.Mobi Could Spur Wireless Web

Carl Bialik from WSJ writes "Microsoft, Google, Vodafone, Nokia and several other companies are backing .mobi, a new top-level domain aimed at making it easier to browse the Web on mobile devices, such as cellphones and PDAs, the Wall Street Journal reports. On Monday, Mobile Top Level Domain opened registration. 'In a matter of hours, thousands of websites were signed up, including Yahoo.mobi and Hotjobs.mobi. For now, registration for dot-mobi Web sites is open only to members of wireless industry trade associations, which include wireless carriers, handset manufacturers and media companies, including Yahoo Inc., that want to make money from providing content to the wireless Web.' Registrants have to follow certain rules to get the domain, including that sites cannot 'cause pop-ups or other windows to appear.'"

Comments

This could be good... or maybe not

[zappepcs]

With the plethora of wireless devices now having some wireless 'web' capability, some have Java browsers, some with WAP browsers... a single .mobi TLD won't fix all the problems. The real problem is a lack of standard practices for wireless browsers. There are some sites that work well today, formatted for small screens... many don't.

Just saying it will fix things (remember .xxx) won't fix the problems... but its a good start IMO

Better Solution...

[meatflower]

As has been said it was stupid to make a four letter TLD for a mobil device. The smartest thing to have done would be to make it something easy to type out on a phone keypad. Something like .adg (just hit 1,2,3) or .ptw (7,8,9). Sure they're not catchy but they would be very quick to type out on a cell phone.

Odd length-Power of the default.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Given the generally awful text input systems on mobile devices, why create a TLD that is four characters long? It's still easier to type .com!"

You don't have to type .com in browsers. So it's not a big step to having mobile browsers defaulting to the new TLD.

Re:Odd length

[rtconner]

If it becomes popular enough I'm sure most devices would only make you type in "yahoo" and then default to yahoo.mobi.

Anyways, I can easily see myself using these .mobi sites for regular surfing on my PC. They are a lot simpler and with no popups, minimal ads, etc.. these pages will be wonderful to view. Never again would I have to face the huge clutter of yahoo's current home page.

Nonsense and bullshit

[Tom]

Whoever came up with this should be shot. Seriously. Either use the DNS the way it is designed, or open it up and let everyone make stuff up.

yahoo.mobi? Idiots who fell for a salesguy with even less brains, and neither of them understand what a hierarchy is supposed to be for.

mobi.yahoo.com - now, was that so difficult? Google gets it - it's "maps.google.com" and not "google.maps". And that's exactly the way the DNS hierarchy is supposed to work - go from the most general towards the more specific. TLD: Generic type, domain name: Owner/Company, subdomain: Purpose.

Ah well, I guess it's too late anyways. Idiots have been running ICANN for years, it was only a matter of time until they fuck up completely. I'm sure this'll go through. :(((

Re:Nonsense and bullshit

[Billosaur]

yahoo.mobi? Idiots who fell for a salesguy with even less brains, and neither of them understand what a hierarchy is supposed to be for.

mobi.yahoo.com - now, was that so difficult? Google gets it - it's "maps.google.com" and not "google.maps". And that's exactly the way the DNS hierarchy is supposed to work - go from the most general towards the more specific. TLD: Generic type, domain name: Owner/Company, subdomain: Purpose.

Agreed. This constant need to develop new TLDs is eventually going to choke the DNS system. People have to take a simple, elegant concept, and butcher it; it's the new way of IT.

Frankly, the whole idea of the browser on a mobile phone is pretty over-rated -- it's a phone! Most of the mobile providers have services you can dial up if you want information. Screens on phones are just too small to make the browsing experince any more enjoyable than root canal. We're going to be a society of squinters before long and the only people to benefit from .mobi are going to be optometrists and opthamologists.

Re:Odd length

[hackstraw]

Given the generally awful text input systems on mobile devices, why create a TLD that is four characters long? It's still easier to type .com!

All this new TLD stuff is stupid. The only decent proposal that they won't adopt is .XXX.

Why do we need yet another TLD that needs to be registered and maintained when we can today go to mobi.slashdot.org and get a slightly different page? Why can't we just use CSS's @media handheld?

This is a poor solution to a nonexistent problem.

Re:Why TLDs at all.

[pldms]

A little cynical, but rightly so. Here's a question: which is better?

A: mobi.yahoo.com

B: yahoo.mobi

Frankly I see little difference, but B is going to cost yahoo $140 (if I understand the article correctly), so I bet the registrars like B.

The link between .mobi and conformance to some mobile browsing standards is not very convincing. There are many better methods to do this than using a TLD. How about metadata? HTTP negotiation? Profiles? Overloading the meaning of a DNS entry is not a good idea.

Can someone explain why this is needed?

[twfry]

I thought web browsers and web servers were suppose to take care of this without having a separate address.

For example, if a cell phones does an http GET from www.cnn.com, the cell phone sends a header stating that it is a mobile device, the server then adjusts to content to make it appropiate for the cell phone. Is this right?

Also, why the hell are they making a separate registry for this? It is just a different protocall and the internet was designed so different registries were not needed for different protocalls. Shouldn't it be:

mobi.cnn.com

Instead of www.cnn.mobi

That is what is done with other protocalls such as ftp, etc. Thats why you see 'ftp.yoursite.com' instead of 'www.yoursite.ftp'. Whats next a different registry for every device/protocall combination?

CSS?

[StonedRat]

Isn't this what the "handheld" CSS media type is for?

*Could* spur the wireless web, but it won't

[Chelloveck]

Maybe .mobi could spur the wireless web... If it weren't for the fact that any content provider could already do the exact same thing today, without needing the new TLD. If they cared, which damned few seem to do. You don't need a fancy new domain to publish a clean, uncluttered, page without tons of flash and javascript. If sites wanted to do that they would. But they don't, so they won't, and a new TLD won't change that.

Sounds like WAP re-born. No one supported that, either.