Do We Really Need a .mobi?

[jmiller]

Corporate giants by the dozen teamed up in a Justice League sort of way to procure a new Internet domain specifically for mobile phone users. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) will provide the registry service for the new .mobi domain, even though nobody’s sure if we really need it.

But how do you say no to Microsoft, Nokia, the GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) Association, Vodafone Group, Ericsson, Samsung, Telefonica Moviles, and T-Mobile, especially when they’re all standing in front of you in their giant wireless tights?

To be launched early in 2006, the .mobi domain will be under the charge of mTLD Top Level Domain Ltd., of Dublin Ireland, who will release style guides, policies, and sample code for domain buyers.

Those orchestrating the domain’s creation said that the Internet is underused by mobile phone owners and that more needs to be done to encourage mobile Internet use. According to the GSM Association, only 12 to 14 percent of the 1.8 billion mobile users have ever accessed the Web from their phones.

(You know, I was just thinking we needed more people web-surfing while they drive. Good idea.)

By creating a domain that is mobile friendly (designed exclusively for mobile phone use), the companies hope that the number of businesses using the special domain and the number of people surfing the Internet with their phone will increase.

Currently, not all Internet destinations are coded correctly to be accessed by mobile phones. The new domain is aimed at making more of the web viewable.

"The issue we are trying to solve is that the average mobile user has mobile Internet access but doesn't know it or doesn't want to try it," said Rick Fant, a member of the board of mTLD.

"When you see .mobi at the end of a service, you know it's designed to work with a mobile device," he said.

Not everyone agrees that a whole new domain created specifically for mobile phones is the answer.

"The answer isn't having another extension; the answer is having more applications and more capabilities for supporting mobile devices," Gartner Group Research Vice President Phillip Redman told TechNewsWorld.

"They're assuming that anything that says mobi in it will work on your phone," he maintained, "which isn't necessarily the case because there are different browsers, different form factors of phone and different ways of interfacing."

Redman went on to predict that the .mobi domain would have little impact on the mobile Internet world.

[cspelts]

You know, if the companies that end up buying www.com.mobi, www.net.mobi, and www.org.mobi were to offer redirects for sale, I'd sign up.

That way I could brand my regular site, knowing that if someone is out with their cell phone and needs some info from my site, they could just plug in the regular URL and add the .mobi extension, and get the mobile version of my site. That would be worth paying for.

[Faglork]

Originally Posted by cspelts

That way I could brand my regular site, knowing that if someone is out with their cell phone and needs some info from my site, they could just plug in the regular URL and add the .mobi extension, and get the mobile version of my site. That would be worth paying for.

And why not simply make your "normal" website mobile-friendly? Then there would be no need at all to visit a different URL.


Alex

[ctabuk]

What a plug!! Thanks Alex Nice One lol

[luismorais]

Man, I am getting sick and tired of every other home appliance getting a browser stuck in it and asking compliance from my part.

Mobile surfing sucks, the only thing I would like to use it for is to access dictionary.com and to download the crazy frog.

I ask, why would they not create a central, like a proxy server in which every page you access from your mobile or toaster is given the .mobi treatment and transformed into a godblessed .mobi compliant page, it wouldn't take much, just make the pages accessible and they will help the algorithm clean the html or simply create a monster one to clean up everything. (should I have patented this idea before, guys?)

For now I would just be happy if my 'Three' phone got calls whilst under a roof...

[Faglork]

Sorry for being unclear - but there is NO extra effort involved.

What you see on the cellphone above is
http://www.counciltenantsmortgages.co.uk
- the very same site you visit with your browser, nothing different, not even an extra CSS.

Just plain valid XHTML.

That was my point: In most cases, you don't need extra proxies, redirects to .mobi or whatever ...

Alex

[luismorais]

Originally Posted by faglork

Sorry for being unclear - but there is NO extra effort involved.

Hi Alex,

I was not talking about the site you sent but about the guidelines the big guys want to push with this .mobi at:

To be launched early in 2006, the .mobi domain will be under the charge of mTLD Top Level Domain Ltd., of Dublin Ireland, who will release style guides, policies, and sample code for domain buyers.

Surely they will base the whole thing on XHTML and CSS and it is implied that .mobi will only be accessed by mobiles. What I am complaining about is the fact that instead of ganging up and creating some kind of network service that did a content conversion automatically, they go the all the way back to reinvent the wheel and dump another unnecessary domain name in the market.

I need to check at the W3C if they have any working draft for mobile technologies that the .mobi will probably use. Perhaps they will use wml or like the site you showed us, XHTML.

[Faglork]

Full ACK.

.mobi is as superfluous as a TLD can get.

With ENUM coming on strong, this is totally unnecessary. And it won't help to solve the domain name problem either. This will produce just more work for lawyers ... sometimes I think, the whole ICANN must be operated by lawyers who just think about how to get more work.

Alex

[cspelts]

Originally Posted by faglork

And why not simply make your "normal" website mobile-friendly? Then there would be no need at all to visit a different URL.

If anything I want to make my "normal" sites even richer and more complex - not simpler so they'll work on a cell phone.

I have been designing for the lowest common denominator for nine years - because I firmly believe that a site should work for all who choose to visit it - but I want to move forward - not backward. Most of my sites are database driven, so I could easily do a cell phone version, but that will never be the only version.

[Faglork]

Originally Posted by cspelts

If anything I want to make my "normal" sites even richer and more complex - not simpler so they'll work on a cell phone.

I beg to differ - I do not see a contradiction in "complexity" and "accessibility". Why do you think you have to make your site "simpler" in order to make it work on a cell phone?

As long as you have proper serialization - which you need to conform to WAI guidelines anyway - and do all your formatting with CSS, where is the problem? You can use CSS of any grade of complexity.

If you want to use multimedia, again, it is good WAI practice to offer alternative content which will work well on mobile devices.

My point is that a modern, accessible, validated XHTML website does not need much tweaking to make its content accessible by mobile devices. About the only "problem" I encountered was that you better put your "decorative" graphics into the background (so that they do not get transmitted) - but that's where they belong anyway.

That pretty much is it ... I do not see that this makes your site "simpler". And it is no "backward move" either. Depending on the site's content, mobile accessibility may even be one of its killer features.

I do not know how mobile devices catch on in US, but here in Germany this is a steady growing market. Opening your site to a new market can hardly be considered as "backwards move". Especially, when you don't need to change much.

However, if "even richer and more complex" means to you that you want to write complicated code - like, say, an old-style "nested tables" design, I agree. But that is not what you want to do, or do you?

Complexity never shows in the code. It shows in the concept.

Alex