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.mobi Websites Now Available to Register 149

Posted by Zonk from the looking-foward-to-.awesome dept.
Jaruzel writes to mention a BBC article about the availability of .mobi addresses for registration. The new TLD is intended to give a home to websites specifically formatted for mobile devices. From the article: "MTLD is promising that websites with a registered dotmobi address will be optimized for mobile phones, guaranteeing users a consistent experience. It costs about $25 (£14) to register a dotmobi site for a minimum two-year period. Oliver said that while he agreed with the need to improve the mobile web experience, promises of a 'consistent experience' did not always equate with reality."
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.mobi Websites Now Available to Register More

.mobi Websites Now Available to Register

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  • Finally! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 26, 2006 @09:37AM (#16198333)
    A worthless TLD just for mobile phones! It's about time.

  • The laziest way to make money (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Need money? let's just create a new TLD!

  • Duuuhhhhh (Score:5, Interesting)

    by $RANDOMLUSER ( 804576 ) on Tuesday September 26, 2006 @09:39AM (#16198363)
    Why not just use "mobi.ibm.com", for example - why do we need a TLD for this? It's not like there's going to be millions of .mobi sites.

    • Re:Duuuhhhhh (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Rob T Firefly ( 844560 ) on Tuesday September 26, 2006 @09:46AM (#16198449) Homepage Journal
      So they can make a metric pantload of money selling everyone's trademarked and otherwise in-demand names back to them again.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by ElleyKitten ( 715519 )
      Why not just use "mobi.ibm.com", for example - why do we need a TLD for this? It's not like there's going to be millions of .mobi sites.
      Because ibm.mobi is shorter to type than mobi.ibm.com (mobiles don't have the best keyboards), and so that mobiles can default or have a shortcut key for .mobi so that people can get to sites that their phone can handle with even less typing.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Rob T Firefly ( 844560 )
        Personally, I love my site readers, but I really don't feel the need to enrich registrars more than I already am just so they can push four fewer buttons to get to me. I'd like to think my content is interesting enough to be worth pushing those four buttons. (Disclaimer: it isn't.)

        Besides, wasn't it supposed to be a part of the whole XHTML/CSS revolution that a weak handheld could easily extract and adapt bog-standard site content?

      • Re:Duuuhhhhh (Score:4, Insightful)

        by ameoba ( 173803 ) on Tuesday September 26, 2006 @09:56AM (#16198571)
        If they're concerned about making things easy for mobile devices, which usually have somewhat limited input facilities, then wouldn't they pick a 2 or 3 letter TLD instead of 4? If they were concerned about ease of typing this in, they wouldn't have put M & O next to eachother (look at your cellphone).

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Tim C ( 15259 )
          That's a vaild point. However, it would also be trivial to mobile browsers default to adding ".mobi" to the end of any "naked" domain name a user types in - so eg you type in "ibm" and it automatically assumes that you mean "ibm.mobi".

          Apart from that, yeah, having "m" and "o" together isn't the best of ideas, and is "mob" really that harder to understand than "mobi" that it's worth the extra character? Couldn't they have used ".wap"? (Yes, it would make it appear that it's tied to a particular tech, but it'

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by MoOsEb0y ( 2177 )
        If they were truly optimizing for mobiles, they would have done two things: 1. they would have composed the domain name entirely of letters that come up first on the keypad when you push a button (i.e. a,d,g,j,m,p,t,w). 2. It wouldn't be 4 letters long

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by garcia ( 6573 )
        How about IBM just adds mobile web stuff to IBM.com which automatically detects the mobile connection and serves the proper content?

        ibm.com is shorter to type than ibm.mobi ;)

        I have a script that converts letters to numbers (dollar word) at http://lazylightning.org/dollar [lazylightning.org] -- it works for regular browsers and mobile ones (WAP) so people can use it from the field when they are geocaching [geocaching.com].

        It's fairly easy to do with a couple of simple lines in your HTML and your http.conf.

