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ICANN approves '.asia' as top-level domain

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers signed off on the .Asia Registry Agreement on Wednesday at its annual meeting in Sao Paulo, Brazil, meaning that businesses in the Asia-Pacific region will soon have the option of registering an ".asia" domain. The top-level domain will be overseen by the DotAsia Organization. The ".asia" domain will be used as a supplement to country domains like ".jp" for Japan and ".cn" for China.

ICANN is a California-based organization that keeps tabs on the technical side of the Internet, including guiding traffic to gTLDs (generic Top-Level Domains) like ".com". Because of the way the Internet evolved, the U.S. Department of Commerce has ultimate control over ICANN, a point of contention with other countries. DotAsia, according to an ICANN statement, is the first gTLD registry to be headquartered in the Asia-Pacific region.

December 8, 2006

Google launches Chrome theme gallery

Google on Tuesday launched a gallery of 29 themes for Google Chrome (requires Google Chrome 3.0 beta for Windows). But Mozilla, while refraining from sniggering, boasted it's now up to 20,000.

Cosmetic changes are, well, cosmetic, but a lot of people like them as a way to add some flair to their machines. Many had been pestering Google to add themes support even though Chrome employs a Spartan user interface without much acreage for artistry. Last week's developer version of Chrome added a "Get themes" button in the Options dialog box, and now Google has flipped the switch to activate the Web page that button points to.

The collection of themes includes Legal Pad, Star Gazing, Transparent (it's not, on my Windows XP machine), Dots, and Pencil Sketch. One monochromatic theme called Minimal downloads nearly instantly, but Grass, at 1.3MB, takes more time.

Why so large? Themes can come with a background image that shows on Chrome's new-tab page that offers a much greater chance for expressiveness, especially since that page is the default when Chrome launches. That could help Google with its attempt to recruit artists to supply their own themes, as some have done with the iGoogle customizable home page.

Mozilla has its own skinning technology in the works, a plug-in called Personas that launched on Mozilla Labs in March. That head start, coupled with its vastly larger and more engaged external audience, gives it a big lead over Chrome when it comes to getting gussied up.

Mozilla Labs announced Monday that Firefox now has 20,000 Personas, with 10,000 of them arriving in the last 10 weeks.

August 4, 2009

Digg stops redirecting some URLs, links to self instead

Over the weekend, social news site Diggchanged how its links work in a way that gives the site an increase in the number of users who visit.

Users of the site's URL-shortening service noticed that if the Web address they had shortened had been submitted to Digg, the shortened URL would then take its visitors to the story's page on Digg instead of the page it linked to. At least it was this way for users who were not logged into Digg; registered users who had turned off the DiggBar (and who had a recent log-in cookie from Digg) would not see the change in behavior.

July 20, 2009