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WASHINGTON (IslamOnline) – A Lebanese-American scientist has come up with a computer system that will allow Internet users to type in URLs in any language in the world, instead of the English-only system used nowadays. Walid Tout, 35, of Ann Arbor, Michigan, has developed the World Access Liaison for International Domains (Walid), an Internet solution that will allow registration of domain names in any language. The system, which goes online on Sunday, May 7, will start with Arabic, but will be expanded to other languages gradually. Tout announced in a news conference in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, May 2, that he had 1,000 requests for companies and individuals that wanted to register for domain names in Arabic, and he expected many more. As demand increases for web site registrations, Tout and his group, Walid, Inc., expect to attract more and more Arabic speakers. The main income of the company will be domain name registrations, which cost $35 per year, just like English name registrations. A typical URL would look like this: The word “mauqi’” (site in Arabic), followed by a dot, followed by the domain name (IslamOnline, for instance), followed by a dot and the word “shabaka” (net) or “sharika” (company). Tout argued that English is only one of the 6,000 languages spoken in the world today, and the vast majority of the world’s population does not speak English. But they all have to type Internet addresses in English, even if their sites are in their native languages. Industry experts estimate that more than half of the Internet’s users are English speakers, but that this number will shrink in the next five years to 30 percent. For more information, visit www.walid.com.
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