"Death of the URL" No need for IDN's

[IDNCowboy]

Latest post on frank's blog

http://frankschilling.typepad.com/my...sire_to_c.html

[thefabfive]

This is nothing new. We all know how search is done is Japan.

The big question is how will IDN alter the status quo.

[thegenius1]

Originally Posted by thefabfive

This is nothing new. We all know how search is done is Japan.

The big question is how will IDN alter the status quo.

I like your site 為替レート Looks Good .

[gammascalper]

Yep, looking good tff

[thefabfive]

Ty

[jacksonm]

Originally Posted by thefabfive

This is nothing new. We all know how search is done is Japan.

The big question is how will IDN alter the status quo.

Nonsense.

If people in Japan didn't search, then there wouldn't be overture for Japanese terms. I can find quite a lot of generic terms in Japanese OVT which have hundreds of thousands of searches per month.

.

[thefabfive]

I'll spell out my last post a little clearer.

We all know how Japanese web surfers navigate - primarily by search. This is nothing new to most everyone here.

How IDN will change that culture is still unknown. The idea that IDN urls would not be preferrable to ASCII or even numerical urls is shortsighted.

[thegenius1]

Originally Posted by thefabfive

The idea that IDN urls would not be preferrable to ASCII or even numerical urls is shortsighted.

That is a understatement come on tell us the real words you would like to use , i bet they rhyme with "pee farted"

[jacksonm]

Originally Posted by thefabfive

I'll spell out my last post a little clearer.

We all know how Japanese web surfers navigate - primarily by search. This is nothing new to most everyone here.

How IDN will change that culture is still unknown. The idea that IDN urls would not be preferrable to ASCII or even numerical urls is shortsighted.

Ah, right. I misunderstood you. Sorry.

Actually, I used to type-in quite frequently several years ago, but I stopped doing it altogether after the majority of the sites turned out to be "for sale" or parking pages. That conditioned me over time to just give up typing-in.

.

[Rubber Duck]

I don't think I have ever typed in the sense that I use it as a search method, although, it is clear that many people do tend to search this way.

What I do, is make a mental note of domains and then type them in to navigate to a site that I am familiar with or one that I have heard about or have the URL for. The Japanese, it would appear do not even do this very often. For most of them the address bar is something they do not really understand and for many, might as well not exist at all.

Originally Posted by jacksonm

Ah, right. I misunderstood you. Sorry.

Actually, I used to type-in quite frequently several years ago, but I stopped doing it altogether after the majority of the sites turned out to be "for sale" or parking pages. That conditioned me over time to just give up typing-in.

.

[burnsinternet]

It is difficult to tell if he is negative or positive on IDN. In a way, he seems to show that number domains are used and search engines are used, but he blames it on the slow rollout of IDN to the Japanese. I complain about this, too.

I am always accused of being naive and seeing the best in people when I should watch out for myself.... Am I reading this incorrectly?

[touchring]

Originally Posted by burnsinternet

It is difficult to tell if he is negative or positive on IDN. In a way, he seems to show that number domains are used and search engines are used, but he blames it on the slow rollout of IDN to the Japanese. I complain about this, too.

I am always accused of being naive and seeing the best in people when I should watch out for myself.... Am I reading this incorrectly?

He is not negative on IDNs, but since he doesn't own much IDNs (assuming this), he can't say good things about IDNs, can he? Doesn't benefit him. I mean, we're all like this, what we own, we talk good about, what we don't, we critic.

[Rubber Duck]

Numbers is an interesting topic. Latin numbers have been used for centuries by the Chinese and probably by the Japanese as well, so they are an integral part of the language as indeed as some common Latin Acronyms now.

Numbers are of importance to the Chinese and will continue to be important, but that importance has been exaggerated exponentially because than is about all that was workable. Numbers will continue to be used but they won't be the gold dust that have been in Chinese, and as China was really the main market for number domains their value elsewhere is likely to take a knock as well. If you are investing in number domains, either invest in series of 3 or get something with repeated digits like 118118.

Originally Posted by burnsinternet

It is difficult to tell if he is negative or positive on IDN. In a way, he seems to show that number domains are used and search engines are used, but he blames it on the slow rollout of IDN to the Japanese. I complain about this, too.

I am always accused of being naive and seeing the best in people when I should watch out for myself.... Am I reading this incorrectly?

[touchring]

Originally Posted by Rubber Duck

Numbers is an interesting topic. Latin numbers have been used for centuries by the Chinese and probably by the Japanese as well, so they are an integral part of the language as indeed as some common Latin Acronyms now.

Numbers are of importance to the Chinese and will continue to be important, but that importance has been exaggerated exponentially because than is about all that was workable. Numbers will continue to be used but they won't be the gold dust that have been in Chinese, and as China was really the main market for number domains their value elsewhere is likely to take a knock as well. If you are investing in number domains, either invest in series of 3 or get something with repeated digits like 118118.

Chinese number characters are actually words, less of "number" in the sense of arabic numerals.

Words:
English: One, two, Three
Chinese: 一,二,三

Numbers:
English: 1, 2, 3
Chinese: 1, 2, 3

Chinese used to have its own "number" system, but which is now extinct.


[url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_numerals[/url]

[quote]Suzhou (蘇州) or huāmǎ (花碼) numerals

In the same way that Roman numerals were standard in ancient and medieval Europe for mathematics and commerce, the Chinese formerly used the rod numerals, which is a positional system. The huāmǎ system is a variation of the rod numeral system. Rod numerals are closely related to the counting rods and the abacus, which is why the numeric symbols for 1, 2, 3, 6, 7 and 8 in the huāmǎ system are represented in a similar way as on the abacus.

