The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), Internet global regulatory body, has announced that just anything, anywhere including individuals and commodities can now apply for and obtain a top level domain name. Before, securing an Internal domain name was a long and painful process. But ICANN rose from its yearly general meeting in Paris, France, with a full liberalisation of the Internet in order to make it available, accessible to many more people. Specifically, all bottlenecks associated with such registration in the past have been removed. It will be a free for all from now and there will be no language or cultural barriers. But henceforth, registration by such domain names will attract a fee of $100,000.

The decision was based on its stockholder’s worldwide, consultation. Scripts other than Latin which were not originally permitted on the Internet could now make free inroads into the information superhighway. These languages include, but are not limited to, Chinese, Japanese, Arabic and Cyrillic. If this sails through, the Internet will now be more accessible to people in the Middle East and Asia.

Until now top-level domain names— the .com or .uk at the end of a web address — have been restricted by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (Icann), the international not-for-profit body set up in 1998 to to oversee the structure of the internet and maintain its stability. Icann regulates the way web addresses are assigned to ensure that computers can communicate with each other.

The free-for-all agreed in Paris yesterday is seen as a great leap forward akin to the privatisation of telecommunications in the Thatcher era. Icann is not being forced to act because of there are not enough name options, but because it wants to open up the system to increase consumer choice.

Most web addresses in Britain have the suffix .uk. The most popular top level domain name in the world is .com and there are about another 20 possibilities such as .org or .net. Every country has a country code domain name such as .de (Germany) and .fr (France). Now the possibilities are endless and the new names could range from place names to commodities.

Paul Twomey, the chief executive of Icann, said: “It’s a massive increase in the real estate of the internet. It will allow groups, communities and businesses to express their identities online.”

Mozilla have release Firefox 3 on Tuesday night, and the open source project is opening a new front in web browser wars. Firefox 3 will be the first internet browser to offer offline web application support. Despite repeated server crashes, it looks like the new Firefox 3 web browser is on a roll.

As of Wednesday morning, the day after the latest version of Firefox 3 was released, more than 7.9 million copies of the software had been downloaded.

The crush of demand made access to the new software spotty for much on Tuesday after its debut. But by Wednesday, new copies of the software were being downloaded at a rate of 5,523 per minute.

Mozilla is pushing to set a record for more software downloaded in a 24-hour period, and it’s clear Mozilla is set to beat that goal, in addition to surpassing its own target of more than 5 million downloads over that period. Mozilla said it’s waiting for the Guinness Book of World Records to review the results.

Of course, it’s easy to dismiss the rush to download the new software as hype. The open-source software has been available in various beta forms since 2007, and none of its new features have been kept under wraps.

New features of Firefox 3

Enhanced bookmarking abilities and security features are main themes for Firefox 3, the Mozilla-backed open source Web browser. The new browser will also sport a slightly new look. Makers of the software, many whom have volunteered their efforts for free, hope to set a world record for the most downloads in a single day when the final version of Firefox 3 goes live next Tuesday.

Many of the enhancements in Firefox 3 involve bookmarks. The new version lets Web surfers add keywords, or tags, to sort bookmarks by topic. A new “Places” feature lets users quickly access sites they recently bookmarked or tagged and pages they visit frequently but haven’t bookmarked.

There’s also a new star button for easily adding sites to your bookmark list — similar to what’s already available on Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 7 browser.

Other new features include the ability to resume downloads midway if the connection is interrupted and an updated password manager that doesn’t disrupt the log-in process.

The new features of Firefox 3 include the following:

Personal

• Library

• Tags

• Smart Location Bar

• One-Click Bookmarking

• Smart Bookmark Folders

Security & Privacy

• Instant Web Site ID

• Anti-Malware

• Parental Controls

• Anti-Virus Software

• Clear Private Data

• Customized Security Settings

• Add-ons

• Automated Update

• Password Manager

• Anti-Phishing

• Pop-Up Blocker

Customization

• Add-ons Manager

• Over 5,000 ways to customize

• Browser Look & Feel

• Beyond Add-ons

Productivity

• Platform-Native Look & Feel

• Feed Reader

• Download Manager

• Spell Checking

• Session Restore

• Full Zoom

• Image Loading

Search

• Smart Keywords

• Search Suggestions

• Integrated Web Search

• Hundreds of Search Engines

• Find

Tabs

• Tabs

• Reopen Closed Tabs

• Drag & Reorder Tabs

• Smooth Scrolling

• Save on Exit

Universal Access

• Universal Customization

• The Language of Firefox

• Emphasis on Accessibility

• Improved Text Rendering

Performance

• Improved Memory Management

• Smaller Memory Footprint

• Faster JavaScript

• Graphics Engine Improvements

• Faster Page Load

Standards

• Online Application Support

• Color Profile Support

• Advanced Graphics

• Support for Advanced Web Technologies

• Offline Browsing

Help

• Live Support

• Firefox Support

You can read the details information of the new features of Firefox 3 here: [URL=http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/features/#instant-id]Read More [/URL]

And you can download Firefox 3 from here: [URL=http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/]Download Firefox 3[/URL]

Collective Development
Firefox is the No. 2 web browser behind Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. It comes from Mozilla an open source community in which thousands of people, mostly volunteers, collectively develop free products. Mozilla has been developing Firefox 3 for nearly three years and has been publicly testing it since November for Windows, Mac and Linux computers.