Here is an interesting idea. Would you like to have the domain name yourname.yourbusiness?
How about firstname.lastname?
Well thanks to those wacky and crazy people at ICANN and a few bottles of expensive French wine, we might see that go into effect sooner than you would think. In an unanimous vote held in Paris, France last week ICANN has given approval for new top-level domain names including multilingual ones. No longer will you just have the traditional domain name extensions. Now you could practically have anything dot anything registered once all the regulation and paper work has gone though. Unless something goes wrong, this should all go in effect in 2009.
Dr Paul Twomey, the chief executive of ICANN had an interesting quote:
“Like the United States in the 19th Century, we are in the process of opening up new real estate, new land, and people will go out and claim parts of that land and use it for various reasons they have. It’s a massive increase in the geography of the real estate of the Internet.”
Yeah, you’ll be able to claim a part of it if your a multi-million dollar company or have a hidden stash of cash hidden under your mattress.
Don’t let your blood boil yet. I highly doubt that your traditional top-level domains are going anywhere. People already have in their head that a web site domain has to be something with a dot com behind it (or dot org, dot net, ect). Also it isn’t like you or me will be setting up our own domain name extensions because the application fee to get it going will cost around $100,000 or more.
A few week’s back there was a news story not many made much out of happening that I though I could at least mention here. 
I am happy to see ICANN has decided to stand up and do something about this money grubbing nonsense. Under current ICANN rules, anyone who registers a new domain name has a five-day grace period to back out and receive a total refund. The problem is people use this period to test how well the domain name does in the real world and also slap ads all over it to make a buck.
PHP 4 vs PHP 5
There has been lots of talk about web hosts offering and clients needing upgrades to PHP 5. For those of you who might be outside the loop, let me first explain what PHP is. PHP is a framework that works on your hosting server’s side of things. It is a programing language that allows web developers to create content that dynamically interacts with databases.
Now the main reason you would want to upgrade to PHP 5 is that development for PHP 4 ceased at the end of 2007. You will no longer get updates for it, unless they are security related. Critical security updates for PHP 4 will be provided till August 8, 2008. So this is another good reason why a move to PHP 5 might be a good idea.
Where are the advantages of PHP 5 over PHP 4? Well without getting too geeky on you there are a number of improvements that just make it more robust, faster, more secure and easier to work with. What was wrong with PHP 4? Well, nothing really – it is just getting a little long in the tooth. PHP 4 you have to remember was released back in 2000. Think of it as a pair of old shoes you really love. the laces might be lost and your holding the heel on with duct tape but you can still put them on your feet and use them. PHP 5 would be the pair of sneakers you always wanted.
There have also been several public movements to help lead the charge to PHP 5, one of the more popular ones was the GoPHP5.org project that shared information about PHP 5 and kind of helped push a lot of web hosts in the right direction when it came to supporting the most recent stable release of PHP 5.
The name of the game is evolution. As with any technology, we need to move forward as soon as there is a solid stable release because in doing so we can continue to make things bigger, faster, better and stronger.