Nowadays, the huāmǎ system is only used for displaying prices in Chinese markets or on traditional handwritten invoices. According to the Unicode standard version 3.0, these characters are called Hangzhou style numerals. This indicates that it is not used only by Cantonese in Hong Kong. In the Unicode standard 4.0, an erratum was added which stated:

The Suzhou numerals (Chinese su1 zhou1 ma3 zi) are special numeric forms used by traders to display the prices of goods. The use of "HANGZHOU" in the names is a misnomer.

All references to "Hangzou" in the Unicode standard have been corrected to "Suzhou" except for the character names themselves, which cannot be changed once assigned, according to the Unicode Stability Policy[1]. (This policy allows software to use the names as unique identifiers.)

In the huāmǎ system, special symbols are used for digits instead of the Chinese characters. The digits are positional. When written horizontally, the numerical value is written in two rows. For example:

〤〇〢二
拾元

The top row contains the numeric symbols, for example, 〤〇〢二 stands for 4022. The bottom row consists of one or more Chinese characters that represents the unit of the first digit in the first row. The first part in the bottom row indicates the order of the first digit in the top row, e.g. qian1 (千) for thousand, bái (百) for hundred, shí (拾) for ten, blank for one etc. The second part denotes the unit of measurement, such as yuán (元 for dollar) or máo (毫 or 毛 for 10 cents) or xiān (仙 for 1 cent) or lǐ (里 for the Chinese mile) or any other measurement unit. If the characters shí yuán (拾元, "10 dollars") are below the digits 〤〇〢二, it is then read as forty dollars and twenty two cents. Notice that the decimal point is implicit when the first digit '4' is set at the 'ten' position. This is very similar to the modern scientific notation for floating point numbers where the significant digits are represented in the mantissa and the order of magnitude is specified in the exponent.

When written vertically, the above example is written thus:

拾〤
元〇
　〢
　二

The digits of the Suzhou numerals are defined between U+3021 and U+3029 in Unicode.

Zero is represented by a circle, probably the numeral '0', letter 'O' or character 〇 may work well. Leading and trailing zeros are unnecessary in this system. Additional characters representing 10, 20, 30 and 40 exist: 十, 卄, 卅, 卌.

For those who cannot see the Unicode glyphs in the web browser, here is an image with the appearance of these digits:

Note: 9 is a dot on top of a variant of the 〤 (4) symbol (〩,not represented in the image); this symbol looks like the Chinese character for "jiǔ (久)", compare to the formal character '9' "jiǔ (玖)". (Some web browsers, e.g. IE 5.5, display this character incorrectly as the "fǎn wén", or reverse "wén" radical (夂 & 攵 & 夊 & 文), click here to see the correct graphic glyph.)

The digits 1 to 3 come in the vertical and horizontal version so that they can alternate if these digits are next to each other. The first digit usually use the vertical version. e.g. 21 is written as 〢一 instead of 〢〡 which can be confused with 3 (〣).[/quote]

[Rubber Duck]

They were actually both, but are rarely used for arithmetic these days.

[rofsjan]

Frank wrote: all those IDNs will need their ascii equivalent for global trade..

I doubt it.

[Rubber Duck]

Originally Posted by rofsjan

I doubt it.

Frank cannot seem to get it in to his head that Global Trade is only the summation of a lot of local trade. If you do not nail down all those individual market sectors there is no global trade.

[domainguru]

Originally Posted by burnsinternet

It is difficult to tell if he is negative or positive on IDN. In a way, he seems to show that number domains are used and search engines are used, but he blames it on the slow rollout of IDN to the Japanese. I complain about this, too.

I am always accused of being naive and seeing the best in people when I should watch out for myself.... Am I reading this incorrectly?

Of course he is positive. The clue is in the blog title:

"The Desire to Communicate in Your Native Language"

There is nothing else to say.

[Alphamale]

My two cents

Frank is neither right or wrong. yeah i'm sitting on the fence

why?

Nobody yet knows how IDN's will be used in the global marketplace, but I have no doubt that we will go through a number of interations before we see the model settle down.

take the here and now..

If I was running a Japanese e-commerce business, lets say I was selling Japanese comics and i export round the globe...

I am an established business, and I have established myself on an ascii.com or ascii.jp domain name.

If I was clued up, I would probably buy myself some related keyword IDNs.com/.jp and simply forward to my ascii site.

we all know today that IDN rank well in Yahoo, and this would probably be a lot cheaper way of bringing new traffic to my door than paying out more for good old fashioned SEO on my ascii domain.

As IE7 slowly replaces the incumbant IE6 browser, then through analytics I may decide one day to start advertising my new IDN domains.

at the end of the day, as a webmaster I will follow the traffic and trend.

but as Frank says, in a global market, i still need to provide an address for my non Japanese visitors (assuming my platform was multi-lingual) but that doesn't mean I NEED the English ascii version of the Japanese IDN keyword I am using, I just continue using the ascii I have always used.

[mulligan]

For an established online business it would require a leap of faith to go fully IDN and frankly could be a very stupid thing to do if they are multinational, dealing in several countries other than their own (Depends on the language your consumers speak I guess) ... not such a leap if they are only doing business in their own country.

But for new businesses and all future new online commerce sites it may be an easier pill to swallow to go IDN from the outset .. again it might depend on whether they are multi national or just a national concern but for an 'in country' business it shouldn't take too long for webmasters to see the benefit of using their native language, there are many more domain names available even in the most heavily mined languages than there are in ASCII .... so it would be a no brainer if you wanted a more descriptive domain name for your paper clip selling business to go native