Cow Computing

ICANN has announced the open-up of Non-Latin Characters’ URL for registration. If everything is good, the service will commenced mid-2010. So there will be another battle of url registration.

Afterall, is having Chinese URL available, good or bad?

On the POSITIVE side: First, it creates lots more space/possibility for meaningful URL, as current latin url has been exhaustively registered by bulk registration. Meaningful and Short URL is hard to create. Second, chinese url is more familiar to chinese people and they can easily remembered the address. Third, It’s another $$ opportunity. Lastly, some proper rule could be implemented on top of the new registration procedure to reduce the chance of abusing url registration.

On the NEGATIVE side: First, chinese url doesn’t sound meaningful to any foreigner, and in particular, it requires users to know chinese typing in order to access the website, which limits business (of course, it could be solved by purchasing TWO sets of URL, Chinese and English). Second, on the technical aspect, it creates trouble for writing regular expression, since some programming language like PHP, doesn’t have a easy way to match unicode characters, and another set of regular expression specifically addressing unicode would need to be added to current working web app to extend its functionality to accommodate chinese url (e.g. to validate website address / email address). Third, headers (e.g. HTTP, SOAP or so…) will need to be able to handle unicode or at least Chinese Character, which is another big changes.

It could be seen that Chinese URL has its own use, but is it necessary?