      • Re:Duuuhhhhh (Score:4, Insightful)

        by cortana ( 588495 ) <sam@robots[ ]g.uk ['.or' in gap]> on Tuesday September 26, 2006 @10:16AM (#16198823) Homepage
        ibm.com is shorter than both.
      • But since I'm on a mobile device, wouldn't it make more sense to have the tld be "m," or something like that? I mean why four characters? ibm.m is even shorter yet.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by bano ( 410 )
          No they are saving that so they can sell us .a-.z in the next few years. So making it .m will be counter to that at the moment.
      • are we forced to append ".mobi" rather than prepending "mobi."? Leave aside the asinine idea of forming a TLD "for mobiles" that uses "m" and "o" right next to each other. If you could get site publishers to agree to a standard (by some other means than creating a new TLD) it would be trivial for everyone to create a sub-domain for mobile devices. There's no "mobile usability magic" in the ibm.mobi domain that couldn't more easily (and cheaply) be dealt with by a common sub-domain (mobi.ibm.com) for mobile

    • Why not just use "mobi.ibm.com", for example - why do we need a TLD for this?



      Exactly. www.dotmobi.org tells us at the bottom that "the official site is available at MTLD.MOBI" ... and when you go to mtld.mobi it takes you to ... pc.mtld.mobi ... I presume if you changed your user agent to something suitable it would take you to the subdomain for a pocketpc or palmos or whatever. Just like it should be done.

      • This doesn't work for me (Opera 9 with the user agent set to emulate Internet Explorer). So I get a crappy-looking page that I suppose is intended to be viewed on a mobile phone.
        Since the page is utterly devoid of useful content, all they've done they've convinced me that browing from a mobile phone is going to be an unpleasant experience.

      • Clarifying my own post...

        I just set the user agent to that used by my phone and the address stayed at mtld.mobi and presented a simple yellowy/turquoise screen aimed at mobile devices. So that's kind of an inverse world that's been created. Instead of google.com, ibm.com serving up 'normal' pages at those addresses and special pages at mobi.google.com, mobi.ibm.com, we get the opposite side of the coin where mtld.mobi is serving up 'normal' pages ... for mobiles ... and 'special' pages for the bigger mach

    • Re:Duuuhhhhh (Score:5, Funny)

      by Rob T Firefly ( 844560 ) on Tuesday September 26, 2006 @10:09AM (#16198743) Homepage Journal
      Because .mob was already set aside for organized-crime-related domains.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by flumps ( 240328 )
        .. and ".cell" was used up by all the prisoners..

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Ilgaz ( 86384 )
        I remember they agreed on crime.org in a meeting. (Simpsons, Duh)

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by cmorriss ( 471077 )
      Yes, we do need this. Web sites have had years to create an obvious standard for the mobile version of web sites. Guess what? It never happened. This creates one. Now, it will be very easy for someone on a mobile phone to find the mobile version of there favorite site.

      If you've ever tried surfing the web on a mobile, you would understand the hope this finally brings to that current mess.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by maxume ( 22995 )
        As long as 'we' consists of people desperate to surf the internet on their mobile phone. I get that checking email and the like is a nice convenience, but pretty much everything can wait.

        A week without access isn't a big deal, and it seems that most companies have embraced this attitude, and don't bother with the 17 people that are frustrated by the lack of a mobile version of their websites. Apparently, Opera does a pretty good job of rendering down real content, and there are also proxies that do much the
      • How hard is it for web sites to check the browser user agent and output something relevant? It's not as if many sites don't do this already anyway.
    • We need it so that Herman Melville can put his whaling epic up on dick.mobi, why else?

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by L33t Windozer ( 1003194 )
      I hereby proclaim: All questions "Why do we need" are from now on to be responded with "because".

  • Too long (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mancontr ( 775899 ) on Tuesday September 26, 2006 @09:39AM (#16198365)
    If they're for mobile phones, wich usually don't have complete keyboard, doesn't it make sense to use a shorter TLD? A 4-letter one will be a pain to type for each site...
    • If they're for mobile phones, wich usually don't have complete keyboard, doesn't it make sense to use a shorter TLD? A 4-letter one will be a pain to type for each site...
      I imagine if .mobi gets popular, mobiles will default to .mobi or have a shortcut key for it.

    • Re: (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Yep, complete failure. M and O are both on the 6 key, so you need to pause before the O if you don't use T9. Com isn't better in that regard, but at least it's shorter, so even though it wasn't created for mobile applications, unlike mobi, it's actually the better choice.
    • Not to mention on most phones you have to pause after 'm', to type an 'o' (which is itself three presses). For a total of 9 key-preses and a pause. WAP was three keys, no pause!

      If WAP was more thought through then this, it tells you something about how likely it is to be a success.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Tim C ( 15259 )
        On every phone I've used in the last few years, you've been able to press the right arrow (or equivalent) to avoid the pause. Of course, then you're swapping the pause for another key press...

