Lottery for domain names

A priority lottery for new internet domains took place this week, paving the way for addresses such as dot-irish, and dot-lol.

The lottery determines in what order the new domains are launched, with internet body ICANN releasing 1,000 of them in the year following its April meeting.

Dot-catholic, written in Chinese, was the first generic top-level domain pulled in the auction, but dot-irish received position 1,491, so it is unlikely to launch until 2014.

More than 1,930 applications for new generic domains were received.