Back in 2005, the UN'sWorld Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) produced fine documents and promises of action to come. So what progress has been made in some of the most significant areas of concern for the evolution and availability of information and communication technologies (ICT)?

Governments and stakeholders have addressed significant issues, including:

• building infrastructure to enhance connectivity

• fostering access to information services

Two .aero external service providers were present at the 2008 Oshkosh Air Venture convention inWisconsin, US, at the beginning of August.

Registry operator Afilias and .aero registrar Names Beyond welcomed visitors from all sections of the aviation community - from airport authorities to professional aviators. Their presence was part of a broader strategy to raise awareness of the .aero domain with business aircraft operators, pilots and aviation professionals - as well as air sports participants.

GENEVA - 4 November 2008 - SITA today issued a reminder that December 1, 2008 is the cut-off date for airports wishing to register their three letter IATA airport codes with .aero, the SITA-sponsored internet domain for the air transport industry.

From December 1, these unique IATA location identifiers will no longer be reserved exclusively for airports but will be available for registration to any qualifying organization or individual, on a first-come-first-served basis and through accredited registrars.

It's easy to forget that, when Tim Berners-Lee first thought up what he called the World Wide Web in 1990, it was intended simply as a tool for the use of fellow scientists associated with CERN, the particle physics research centre that straddles the French/Swiss border near Geneva. The TCP/IP protocol was already offering the infrastructure. Berners-Lee's genius was to find a way of connecting hypertext with the Internet and personal computers.

Regtime Ltd was the first Russian ICANN-accredited registrar to offer a full service of cyrillic domains to Russian companies and individuals. Russian is the native or second language for more than 230 million people, so the decision to launch cyrillic language domains in 2001 was an important stage in the ability of Russian-speakers to access the Internet and the World Wide Web. Regtime continues to play a key role in the development of the Internet in Russia, including its work with the Cyrillic Languages Internet Names Consortium (CLINC).

When you're running a trade exhibition, you need to get the message across to potential exhibitors and visitors quickly, efficiently and clearly. Air transport industry exhibitions command an increasingly global audience - so precision in marketing is vital.

Relevance is also critical, so 'hats off' to a growing number of exhibitors in the business aviation sector who are using the .aero domain to emphasize their community credentials. Three examples of this trend recently came to our attention.