A new way of typing internet addresses has been approved. It's been described as the net's "biggest technical change" since it was created 40 years ago.
Sky news reports how non-Latin characters will be used in future; the organisation that oversees them has backed the use of non-Latin characters from languages like Arabic, Chinese, Hebrew, Hindi and Korean.
Up to now, top-level domains (TLD's) like .com and .co.uk, have been limited to the 26 characters in the Latin alphabet used in English (A-Z) as well as 10 numbers and the hyphen.
That has meant internet users with little or no knowledge of English may still have to type in Latin characters to access their country's web pages.
But now, web addresses using characters from different languages will be available by mid-2010.
Joe White of Gandi.net, which provides internet services based on domain names says, "It will prompt businesses to start thinking about how to adapt their strategy, whether they want to run their own TLD or register a domain within a new TLD such as .lawyer."
