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.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.'"
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!
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.
Wow, a TLD that discourages stupid ads and pop-ups and gratuitous Flash animations. Hell, what's to stop people on regular computer browsers from abandoning the old home pages for these new non-crappified sites?
"In a 32-bit world, you're a 2-bit user. You've got your own newsgroup, alt.total.loser." -Weird Al
New TLDs really serve no purpose other than to enrich the organizations managing them. They don't expand the namespace in a meaningful way - even if you had the financial means to do so you couldn't register Yahoo.mobi or Yahoo.US or Yahoo.biz. So any trademarked term is already ruled out. That said, the pricing for common words is usually enormous - does anyone think they'll be able to purchase sex.mobi for the standard $9/year (or whatever it is)? So now common words are out. If you can't get common or popular words, why bother using .mobi at all when you'd have to come up with a name just as distinctive as if you'd registered a .com?
.com, making it even less useful for its intended task - being used on mobile devices - than .com.
Frankly the only reason I can see for creating new TLDs is to force trademark holders to buy their trademarked terms defensively - that's probably a guaranteed instant 100k registrations. The whole thing just seems like a scam. If they'd at least gone with ".m" rather than ".mobi" then they could play the "simpler to type" angle, but ".mobi" is even longer than
rooooar
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.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
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?
Isn't this what the "handheld" CSS media type is for?
"Religion is the most malevolent of all mind viruses." - Arthur C. Clarke.
I knew someone would finally come up with this technological breakthrough that allows "The Mobile Web" to finally take off. Its not better screens, useable input devices, durable equipment with long battery life and low cost, cheap available bandwidth, or security end users can be confident in. No. None of these. The missing key has been the .mobi top level domain. Now, we can all get down to the business of using it and making money.
1. Invent the internet.
2. Create wireless Phones.
3. Convince end users that the internet is the web
4. Sell devices that can connect to the internet
5. Wait around for a dozen years.
6. Create a '.mobi' top level domain
7. Profit!
The problem with quotes on the internet, is that nobody bothers to check their veracity. -- Abraham Lincoln
Are you kidding? It's a conspiracy!! That 4th character is more data the mobile carriers can charge for using! If it were up to them the TLD would be .mobilenowonderwechargesomuchforunlimitedrateplans whydidntwethinkofthisearlier.