was never really a company; it was a feature invented at another forgotten startup, spun off into its own venture. The programmer who came up with the idea for Twitter, Jack Dorsey, was named CEO, while Twitter’s better-known backer, Ev Williams, a Webhead who struck it rich by selling Blogger to Google five years ago, dithered about how much he wanted to be involved.
Despite Williams’ seeming indifference, Twitter took off — so much so that a crush of new users strained its servers, to the point that the service became famous for its technical incompetence. (The “fail whale,” a cheery cetacean icon displayed when Twitter’s website was unavailable, now appears on T-shirts in San Francisco and Brooklyn.)
In its business affairs, too, Twitter is proving incompetent. Most Web 2.0 startups run cheaply, but Twitter faces large bills from mobile-phone companies which charge it for forwarding text messages to mobile phones; the more it grows, the more it pays. And it has yet to announce publicly a way to make money.
That’s not to say it doesn’t have a scheme. The latest one we’ve heard floated: Twitter would charge companies to have verified Twitter feeds, so users would know that a message from, say, ExxonMobil really came from the oil company. (It’s not as hypothetical as it sounds; a Twitter user inexplicably impersonated ExxonMobil this summer.) Verified accounts might then pay Twitter for every message they send, and also get prominent listing in a Twitter directory.
If that sounds like utter nonsense, the fever-dream imaginings of a desperate business-development executive high on whiteboard-marker fumes, that’s because it is.
With no real hope of making money on its own, Twitter’s best hope is a buyout. But its executives have handled that poorly, too. Dorsey botched talks with Yahoo and then Facebook; he didn’t even tell his own board of directors he was talking to Facebook about a proposed $500 million acquisition. After that, he was fired as CEO and replaced by Williams, but stayed on as chairman, a nominal job which doesn’t require his presence at the Twitter office. One prominent Silicon Valley investor is fuming that Dorsey is still on the payroll at all.
So this apparently “Mickey Mouse ” operation is the future of news? That’s not the most frightening prospect. Even if Twitter were competently run and profitable, the end result is an unreadable jumble. Look closely at the coverage, if you can call it that, of the Mumbai attacks on Twitter. Sitting at their desks, most people had nothing to add except to observe that Mumbai used to be called Bombay — the kind of message that makes you wish Twitter’s length limit was zero characters, not 140.
As more users join, the Twitter feed becomes filled with more and more noise; repetitive retweetings, back-scratching praise, and self-congratulation. A set of amateurs celebrating each other not for the quality or insight of their reporting, but its brevity, swiftness, and modish form of delivery.
Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-10-19
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