CircleID

Announced in a blog post today, ICANN's Manager of Root Zone Services, Kim Davies (CircleID), reports: "Today the first three production non-Latin top-level domains were placed in the DNS root zone. ... The three new top-level domains are السعودية. (“Al-Saudiah”), امارات. ( “Emarat”) and مصر. (“Misr”). All three are Arabic script domains, and will enable domain names written fully right-to-left. Expect more as we continue to process other applications using the “fast track” methodology."

Related Links:
First IDN ccTLDs now available Kim Davies, May.5.2010
First IDN ccTLDs Available ICANN, May.5.2010
The future of the Internet is here: non-English extensions hit the Web Kieren McCarthy, May.5.2010
'Historic' day as first non-latin web addresses go live BBC, May.6.2010
IDN Usability ICANN, May.6.2010
ABC's Lara Setrakian reports from Dubai on IDN Launch ABC, May.7.2010
The Internet has changed forever, and no one seems to have noticed Crooked Timber, May.7.2010

Updates:  UPDATED May 06, 2010 1:56 PM PDT
IDN TLD Update ICANN, May.6.2010

Related topics: DNS, Domain Names, ICANN, Multilinguism, Top-Level Domains