Comments on: .mobi — Kickstarting the Mobile Web, Or Holding It Back?

By: Trying to Be like Bill Gates » .mobi’s Sales Yardstick Once Again Shows It’s All About The Money

Wed, 01 Nov 2006 07:09:53 +0000

[...] I also love using this A number of new top-level domains have been introduced over the past few years, like .jobs, .travel and .eu, but unsurprisingly, they haven’t been particularly popular, except with domain squatters. Registrars and companies that promote new TLDs feed on this, knowing that most big companies will simply go out and buy up domain names containing their names and trademarks of any new TLD, not because they have any interest in using them, but just to keep them out of the hands of squatters and to avoid getting into disputes over ownership, or having to buy them back at inflated prices later. It’s been pretty clear from the outset that one such new TLD, .mobi, intended for web sites aimed at users on mobile devices, has been about little more than the money, despite the protestations of the company behind it. Everything the company has done is geared towards wringing as much money out of the process as possible: .mobi domains carry a higher cost than many other domains, supposedly to cut down on cybersquatting; registrations of trademarks made during the “sunrise” period carried an even greater cost; the company held back 5,000 common words and phrases it will auction off, saying that will ensure a fairer distribution than a first-come, first-served policy and not mentioning it will maximize revenue (while saying it’s not a money-grab because they could have held even more names back); putting out a call for advisors on the mobile web, but only if they can pay. But the truth remains that .mobi really does nothing to advance the mobile internet, and all it does is compel companies to snap up more domains they don’t need and don’t really want. [...]

By: Vijay

Vijay — Fri, 22 Sep 2006 21:30:50 +0000

Hey guys .. im really a rookie .. and im on no assignment here .. but what i thought i need to determine, is the flipside of .mobi .. as a TLD .. in it self .. i guess it doesnt really target a specific niche of audience .. and on the one hand it is purely a platform or interface oriented model ..
what im really concernd is abt why and how ICANN gave .mobi’s introduction a nod ..
.mobi im sure most of u are aware , is backed by thirteen major companies including Ericsson, GSM Association, Google, Hutchison, Microsoft, Nokia, Orascom Telecom, Samsung Electronics, Syniverse, Telefonica Moviles, TIM (Telecom Italia), T-Mobile and Vodaphone,
All these Corporations are Massive in their own sense .. But are they really focussed on making the internet a more enriching experience .. or is it just that .. they know that a merger of this magnitude is a sign of the rise of a New Monopoly .. ?
I mean .. In the case of Most Sponsored TLD’s .. it is a merger of organizations which have specific interest in the growth of the sector that they are responsible for.. eg .travel…
but what is ICANNS agenda here .. ?? do they soon want a parallel internet .. ..i mean i agree that the total domain name usage today is approximately 65 million . .but .mobi is a sophisticated technique of gaining an edge over most of the Gtlds … given the solid support .. and a targett audience 4times that of all the other CCTLD’s AND GTLD’s in existance ..
where is the MTLD .. headed .. ??
Help Me with the answers

By: Agile Ajax

Agile Ajax — Thu, 14 Sep 2006 03:12:19 +0000

More Ruminations on .mobi and Ajax…

If you’re like me, you probably tuned out all of the marketing hype around the launch of the .mobi TLD. Technorati : .mobi, ajax, mobile…

By: What’s .mobi Playing At Now? at MobHappy

What’s .mobi Playing At Now? at MobHappy — Fri, 25 Aug 2006 06:20:51 +0000

[...] It’s no secret that I’m not a fan of .mobi. I haven’t had much to add since I posted on it back in May, so I’ve avoided writing about it here. But the mobile-specific domain’s administrators have done a couple things recently I want to draw attention to. [...]

By: Richard

Richard — Tue, 22 Aug 2006 16:53:34 +0000

The whole concept of the internet is that it doesn’t matter if the person is using a 100-pixel mobile device, or a 4000-pixel NASA supercomputer, or a TV, or an in-car system that reads to them out loud. They simply want to access the site (well, in fact, that’s not true, they simply want the information that the site contains).

