Today is my father’s birthday. I wish him delight, good health, and prosperity.

I sent him what is, in my opinion, a cool present. I hope he agrees.

I read in El País, a Madrid newspaper, that the governing body of the EU (they call it Eurocámara in this article, or Eurochamber, also interpretable as Eurocongress) has recommended a new “.kid” domain extension. Its purpose would be to reflect a friendly-to-children quality in the sites that sport it. Apparently the sites that wish to use .kid could submit their content to a governing body, which would then give them a seal of approval that people could use as a guide for safe viewing.

It seems like a good enough idea. I do have a couple of questions, though.

1. Will this be enforced in any way? Thus far, these things are pretty loosely monitored. Don’t tell, but Aprille is not actually a non-profit organization, for which .org was supposed to be reserved. I’m not completely convinced enforcement is necessary–I don’t think most purveyors of adult content are actively running around trying to recruit child viewers, but I wouldn’t put it past cigarette companies.

2. Is there some little island nation out there that’s getting shafted? Some small nations are selling off the right to use some or all of their designated country domain extensions. For example, we’re used to seeing well-established ones include .uk for the United Kingdom, .ca for Canada, and .dl for Germany, and those are unlikely to ever get usurped. But did you know that .ws, popularly believed to stand for Web Site, actually was originally designated for Western Samoa? Apparently Western Samoa didn’t have enough websites to justify it, and they sold the right to use it to non-Western Samoan businesses.

This has its advantages, sure, but I feel bad for all those little Western Samoan business owners and bloggers who have their domains hogged up.

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(I will never turn my back on you, LaunchBar. I swear it.)