News

The latest edition of the CENTR Monthly Roundup is available and covers the following

• Overview of ccTLD news from CENTR Members 
• Selected findings from a recent CENTR survey entitled "Launch and Use of IDNs"
• Statistics on CENTR Growth
• CENTR Blog details - "Reputational Studies"

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For all previous editions, go to the CENTR Document Library

he IE Domain Registry (IEDR), the managed registry for Ireland’s official Internet address .ie, today announced that its 2013 OPTIMISE e-Commerce Website Development Fund is open for entries.

IEDR is calling on SME and micro-business owners nationwide to apply for one of 20 places on this year’s OPTIMISE Fund. The OPTIMISE Fund provides €150,000 worth of professional consultation, training and development support services to small business owners looking to improve and develop their existing online presence in terms of e-commerce capability and functionality. IEDR has doubled the number of winners of the Fund to 20 since it was first established in 2011.

Applications are open to all Irish organisations classified as an SME or micro-enterprise with a .ie website that is hosted online and currently accessible to the public. Further details about the Fund and the online application form are available atwww.why.ie/optimise. The closing date for receipt of entries is 25 April 2013.

Go to Source Article for further details

Afnic is launching a public consultation on setting up a procedure for registering domain names with one or two characters. 

In accordance with the State / Afnic agreement of July 2012, Afnic wishes to set up a procedure for registering domain names in one or two alphanumeric and/or alphabetic characters.

In order to present the work already done and to collect the public’s opinions and suggestions on the future process, Afnic is opening the project to public consultation from March 25 to April 16 2013 at midnight. Through these exchanges, you are invited, among others, to express your opinion on:
 

• Whether or not to use an auction system for the registration of domain names with one or two characters;
• Whether the registration process should be in two phases, beginning with a "sunrise period";
•  whether the "first come, first served" rule should be applied

InternetNZ welcomes a recommendation from the Law Commission that an independent 185 Media Standards Authority be established encompassing both traditional and ‘new’ media.

The new body would define news media standards to be applied to all types of publishers seeking to access the traditional privileges of being part of the news media. These standards would apply regardless of how they publish, whether online or off. This would include broadcast media such as print, radio and television, and web-based media such as Bloggers. Read further...

DENIC, the registry for .de domains, presents the results of the regional domain statistics 2012. It includes 14.3 million domains in 402 German towns and districts. Adding to these numbers are more than 860,000 domains of holders whose place of residence is abroad. In total, about 15.3 million .de domains were registered at the end of 2012. Even though growth has slowed down a little, the general trend of domain development of the preceding years continued in 2012. Read further.. 
 

CENTR has released the report of the IETF86 meeting held in Orlando, Florida

The 86th meeting of the Internet Engineering Task Force in Orlando, Florida, saw a leadership change in the top IP-protocol standards body. For the first time in IETF history, an engineer from the mobile sector took the helm - Jari Arkko (Ericsson engineer and long-time IETF contributor) has taken over from US security expert Russ Housley. While Arkko promised to address the hotly discussed diversity issue – and also further internationalization of the IETF, Housley's farwell speech addressed Governments asking them to embrace and officially recognize IETF standards – in reaction to last years controversies over the role of standards of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU).

The meeting in Orlando saw discussions about the potential new restful Whois protocol and additional add-ons to the DNS including a DNS API and a new DNS Resource Record Type.
The SOPA (Start Of Policy Authority) Ressource Record Type would allow (according to its author Andrew Sullivan, Dyn) to "assert a common assert a common administrative realm by placing a resource record (RR) at DNS names within the policy realm“.

Click to access the full report

 

Source Article: CZ.NIC

The research and development centre of the maintainer of the Czech national domain, CZ.NIC Labs, released the first stable version of its application for accessing egovernment mailboxes for devices running Android version 2.2 and higher. Datovka for Android version 1.0 can be downloaded free of charge on the project website or from the Google Play service. Datovka for Android is one of the CZ.NIC Labs projects for communicating with egovernment mailboxes.

“We believe the application has been debugged to a level at which the first stable version can be released. With this step, we have for now completed the portfolio of applications communicating with egovernment mailboxes. Datovka is now available for devices running the Android and iOS operating systems as well as for desktop computers,” said Ondřej Surý, head of the CZ.NIC Labs. “We are happy that Datovka for Android has found its fans and users. This is confirmed by the number of downloads, which have exceeded 1,700 as of today.”