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by war2k1 ( 15869 )
      or hell, i'd just be happy with a domain that doesn't require someone to enter two adjacent letters that share a key when using multitap (e.g. mo in mobi or om in com)

      how about net? or org? all those letters on different keys, so nice.

      or, even better, how about .dam? lets us enter just the first char on multitap....

      sure, a mobile domain is great, but how about making is usable on a mobile phone...
    • Not only that, m and o are both on the 6 key. Not good.
    • Should be just ".mob"... because the mob rules! [wikipedia.org]

  • Oh well (Score:1, Funny)

    by cubicledrone ( 681598 )
    Everything sux. Cue 500 comments about how TLDs suck, computers suck and websites suck. Throw in a smartass comment about Flash just for spite. Season with bitching about spam and blogs to taste. Stir lightly. Serve with vegetable side.

    • Re: (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Also cue the huffy holier-than-thou comment bitching about all the other comments... oh, wait.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by oc255 ( 218044 )
      Despite the obvious sarcasm, the first thing I thought was ".mobi is evidence DNS is broken". No one's .com blog is commercial, the xxx stuff won't work for the common good and .mobi is 4/6th of mobile. s/sux/broken/ although it's a "broken" system that's working.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by TheRaven64 ( 641858 )
        I believe part of the reasoning behind .mobi is that domain owners can have their domain name revoked if they use it to host content that is not HTML/CSS compliant and won't degrade properly on small-screen devices.

        Some top-level domains are properly policed. Try getting a .edu for your blog, for example (or a .ac.uk if you are rightpondian). I agree .com is in a sorry state though; it's become the web equivalent of USENET's alt.*, but with a less meaningful name.

        • but .com is simply "commercial", and you can't deny that that's what most sites on the .com TDL are.

          Looks like it worked to me.
    • BUT I WANT CHIPS AS MY SIDE DAMN IT! In all seriousness you deserve a metal for best post of the year i think.
  • I wonder if all those crazy people that wanted to try and put all internet porn on .xxx tld's are pissed that thier worthless tld didnt go through but an even more worthless tld (.mobi) did?

  • The .mobi site could do with updating.... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by REBloomfield ( 550182 ) on Tuesday September 26, 2006 @09:44AM (#16198425)
    "It is not yet possible to register .mobi domains. Dot Mobi domains will be registered through ICANN accredited registrars. Please check back to this page for updates on when and where to register .mobi domains" - right underneath the big register button....

  • This is just record-industry hype. (Score:4, Funny)

    by Peter Trepan ( 572016 ) on Tuesday September 26, 2006 @09:47AM (#16198455)
    They're rolling out this top-level domain to generate publicity for Mobi's new album.

  • The web is broken (Score:5, Insightful)

    by MasterC ( 70492 ) <cmlburnett@gm[ ].com ['ail' in gap]> on Tuesday September 26, 2006 @09:52AM (#16198521) Homepage
    When a new TLD is created because of a style issue: the web is broken. This approach of splitting mobile content from "normal" content is the wrong way to do this. CSS has media types [w3.org] and a media type of "handheld" FOR EXACTLY THIS PURPOSE!

    The only benefit to .mobi is to be cash cow for the registrar. That's it. A properly design site should take advantage of the already existing method for handling this very situation. The website should change to me, not the other way around.

    • Re:The web is broken (Score:5, Insightful)

      by jfengel ( 409917 ) on Tuesday September 26, 2006 @09:59AM (#16198621) Homepage Journal
      Is changing the CSS sufficient? I'd imagine that for handheld devices, you want to change more than just the formatting. You'd want to deliver fewer bits overall (because of limited bandwidth), and possibly less content per page (because of small screen sizes).

      That's not just a formatting change; that's a radical restructuring of the way you'd want to design the web site. I don't think you can accomplish all that with CSS.

      • Re: (Score:1, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Yep. You shouldn't be using all those div tags anyway. And definitely not all those layout tables.
        If your site absolutely has to look a particular way that you can't just render with a minimal set of tags... maybe you should rethink trying to make your site look that way.

      • Re:The web is broken (Score:4, Interesting)

        by MasterC ( 70492 ) <cmlburnett@gm[ ].com ['ail' in gap]> on Tuesday September 26, 2006 @10:15AM (#16198809) Homepage
        That's not just a formatting change; that's a radical restructuring of the way you'd want to design the web site. I don't think you can accomplish all that with CSS.


