ICANN’s plan to open up the Internet to a new level of addressing in the form of custom top level domains is delayed… due to technical difficulties. The already besieged initiative, as we reported last month, is under scrutiny for a systemic glitch as explained in a statement last Thursday from ICANN chief operating officer Akram Atallah:

ICANN constantly monitors the performance of the TLD Application System (TAS). Recently, we received a report of unusual behavior with the operation of the TAS system. We then identified a technical issue with the TAS system software.

ICANN is taking the most conservative approach possible to protect all applicants and allow adequate time to resolve the issue. Therefore, TAS will be shut down until Tuesday at 23:59 UTC - unless otherwise notified before that time.

In order to ensure all applicants have sufficient time to complete their applications during the disruption, the application window will remain open until 23:59 UTC on Friday, 20 April 2012.

We apologize for any inconvenience this has caused. If you have any questions, please contact the gTLD Customer Service Center (CSC) via the CSC portal.

So far, 839 companies have paid $185,000 to submit vanity domains in response to ICANN’s approval last June of an increase in gTLDs (generic top-level domains) from the current 22. The plan is to offer new benefits to Internet users such as the ability to create new TLDs in non-Latin, non-English scripts. Continue reading...

Looking to get fancy with your site’s URL? It’ll cost you $185,000 to do it. 

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the nonprofit group that oversees the Internet’s address system, currently has 22 generic endings, such as .com, .edu, and .org. But it will open the doors to applications on Jan. 12 to let sites buy up whatever tags they’d like at a price of $185,000 per URL. (Earlier this week, ICANN opened up .xxx web addresses to all of you in the adult-entertainment industry who have been waiting so patiently.)

Bloomberg BusinessWeek reports, though, that the program “is failing to win over U.S. brand owners.”Continue reading...