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Mobile Top Level Domain Gets ICANN Nod
Sushant Bhatia writes "Despite fierce criticism from Tim Berners-Lee, the father of the Web, ICANN has decided to go ahead and create a new TLD (Top Level Domain) aimed at mobile phones and other mobile devices. Bizarrely the new domain will be '.mobi'. Considering that one of the chief banes of accessing the Internet from a mobile phone is the fact that keying in long Internet addresses takes time, the decision to use .mobi seem odd. A good place to keep up with the ongoings of ICANN is the ICANN Watch which reports that a TLD system has been launched in Turkey as the result of an alliance between the Turkish Informatics Association (TBD) and Unified Identity Technology (UNIDT)."
Why is this TLD based on the medium used to access it? In the past the TLD had more to do with the nature of the organization hosting the website.....
Considering that one of the chief banes of accessing the Internet from a mobile phone is the fact that keying in long Internet addresses takes time, the decision to use .mobi seem odd.
.mobi instead of making you key it in.
This is a domain targeted specifically at phones. So it is reasonable to assume that phone manufacturers will create something that automatically fills in the
Of course, who knows how many of these addresses will really be optimized for phones. It probably won't take long for domain speculators and porn shops to gobble them up.
unless there's a reason that you can't have a 1 character tld
[not to mention that "mo" are on the same key in a cellphone, making it even more annoying to key in... but at least predictive text might pick up that you're typing "mobile"]
Assuming I could register a .mobi address for my phone, now what? Was something like [my phone number]@[wireless provider].[net or com] too difficult? It seems like a solution looking for a problem.
I don't practice what I preach because I'm not the kind of person that I'm preaching to.
Is there any real reason they couldn't have done .M or .MOB or .MBL Or anything that didn't have Fscking 4 characters?!
There is evidence to prove both Democrats and Republicans are lying cocksuckers. Vote independently.
So what are the advantages of the TLD approach that caused this to get approved?
More money for ICANN.
Not only did they put a 4 letter TLD - on a device where it's important to have short URLs but on most ABC phones, it would require 6- pause - 666 - 22-444 8 key presses and a pause!!!!! My suggestion, in just 3 seconds of thinking I came up with 6-7-9 MPW which would give you mobile phone web.
Apple wants you to buy only Apple products and services. Microsoft strongly recommends that you install only Genuine Microsoft Windows on all your computers. ICANN wants you to register a .mobi domain for mobile content. There's one reason behind all these: money.
.mobi to set the world on fire just like .museum revolutionized the way museums used the internet, or the way .name encouraged everyone to buy their real name's domain, or the way .pro encouraged "professionals" to get their name for $200+. In other words, it's a poor attempt to wring money from gullible latecomers to the web.
I expect
For more information, click here.
He says it will devalue existing domain names.
Okay, so: What's wrong with that?
These are mnemonics, not currencies.
Their intent was never to be a currency. Just mnemonics.
If you are buying up names because you think they'll be valuable later on, you're doing something dumb. The names system doesn't owe you anything. You aren't owed a profit on names.
Let the names be plentiful.
The device detection problem is a big one. Tim is right on this. URLs are how we identify sites that we want to go to, not how we identify content. There should be one URL for all content types and the site should do the right thing for the device.
That's a complicated problem. There are about 1,000 different mobile devices currently in use. Keeping track of them, and the different types of content they need, is tough.
Most devices can handle one of four different types of content:
- Full HTML: desktop computers, etc
- Mobile XHTML: newer phones
- WML: older or mid-range phones
- cHTML: DoCoMo i-mode phones in Japan
Within these four basic types, there are still more questions:- Screen size: How big should images be
- Image types: PNG, GIF, JPEG, or WBMP?
- Media types: can it play videos, etc?
- Java types: MIDP1, MIDP2, DoJa, or perhaps even J2SE?
There's no way to make this work without some specialized software help. One tool is the free open-source WURFL. Another tool is, of course, our own DeviceSource and Mobile Web Module.Creating another domain shifts more work to users (in the form of marketing the other URL, remembering it, using it). Users shouldn't have to do work. Tools should do work.
Anyway, if Slashdot ever wants to get a license to our software to have a mobile Slashdot you can read on the phone, contact us: info@chiralsoftware.net.
Why this is bad has been covered before...
.toaster tld? what about .fridge or .car?
Tim Berners-Lee talked about it over a year ago, and many other people have covered the reasons why it's bad.
The main reason being that creating top level domain names for specific devices is dumb. Cell phones / mobile devices may be hot shit right now, but what happens in 10 years when every device we own had access to the web... will we get a
User agents have content negotiation and identify themselves for a reason. that is what should be used, not the TLD to determine content.
It's not a location, unless you foresee a great number of mobile webservers. I live in the Netherlands, but I don't just surf the .nl web. Just because I'm using a mobile device doesn't mean I should be restricted to .mobi. My laptop can render HTML just fine. So far, TLDs reflected the type of business, second-level-domains the name of the business, and third-level-domains the service offered by the business (e.g., mail., www., etc)
Now, all of a sudden, the device you use determines the which domain you must go to. So there's an http://www.icann.com/, but rather than having mobile.icann.com (which is appropriate in the old scheme) you now have either www.icann.mobi or just icann.mobi.
What does this do for businesses? Well, they'll have to register another domain, otherwise there will be squatting and problems when you finally DO want mobile services. And with a whole lot of businesses that's a whole lot of extra annual cash.