        Touche. It won't reduce the bandwidth but you can easily hide your content. Some sites look *radically* different with and without style. For example, if you have the web developer extension for Firefox (or something equivalent) then hit up mozilla.org [mozilla.org] and then disable the styles (if not then copy the HTML into a blank page and strip off the link tags). There's two approaches here: minimal HTML design and dress it up with CSS (which is what mozilla.org does) or layout your entire site in HTML (as is usually done) and fine-tune with CSS. As of this writing, mozilla.org is 2796 bytes (excluding style sheets but including the links to them) but you might be deceived of that number by looking at the page.

        If I can't claim brokenness on improper use of style then I do so on the user agent not being wholly reliable. If it was then you could switch your output *at render time* instead of at the virtual host level of your web server.

        My point was that there are definitely ways to solve this issue without resorting to a new TLD with $25/year fees. Otherwise we better start .print for printing pages and .jsfree for javascript-free pages. It's wholly the wrong approach and the fact that it's being done indicates it's broken.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by jfengel ( 409917 )
          Agreed there. The idea that foo.mobi should be owned by anybody except the owner of foo.com is ludicrous and clearly a money-grab. I strongly advise against buying anything except .com domains in the US.

          The other reason I've seen for .mobi is that a handheld device could automatically add it, saving keystrokes, which are more difficult on a tiny device. Well, web browsers regularly route "example" to www.example.com, and could just as easily turn "example" into "mobi.example.com" (and fall back to www.examp

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by fbjon ( 692006 )
            and could just as easily turn "example" into "mobi.example.com"
            How would you go about making a standard out of this hack? A standard that, say, all phones could use?

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by jfengel ( 409917 )
              Is it any more of a hack than assuming that "google" typed into a cell phone/wireless PDA means "google.mobi"? Even with the imprimatur of having a TLD, I'm not aware of any standard that endorses the shortcut.

              It's a convenience of the device, and if enough device manufacturers make it policy, it becomes convention. Convention is usually more important than standard, but de facto conventions can become de jure standards with an RFP.

              Beyond that, it's really not necessary for all phones to apply to the stan

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by PW2 ( 410411 )
          On thing I've tried is to make a function in ASP or PHP called IsPDA() which I believe takes a look at the server variable "HTTP_USER_AGENT" and if "palm" or "pocketpc" (or something like that) is present then it will return true.

          The template for my simple website [remote-control.net] then will remove left/right columns, show photo thumbnails in 1 column instead of 4 columns, etc. if IsPDA() returns true.

          I forget to test with a PDA, so I make no guarantees as to whether or not it still works perfectly, but the idea does w
      • I've just redesigned a corporate site to use CSS-only positioning, and was able to make it render properly on every browser in reasonably current use. It uses lots of Javascripts, but they all degrade elegantly. In theory, the entire structure could be changed arbitrarily using only a different stylesheet.

        If I were creating a stylesheet for mobile devices, I'd tell certain classes of images (the ones I knew would be large) not to render, (perhaps you could instruct it to use the ALT text instead,) use sm

    • How many people use it? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by DG ( 989 )
      My wife got me a Palm LifeDrive for our 10th wedding anniversary. Comes with 4Gb of native storage, and built-in Bluetooth and Wi-Fi.

      With a wireless access point in the house, this had actually proven to be pretty useful - the web in the palm of your hand!

      But the number of sites that provide any sort of mobile-device support is minescule. Slashdot itself renders in Blazer (the Palm browser) as a single 1 character wide column of text.

      If Slashdot can't do it, do you expect the rest of the world to get it rig
      • If Slashdot can't do it, do you expect the rest of the world to get it right?

        Yes. Slashcode is a horrible mess of Perl that never created standards-compliant HTML. After a lot of refactoring, it now generates valid HTML 4.01 Strict [w3.org], but this took a lot of work by the developers. Getting it to work nicely on other devices is probably the next step.


      • 1.) http://slashdot.org/palm [slashdot.org]

        2.) My phone renders slashdot-minus-CSS just fine. It's a T-Mobile Sidekick II. Without the CSS, the page is perfectly readable.

        (to get an idea of what it looks like, in firefox, "View" - "Page Style" - No Style)

        ~X

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by coreyb ( 125522 )
        I use blazer on a TX - try http://slashdot.org/palm/ [slashdot.org] (didn't see a link to it anywhere, but when a site looks horrible in blazer, I usually give that type of url a shot - works ocassionaly), wide page mode, or fast mode (CSS off).
        Netfront is also good, but caused stability problems for me.

    • There is a possible benefit in seperating main from mobile content, mostly for reasons of size/bandwidth which cannot be achieved with CSS.

