How about...

best-cakes-in.theworld?

restaurant-at.theendoftheuniverse?

my-dad-is-better-than.yours?!

or, more applicably:

focusnewmedia.bristol?

These are just some of the potential urls that may come out of ICANN's latest announcement regarding top level domains.

Caving into stakeholder pressure, ICANN have agreed to open up the virtual real estate of the web by making it possible for people to select their own domain names.

Currently, internet users have a limited choice of 21 domain extensions, such as .com, .org, and .uk.  By this time next year people may be able to apply for whatever they like.

A major factor behind this change was the pressure and influence exerted by non-English users of the web. 

"One of the most exciting prospect before us is that the expanding system is also being planned to support extensions in the languages of the world," said Peter Dengate Thrush, ICANN's Chairman. "This is going to be very important for the future of the Internet in Asia, the Middle East, Eastern Europe and Russia." The present system only supports 37 Roman characters.

Many pundits see this move as an act of appeasement to the Chinese, who have made many moves to implement a separate internet (going further, even than their Great Firewall).  Others see it as an inevitable solution to increasing web usage, much like the periodic extension of local telephone codes.

I'm personally hanging on to get first dibs at my own name extension - hands off all you other amy wilson's!

Well, clever perhaps isn't the word but effective sounds a bit dull.

Creating a buzz around Firefox 3.0's launch day by attempting to make a World Record for the number of software downloads has worked rather well.  Over 8.3 million users grabbed the software within the 24-hour window, a figure that is being impartially scrutinised before submission to the Guinness Book of Records.

The fact that no other software company has previously attempted this record will no doubt leave some well-paid marketing execs kicking themselves. 

In terms of web development, Firefox 3.0 promises a "leaner, speedier experience", with access to sites like gmail being up to 6 times faster.  It certainly has our own developers smiling!

If you've noticed your site stats going through the roof recently it may not be down to your 2nd quarter marketing efforts but an unexpected side effect of AVG's latest anti-virus software.

20 million users are estimated to have upgraded to version 8 over the past couple of months.  One of the first things you'll notice upon installation is that for any search carried out in Google, Yahoo or MSN, a green tick or red cross appears by each returned result. 

AVG searches all sites for malware, disguising itself as a 'real' visitor to fool the more sophisticated programmes.  Which is good news for users but disastrous for website owners who rely on analytics packages to successfully measure 'real' traffic from which to base their online marketing budget. 

By making an anti-malware 'probe' that is indistinguishable from a human visit, AVG may have accidentally created more problems than it intended to solve.  Web developers may have to work hard to produce an answer to this mess or demand that AVG modify its package.

Source: The Register

"Honeybees can communicate with others from far-off continents by learning to interpret their dance moves, scientists have found."

I'm afraid I can't think of even the most tenuous link between this article and web development or our industry, it's just the best thing I've read in the papers all week.

Cross species communication doesn't happen all that much (unless you count how many times your pet dog induces you to yawn a week) so it's pretty exciting when it does.  Especially when this involves the deployment of jazz hands (or wings oscillating wildly, which is almost the same thing).

Honeybees find food sources by sending out intrepid explorer bees to find flower food or die trying.  If they return, they have to do a little dance to let other worker bees know in which direction it lies and how far to travel.  Different honeybee species dance in a variety of manners (the French precariously carrying a baguette under one wing, for example).

Amazingly, if you put a bunch of Eurasian honeybees and Asian honeybees together in a hive, the latter species manage to learn the formers' funky dance moves in a jiffy - leading them to the same food sources!  Brilliant!!!

You can read the proper articles about honey bees here and here.  For more stories about shaking pandas and cannibalistic ladybirds, go here and here.

Sources
Guardian
Science Daily
Null Hypothesis
Animal of the Week

Facebook has just been charged with a series of privacy violations by a Canadian public policy group.

Perhaps it was only a matter of time before this happened, especially after the latest BBC reportage indicated how easily a rogue program could be created to harvest personal information from the site.

Canadian officials have called for a full review of social networking rules.  In terms of web development, this appears to be an essential next step for one ofthe fastest-growing areas of our industry. 

Source: ComputerWorld