Datovka provides access to ISDS data boxes; it can be used to download incoming and outgoing messages and manage their attachments. The writing and sending of messages is not supported. The application is based on the iDatovka client for the iOS operating system developed at the CZ.NIC Labs, the research and development centre of the CZ.NIC Association.

More information on Datovka for Android and other projects related to egovernment mailboxes can be found on the website of CZ.NIC Labs.

Source article: ARNES

ARNES extends an invitation to attend the ARNES 2013 Conference, which will be held on 15 May 2013 in Kranjska Gora. The theme of this year’s conference is User Mobility. There are no fees, and you can register for the conference at the start of April. The conference programme is already available on the ARNES 2013 Conference website.

Today, ensuring access to wireless networks is no longer an advantage, but rather a necessity. Users expect to be able to access services anywhere at any time, regardless of the device they’re using - desktop computer, laptop, tablet or telephone. Our web services must work on laptops as well as tablets.

This year’s conference will examine mobile trends in the European education and research sector, and will review the current situation in Slovenia. We will look at how network administrators can use mobile applications in our work, and discover the implications of mobile application development for financial and human resources. We will also learn that the new options for accessing and using services bring new risks, which we must recognise and protect against. We will link the event to a presentation of current ARNES services, in terms of both end users and network and service custodians (conference programme).

The ARNES conference brings together users in education, research and culture, and is aimed at a wide range of delegates, covering both user and systems aspects of the use of new technologies.

Source Article : SWITCH

Europe's oldest Web Award is presenting its Honorary Award 2013 to the SWITCH Foundation – and hence to an organisation for the first time rather than to an individual.

At the 'Best of Swiss Web' Award Night being held in the Kongresshaus Zurich next Thursday, 21 March 2013, not only will the best Internet and mobile projects receive awards in front of an audience of 700, but the traditional Honorary Award will also be presented. This prize is generally awarded to persons who have rendered exceptional service to the development of the Internet and the ICT sector, such as through fundamental developments in the technical field or exceptional achievements as an entrepreneur, politician or researcher.

For the 2013 Honorary Award, the jury has selected an organisation for the first time, rather than individuals. This year's Honorary Award is going to the SWITCH Foundation.

Since it was founded on 22 October 1987, SWITCH has been a Swiss Internet pioneer and, for more than 25 years now, a reliable competence centre providing services both to the Swiss universities and to the entire Swiss Internet industry. In the jury's opinion, SWITCH has created excellent conditions for Swiss students, researchers and teachers to be able to work together efficiently and securely. This involves providing the technical basis for internet access and extends right through to taking all the necessary IT security precautions.

SWITCH has also provided valuable services for all companies, organisations and individuals as the registry for all the Internet domain names for Switzerland and Liechtenstein. Added to this come a large number of other services and activities, including the promotion of young Internet talent with the SWITCH Junior Web Award website competition for school classes.

In many areas, SWITCH holds a leading position worldwide, including in identity management and in the fields of high-performance networks and network security. It is thanks to SWITCH that Switzerland's Internet is one of the most secure in the world. In a globally unique anti-malware process, SWITCH informs the operators of infected .ch and .li websites and asks them to remove the malicious code within a period of 24 hours. According to the 2012 annual report of security firm, Panda Security, Switzerland is one of the countries with the fewest infected computers anywhere in the world.

SWITCH has been a dependable and innovative partner throughout the eventful development of the Internet – and one that has stood out through its high quality and sustainability.

The managing directors of SWITCH to date will be taking receipt of the prize on behalf of the Foundation:

- Prof. Dr. Bernhard Plattner (first managing director)
- Peter Gilli (managing director from 1988 to 1995)
- Thomas Brunner (managing director from 2001 to 2012)
- Dr. Andreas Dudler (managing director since May 2012)

Previous 'Best of Swiss Web' Commendation Prizes have been awarded to: 

• 2007: Dr. Fulvio Caccia (former director of ComCom ) 
• 2008: David Nüscheler (CTO Day AG)
• 2009: Christian Wanner (CEO LeShop)
• 2010: Robert Cailliau (co-inventor WWW, CERN)
• 2011: Marc Bürki and Paolo Buzzi (founders of Swissquote)
• 2012: Prof. em, Dr. Beat Schmid (founder of IWI, St. Gallen University)