      Having said that, I would say a standard subdomain would be a more sensible way - and lower cost - way to achieve this. Multiple TLDs just confuse users: "Is it ubuntu.org or ubuntu.com..." hence the reason most companies just buy them all up.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by suv4x4 ( 956391 )
      This approach of splitting mobile content from "normal" content is the wrong way to do this CSS has media types and a media type of "handheld" FOR EXACTLY THIS PURPOSE!.... A properly design site should take advantage of the already existing method for handling this very situation. The website should change to me, not the other way around.

      I agree the site should adapt to you. But if you honesly believe the same content can seamlessly be presented on completely different media only via the use of a different
    • You might not like it but its just a fact. The mobile market place is the next big rush.

      .mobi didn't happen because of evil registrars, it happened because the marketplace wanted it.

      I work for a company thats in technology, so we watch trends pretty closely. Mobile space isn't even on our map yet but we attend CTIA and look for opportunities very carefully. It would probably be irresponsible for us not to. People want mobile technology and at some point, at least for more casual things, laptops don't cu

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by MasterC ( 70492 )

        You might not like it but its just a fact. The mobile market place is the next big rush.

        Not trying to be rude, but you're just now figuring this out? :)

        .mobi didn't happen because of evil registrars, it happened because the marketplace wanted it.

        The market "wants it" because the current market can't handle it. Suppose for a second that websites used CSS properly and could handle user-agents correctly: would the .mobi TLD be necessary?

        On a completely side point: I can't imagine that an emerging market for

  • anyone know of any registrars already seeting .mobi? i wouldnt mind picking one up, just for fun.

  • Sounds a bit lame... (Score:3, Funny)

    by grub ( 11606 ) <slashdot@grub.net> on Tuesday September 26, 2006 @09:57AM (#16198587) Homepage Journal

    goatse.mobi just doesn't roll off the tongue.

  • Got mine (Score:1, Redundant)

    by tygerstripes ( 832644 )
    Bagsy "dick.mobi" /coat
  • .mobi sounds so, well, you know...

  • long TLDs (Score:3, Interesting)

    by hey ( 83763 ) on Tuesday September 26, 2006 @10:00AM (#16198633) Journal
    At least the useless TLD are four letters or more.
    Makes it easy for program to classify them.

  • Already done! (Score:2, Informative)

    by Square Snow Man ( 985909 )
    Most companies already have a mobile friendly version of there website. For example: http://www.google.com/pda [google.com]

  • Longer URL (Score:2, Insightful)

    by rad_chad ( 611206 )
    So, in order to use this TLD, which is designed for mobile devices with generally akward methods of input...you have to type a longer URL than normal. If this is supposed to be useful why not: "website.m". Google has it right with http://m.gmail.com/ [gmail.com]
  • So, they've called something that's intended to be small and is presently of dubious usefulness ".mobi"? Wouldn't that make ".mobi" and moby antonyms?
  • *.hates.mobi
  • Does any country have a TLD .le?
    I mean, come on, isn't it obvious? .mobi.le?
  • Is anyone going to force adherence to the standards? If company X registers a domain and serves content that cannot be displayed, will the domain be withdrawn? No. So what's the point of a dedicated domain?

    Lets just be sensible and stick to subdomains as mentioned by an earlier poster, mobi.bbc.co.uk makes far more sense then bbc.mobi, but then of course, no-one makes tens of millions in the land-grab.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by thorkyl ( 739500 )
      Is anyone going to force adherence to the standards? If company X registers a domain and serves content that cannot be displayed, will the domain be withdrawn? No. So what's the point of a dedicated domain?

      Money...

      Lets just be sensible and stick to subdomains as mentioned by an earlier poster, mobi.bbc.co.uk makes far more sense then bbc.mobi, but then of course, no-one makes tens of millions in the land-grab.

      Self answered

  • Separation of style and content (Score:3, Insightful)

    by zoeblade ( 600058 ) on Tuesday September 26, 2006 @10:20AM (#16198875) Homepage
    This goes against the whole point of separating style and content - the exact same web page, using a handful of CSS files that are each tailored to suit a particular medium, should look equally good on a computer monitor, a TV set, a projector or a mobile phone. Hopefully as people use percentages and ems more and pixels less, we should see a trend towards this ideal.