As mentioned above, Tim Berners-Lee warned against the domain, and I agree- Sniffing the browser with endless branching is so last millennium, and should be discouraged in favor of handheld CSS. Having to remember what extension to use (.com/.co.uk/.org/.net/.mobi etc) is only part of the trouble. Screen size is another factor, but it isn’t the only one, and in one of the examples I gave above, it doesn’t matter. You also have to consider bandwidth, software compatibility, processing power and so on. There are far too many factors to worry about, without something extra and trivial like this.

Besides, what happens when you buy a mobile phone in 2011 that has a 50GHz processor and a 3D screen? Will we still have to be tied to this tld?

If everybody used the tld that suited their company, then things would be a lot easier. Personally, I don’t even like it when every organisation uses .com without thinking about it. I guess I’m just a purist…

By: Chris

Chris — Sat, 19 Aug 2006 02:15:06 +0000

Sniffing user-agent strings for mobile devices is trivial. Along with those strings (and more important than the string) devices display other ‘header’ information to the sites they browse which can inform exact display capabilities including encodings, screen size and other details. Therefor you don’t have to maintain anything other than the most basic heuristics to determine what to serve to a particular device.

The .mobi domain is confusing for consumers and not helpful to companies. I wish it would go away.

By: Tech Headlines

Tech Headlines — Thu, 17 Aug 2006 19:56:42 +0000

Mobile-Only Domain Shows Its True Color: Green…

Backers of the .mobi mobile top-level domain insist that such a domain is “needed” so people know they…

By: Eran Wyler

Eran Wyler — Mon, 19 Jun 2006 13:36:17 +0000

dotMobi actually tries to address the need for more content on mobile devices but it doesn‚Äôt give a solution for the content provider community. They will still need to redesign and rewrite their content in WAP (2.0) and/or i-mode and/or new standards. Instead of having a new suffix (.mobi) today‚Äôs technologies can address this problem by simply identifying a mobile device that is trying to access a website, directing it to the mobile version automatically, so the user will type the same URL they are familiar with while being on the move.

Why reinvent the Web when Internet users are happy with the Web sites and services that already exist? Although WAP and i-mode exist, most of the Internet content including the top sites either don‚Äôt have a mobile version, do not work on mobile devices, or the results are very poor. And what about the multi-technology gaps that exist between mobile device manufacturers? Are we going back to a low common dominator concept or will all relevant players start to develop systems according to the same specifications? (I am sure that the answers are obvious). So did we miss something? Yes, it is the time and effort a content provider must put into the project in order to have a mobile version and that issue is not addressed by the dotMobi initiative.

The other issue remaining is the end-user habits and experience. Even if a content provider will write a mobile version, it will be different and will not include all the original web site offerings. The level of expectation from the end user perspective is not the same, it could even be perceived as a different site ‚Äì a site the user is not familiar with.

The dotMobi concept is all about giving the end user a list of certified working sites available for mobile phones and standards behind the domain name, but what is the difference from the WAP 2.0 or i-mode standards? As I see it, users want the full web and dotMobi won‚Äôt be able to deliver it without heavy efforts from all sides (including the content providers). Therefore the issue should be solved from a different direction ‚Äì for example, solutions which automatically adapt the original site to the mobile device‚Äôs physical and functional capabilities. This solution must provide the best content presentation and ease of use for even the smallest device. We need to provide users with what that they are really looking for ‚Äì the World Wide Web!

By: Talking With Jon von Tetzchner, Opera’s CEO at MobHappy

Talking With Jon von Tetzchner, Opera’s CEO at MobHappy — Tue, 13 Jun 2006 23:52:23 +0000

[...] For users, it’s pretty obvious — an Opera browser allows them to hit the sites their familiar with, at the usual address, “giving people what they want,” as von Tetzchner puts it. He sees no point in creating a mobile site a different, specific address, when users are already used to straightforward ones on the desktop (echoing my earlier comments about .mobi). [...]

By: Lifeblog

Lifeblog — Wed, 07 Jun 2006 07:45:20 +0000

MobHappy on .mobi…

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