ICANN is introducing a range of new top level domains (think .com, .net, .org) which will be open to anyone who cares to think of one. So far suggestions have varied from geo-domains like .paris, .london and .nyc, to topics like .eco, .food and .music.

When these new domains come along, will they be useful? The argument often given is that you replace the three meaningless characters to the right of the dot, namely com or net,  with characters that actually provide guidance to the user about what will be found at the web site using that TLD (think .music, .london).

The gTLD process is bogged down at the moment, but ICANN have announced that country code domains (like .cn, .ru) will be translated into their own native character sets. This has been on the cards for a long time and its great to see it should soon be a reality.