    Saying "this site is for mobile phones, that one is for desktop computers," completely ignores all of this, telling people to go to a site designed for just their medium.
    • I think a lot of the idea of .mobi is to create a set of sites *guaranteed* to work with phones. I'm sure plenty of sites on there will only be for phones, not for normal PCs, and have content/functionality commensurate with that aim.

      The fact that they'll police all sites on there to ensure compliance is a fantastic idea, I reckon.

      • The fact that they'll police all sites on there to ensure compliance is a fantastic idea, I reckon.

        Yeah, and I'd also be all in favour of a database linking to sites (DMOZ style) that comply with HTML standards enough to work with pretty much any browser. Far too many sites don't work properly in text mode, or using speech synthesis, which is a real shame for anyone visually impaired. Hell, far too many sites don't work properly on an Apple Mac or anything else that's not Windows running Internet Explor

  • I just tried http://nic.mobi/ [nic.mobi] on a regular browser and it loaded. Now if I try something like http://google.com/ [google.com] on my mobile I get a WML page.

    So, is it going to be the norm for every site to give a different page depending on the type of device used to access it. If so, this TLD clearly brings nothing new.

    I would much rather type a well known URL I use at home and hope it gives me page that works with my mobile instead. Not change the TLD to mobi and just *hope* it is owned by the same company.

  • A whole entire TLD just for "services" aimed to "mobile" users.
    Next step will be the ".car" for 4 wheels enthusiast services and ".c" for C language programmers.
    In the end we'll have almost all dictionary ( .dict? ) words as TLDs!

  • At what point is this just catering to companies who are running an otherwise closed network? It goes against what I understand to be the fundamental rule of the Internet: networks should at least attempt to play nice with each other. I understand there is a business perspective here, but I can't say I'm too interested in developing (free) content for mobile devices that will just end up enhancing the value of those closed cellular networks -- especially on my own dime. Maybe the cellular providers should
  • Because of squatters, .mobi is gonna be a self fulfilling prophecy: everyone buys their .mobi in fear someone else might do so and blackmail them.

    I've plenty of com/net domains I use for my sites, and since I'm not quite that rich, I refuse to waste thousands of dollars on a nonsense preemptive strike.

    Mobi will fail anyway.
  • I think the heading is wrong. It says that .mobi websites are available to register. Shouldn't that have been .mobi domains?

  • Opera mini (Score:2, Interesting)

    by edxwelch ( 600979 )
    In my experience so-called "special" web sites made for mobile phones work much worse than the normal ones and besides that Opera mini can display just about any site perfectly (the only difference from viewing on a PC is that you will have to do a lot more paging)
  • Well let's just hope that this proves to be just as huge a success as .biz has been. Now, if you'll excuse me I'll just go and investigate the smoke coming out of my sarcasm detector.
  • The .mobi link Zonk provided is actually just a registar's cover page. The real (and much more web standards-based) .mobi web site is at http://pc.mtld.mobi/ [mtld.mobi].

    • The .mobi link Zonk provided is actually just a registar's cover page. The real (and much more web standards-based) .mobi web site is at http://pc.mtld.mobi/ [mtld.mobi] [mtld.mobi].

      Actually the 'correct' site (see a post I made above) is http://mtld.mobi/ [mtld.mobi]. If you're using a PC it will take you to pc.mtld.mobi ... but if you should go straight to that page using a mobile it doesn't perform any checks and gives you a 150K JPG to digest. Navigating to mtld.mobi should provide the optimal page.

  • I guess .mob was already in [lafamiglia.mob] use [cosanostra.mob].
  • One of the biggest pains in using my cellphone (RAZR) for web surfing is the entry of URLs and addresses via the number keypad. To enter an "M", you press 6. To enter an "O", you press 6 3 times in a row. To enter an M and then an O, you press 6, you pause for a while, then press 666. If I was EVER going to pick a domain name for a phone based site, I would make sure it had no two letters in a row that lived on the same number key.
  • which has been refused a long time ago [icann.org] but would still be very useful in today's context.
  • sucks.mobi/does/
  • They allow a Russian guy to register wunderground.mobi , here comes the dotcom cybersquatting again.

    Check http://pc.mtld.mobi/whois/index.php [mtld.mobi] , put wunderground.mobi to search box and see the result yourself. While on it, check slashdot.mobi , it is taken too.

    Weather Underground is one of the oldest sites on web (they started with Telnet/Gopher!) and they have a dedicated mobile (WAP) version at

    http://m.wunderground.com/ [wunderground.com]

    So, a Russian guy can get that wunderground.mobi yes? What guarantees there won't be som

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