Iliya, thanks for this. SWITCH will start a similar service soon (if they haven't already?) for German Swiss. Browser issue: ITU blog <http://www.itu.int/osg/spu/newslog/2004/03/02.html#a498> mentioned that the Internet Software Consortium has a new IDN plug-in for Internet Explorer. Made available through ISC's open source software IDN work. No idea if this works with the new German service. Perhaps DENIC would know. The plug-in is described as an "alpha-2" version, which I guess means it's buggy. See <http://idn.isc.org/> ITU and IDNs. At the Internet governance workshop last week Netpia spoke on IDNs. If I understand correctly (not sure I do) Netpia does not follow IDN standards so were perhaps a bit of an odd choice? Thanks, Adam At 9:50 AM +0100 3/3/04, Iliya Nickelt wrote: >There are probably many interesting things going on in Rome at the moment, >but here is a quick sidenote: > >Denic has introduced the beloved German "Umlaute" äöü and many more letters >to the .de namespace based on punycode. See >http://www.denic.de/de/domains/idns/liste.html for a complete listing of >the new letters -- with German commentaries, but at least the letters are >international. They started accepting requests on March 1, at 10:00 on a >randomized first come first served basis. Requests were processed via a >signed emails (standard procedure). Even though there were several test >runs, the email server went down after 70 seconds, and it took three hours >to solve the technical problems. ".de" ist the biggest ccTLD with 7.2 >Million domains. So far, 550.000 IDN requests have been processed (see >http://www.denic.de/de/domains/idns/start.html). > >It seems that it is not an easy thing to do, but it can be done. However, >you will need a modern browser that follows international standards to open >the IDN pages: Microsoft IE does, of course, not work, but Mozilla or Opera >work fine. Also, you must figure out how to to access the letters via >keyboard or operating system, or you use copy and paste. > >It is estimated, that about 70% of the new domains went to squatters. You >can check that and also if copy and past works for you by going to eg. >http://www.anwälte.de (German word for "lawyers"). The site says that >"this offer is still under construction". However, the porno link below is >already functional, I guess. BTW: The first domain registered was "öko.de", >that's a German abbreviation for "ecological" (and that server is not up >yet). > > --iliya --