.mobi Approved

[Jon Westfall]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.russellbeattie.com/notebook/1008531.html' target='_blank'>http://www.russellbeattie.com/noteb...ok/1008531.html</a><br /><br /></div><i>"Wow, I'm pretty amazed this happened, but I probably shouldn't be with Nokia, Microsoft and Vodafone pushing for it. But it looks like we'll be able to register a .mobi domain sometime soon (after the 90 day sunrise period is over)."</i><br /><br />Well, add another TLD to the mix, this one hopefully meeting the needs of the mobile browsing community with easily digestable mobile webpages. Russ Beattie has some interesting comments on the news. I'm of mixed opinion when I think about TLDs - On one side, I think they should be uniform, with everyone actually using their country code, then site type indication (i.e. .com.us .net.uk) to make it easier to see the whole point of the site. And on the other side, I don't want to give up my 15 .com's because they are easy to remember! What are your comments on this development? Good thing? Bad Thing?

[Ed Hansberry]

This is among the stupidest things I've read this year. Why in the world do we need another TLD for mobile devices? Why not just detect the device and hand down relevant content? You think CNN, ESPN or any other big company is rushing out to buy cnn.mobi or similar? I doubt it. I don't see Jason running out to put content on www.pocketpcthoughts.mobi either.

Update: it was just as stupid when I read it last year. :lol:

http://www.icann.org/minutes/resolutions-13dec04.htm

Looks like Russle is a bit behind the times. I thought this rant sounded familiar.

[dMores]

i actually don't care.
but i'm sure most of the .mobi domains will be something ABOUT mobile devices, not actually formatted sites for pda/phone/etc.

then there will always be the johndoe.mobi sites where there were no more .net .com .org etc tlds available.

i also think it's a good idea to brand your site with the country you're in.
but if it's a site that is of international interest, this would be confusing.
how many times do we remember a company name, and just enter it into our browser by adding a .com at the end?
this is simple and easy to remember.
but johndoe.com sites kind of annoy me, since .com indicates a commercial site, but you get a personal blog of john doe.

oh, then there's things like .cc
.cc is where germans/austrians/swiss people go when there is no .de/.at/.ch domain available anymore :)

www.mores.cc

;)

[ctmagnus]

:confused totally: Browser sniffing and CSS really isn't that hard to implement. I see $$$ written all over this.

[drowe]

"Wow, I'm pretty amazed this happened, but I probably shouldn't be with Nokia, Microsoft and Vodafone pushing for it. But it looks like we'll be able to register a .mobi domain sometime soon (after the 90 day sunrise period is over)."

I think all we are going to see is Nokia.mobi, Microsoft.mobi, and Vodafone.mobi......

[ctmagnus]

Oh, and will we see a .mnm domain soon as well?

:mrgreen:

[gibson042]

:bad-words: Very bad thing! Content is content, and should not be divided among different TLDs—breaking DNS I might add—based upon how the user is accessing it. Especially when things like content negotiation, CC/PP, XSLT, and CSS can already manage device independence. Wasn't that supposed to be responsible for the great success of the internet in the first place? To quote Tim Berners-Lee (http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/TLD):
It is fundamentally useful to be able to quote the URI for some information and then look up that URI in an entirely different context. For example, I may want to look up a restaurant on my laptop, bookmark it, and then, when I only have my phone, check the bookmark to have a look at the evening menu. Or, my travel agent may send me a pointer to my itinerary for a business trip. I may view the itinerary from my office on a large screen and want to see the map, or I may view it at the airport from my phone when all I want is the gate number.

Dividing the Web into information destined for different devices, or different classes of user, or different classes of information, breaks the Web in a fundamental way.

[Ed Hansberry]

Oh yeah... now it is all coming back to me. I used "stupid" then too. :devilboy:

http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=35543

[Darius Wey]

Well, we can only hope that W3C gets somewhere: http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=40026

[Paragon]

This is among the stupidest things I've read this year. Why in the world do we need another TLD for mobile devices? Why not just detect the device and hand down relevant content? You think CNN, ESPN or any other big company is rushing out to buy cnn.mobi or similar? I doubt it. I don't see Jason running out to put content on www.pocketpcthoughts.mobi either.

Update: it was just as stupid when I read it last year. :lol:

http://www.icann.org/minutes/resolutions-13dec04.htm

Looks like Russle is a bit behind the times. I thought this rant sounded familiar.

I agree with you on this 100%, Ed.

I see this as a negative for mobility. As already mentioned, sniffing browser types is much better. Having a separate domain for mobility will only amplify the problem of not being able to access many sites. How many sites are going to develop a separate domain just for mobility?

Yeah, I thought it was dumb back then as well. ;)

Dave

[OSUKid7]

Oh yeah... now it is all coming back to me. I used "stupid" then too. :devilboy:

http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=35543
I knew I had read about this somewhere before. Now I do enjoy calling the ICANN stupid, but is this really news? Even posting a news item about this is rewarding them for creating yet another pointless TLD.

[Scott R]

Berners-Lee raises a good point about the added cost. I don't want to have to buy .mobi, .us, or .whatever for every single core domain name I use. Name registration is cheap, but it can get expensive if I have to buy all the extensions just to make sure someone else doesn't.

The supposed benefits of this are ridiculous as well. These sites are supposed to be mobile-friendly. Define mobile-friendly. Is that bare-bones text-only WAP? A WAP phone, 160x160 Treo 600, 320x320 Treo 650, 240x320 PPC, 480x320 Zodiac, and VGA Pocket PC all are mobile devices, yet what looks good on one may not look good on another. And I can pass some pretty media-intensive data down a WiFi connection but would want to be frugal about my bits and bytes if I'm using a smartphone (or PDA to cellphone via Bluetooth) connection, yet both are still mobile. Designing a site for the lowest common denominator may "work" on all of those devices, but it won't look great. If I had time to kill I'd love to create a Zodiac-optimized version of Tapland.com. It might even be fairly graphic-rich (though with no graphics larger than the 480x320 resolution of the Zodiac). This would be in addition to my lowest common denominator (800x600) desktop and 160x160 "smartphone" optimized versions. So, I'd have two "mobile" versions, but each of them being quite different.

IMO, the best thing people can do is to just boycott this whole .mobi thing. The big proponents here seem to be the wireless service companies. I wonder if this might be an attempt by them to eventually limit their network so that phones on consumer data plans can only access .mobi domains in an attempt to limit bandwidth. I sure hope not.