ICANN Conference Explores New Possibilities in Domain Names

ICANN 41, which was recently held in Singapore, discussed the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) and has also reviewed the latest developments in domain names, website registration and the technical aspects of coordinating IP addresses.

The eye-catcher at the conference was “domain dialing,” a free service for smartphones designed by Siter.com, a Brazil-based app designer.

The good thing about the Siter’s mobile app is that the Android (News - Alert), iPhone and Blackberry, users can automatically “dial” a domain name rather than struggling through pages and pages of content searching for a phone number.

The program also calls from a collection of more than 26 million assigned phone numbers worldwide and suggests a number to call based on that company’s URL. Users looking to contact their local Target (News - Alert) store, for example, need only type Target.com into the Siter program for a list of the best phone numbers based on proximity to their current location. The service works in 11 languages, and is robust in Brazil and growing in the United States and other countries.

“The free tool makes domain names even more valuable, and smartphones more useful,” said Ricardo Vaz Monteiro, chief operating officer of Siter. “We enjoyed hearing from ICANN participants all the ways this concept could benefit them by better connecting with customers and clients.”

The conference also covered many other issues regarding domain names and it also opened up Top-Level Domains (TLDs) beyond the traditional options for domain names such as .com or .netto include vanity options such as .ebay or generic terms such as .music. The migration to Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) from IPv4 was also reviewed; the move is expected to alleviate the risk of running out of IP addresses.

Hundreds of technology officers, corporate leaders and Internet experts traveled to Singapore to review the latest advances in managing the assignment of domain names and ensuring that companies can make the most of those URLs.