Planning a move online? Get a domain name

Arnis Gross | 

You have just created a new Latvian product or service, or have finally made the decision to establish an Internet presence for your Latvian organization, business, hobby or even the family blog. How do you select the domain name?

Lets say that Pēteŗa Pīrāgi, located in Kuldīga, wants to promote its locally popular bakery not only to the rest of Latvia, but to rest of the world. The owner should first sit down (best without a computer) and make a list of words and phrases that people are likely to enter into a search engine such as Google or input as a Web address. For example piragi, pīrāgi (with all the diacritics), Latvian food, beķereja, Latvian bakery, Baltic bacon buns, Baltic food delicacies or visiting Kuldīga. The longer the list the better.

The owner will have two audiences to target: one within Latvia and the Baltic States and the other in the rest of the world. For this reason they may need to go to at least two different registrars: one that handles the .lv domain and the other the popular .com space. The recently introduced European Union .eu top level domain may also be a consideration especially if the owner is expecting an influx of German, Dutch or British tourists to the bakery.

Latvia’s top level domain .lv is managed by the Network Solutions Department of the Institute of Mathematics & Computer Science at the University of Latvia. The department’s Web site is available in either Latvian or English. Visitors can quickly check whether a domain name is available at www.nic.lv. From the list start with the more generic or popular words. You never know your luck, because a previous holder of that name could have recently released it back to the pool of available names. During the 1990s the rules for registering a domain name were fairly lax. At one stage riga.lv was redirecting to a Russian language Web site that had little to do with promoting Rīga. Cybersquatters would often purchase a whole bunch of names with the intent of selling them to unsuspecting firms for many times the original price. Nearly 40,000 .lv domain names have been registered (compared to more than 50 million .com registrations) and the rules today ensure that geographical names and well known company names or trademarks are protected from these warehousing practices. Naming conventions are generally more relaxed and a business or organisation can register at the top domain without the .com.lv or .org.lv extension, for example, mybusiness.lv and myorganisation.lv. Domain names designated with the .id.lv extension are available free of charge for individuals. Surprisingly, a lot of the more popular surnames are still available (only 500 have been registered), so grab one while you can.

Going back to our example, the owner of Pēteŗa Pīrāgi is overjoyed to discover that the No. 1 choice of pirags.lv was available. Out comes the credit card and, after completing all of the necessary details and authorising the USD 35 or EUR 30 charge, the domain name can now be exclusively used by the bakery for 12 months, after which a renewal notice for the same amount will be sent for the following year. In 2004 NIC.lv also introduced the ability to include Latvian letters or diacritics. These domain names are considerably cheaper at LVL 10. The main problem is that for nearly all versions of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer a special plugin is required to recognise the special letters. Otherwise the user is taken to the standard “Server Not Found” error page. To implement this great idea, the owner of the bakery should have both pirags.lv and pīrāgs.lv for exclusive use and at no additional charge, at least until the technology has caught up and the Domain Name System has become Unicode compliant. NIC.lv provides tūdaliņ.lv as an example to test your Web browser.

For the dot com space Pēteŗa Pīrāgi will need to go to one of the many thousands of registrars located outside of Latvia. Some of the more popular are Register.com, NetworkSolutions and DomainDiscover, where prices start from a low USD 9 for a domain name—nearly 400 percent cheaper than the Latvian equivalent. At these prices Pēteŗa Pīrāgi can register several names, for example, pirags.com, latvianbakery.com and balticbaconbuns.com and have them all automatically redirect to the English language pages of pirags.lv.

The European Commission’s nonprofit organisation EURid has accredited three .eu registrars in Latvia, but only EUREG seems to work and inexplicably defaults to the Russian language. Prices for .eu domain names are quoted at about LVL 15. To date there have been about 3,000 registrations from Latvia. It is not clear whether these figures also includes the reserved names. The owner of Pēteŗa Pīrāgi decides they will watch this space and make an assessment later.

Selecting a domain name is only the initial phase of successfullty establishing an online presence and something that every business should consider sooner than later.

Australian ensemble adds its own flavor to folk songs

Daina Grosa | 

Pumpura iela

The Brisbane-based kokle group Zigrīda Ansamblis has just released its long-awaited first compact disc. The ensemble has been playing for quite a few years and has recently spread its wings to not only play to a local audience but is well known in the Latvian-Australian community from coast to coast. The group has played at national youth gatherings called Jaunatnes dienas, as well as the more widely attended Kulturas dienas, a multi-generational gathering of Latvians in Australia. This first CD showcases the versatility and fusion of modern and ancient sounds that make Zigrīda Ansamblis unique.

With only eight tracks, the CD might seem to be quite short, but on closer scrutiny each individual musical piece can be imagined as a course in a banquet. The flavour of each separate morsel must be savoured, the nuances of each piece must be discovered and enjoyed before the sweet sounds of the next song make their presence felt. Just as a banquet should not lead to overindulgence, for a CD the right balance must be found so the length and variety of music don’t overstimulate the senses. This CD has achieved just that.

The melodies are not all instantly recognisable; they’re not all the standard kokle-type songs everyone has heard over the years. The use of voice, percussion instruments as well as the base kokle all add an extra element making each musical piece a finely polished gem. At the same time, however, there is a sense of continuity as each song flows into the next and gives the album a feeling of unity and wholeness.

“Mēness ņēma saules meitu” and “Ačkups” are the more traditional pieces and bring back memories of folk dancing performances of years gone by, while “Iebrauca saulīte” is an original fusion of percussion (washboard and drum), kokle and voice, showcasing Zigrīda Ansamblis’ talent in acoustic arrangement. The lesser-known version of “Seši mazi bundzenieki” also makes good use of the drum as an instrument in a Latvian folk song.

The CD cover shows good design elements and evokes a truly “Latvian” mood with the use of the traditional symbol of Latvia’s agrarian heritage—wheat stalks and the subdued brown and green earth tones that are so characteristic of the summer colours visible in the countryside in Latvia.

Details

Pumpura iela: From Seed to Bloom

Zigrīda Ansamblis

Zigrīda Ansamblis,  2006

Daina Gross is editor of Latvians Online. An Australian-Latvian she is also a migration researcher at the University of Latvia, PhD from the University of Sussex, formerly a member of the board of the World Federation of Free Latvians, author and translator/ editor/ proofreader from Latvian into English of an eclectic mix of publications of different genres.

Immigrant applications from Latvia see decrease

Andris Straumanis | 

For the third year running, the number of registered applications from Latvia for U.S. immigrant visas has decreased, according to the latest results of the diversity visa lottery announced by the U.S. Department of State.

A total of 75 applicants from Latvia have been registered for the 2007 U.S. diversity visa lottery and may now apply for permanent residency, the department announced July 18. They are among about 82,000 applicants—from a total of 5.5 million entries—who have been notified they may apply for permanent residency.

Only 50,000 of the applicants will receive immigrant visas.

Last year, 97 applications from Latvia were registered for the 2006 lottery. Applicants for the 2005 lottery numbered 158, compared to 172 for the 2004 lottery.

Applications for the 2007 lottery were accepted from Oct. 5-Dec. 4.

A total of 40 applications were registered from Estonia, the State Department said, while 298 were registered from Lithuania.

Andris Straumanis is a special correspondent for and a co-founder of Latvians Online. From 2000–2012 he was editor of the website.