
Although the experience of browsing the web on a mobile phone has improved greatly over the last
couple of days five years or so, there are still sites out there that refuse to load or function as smoothly as they would on a personal computer. A possible solution to this problem comes in the form of yesterday's launch of
dotMobi: or if you prefer it cold and impersonal, the new .mobi top level domain name. Yeah, so you're thinking "how's another domain name gonna improve things?" Well, unlike other domain names, dotMobi has a relatively stringent style guide for anyone wishing to register a .mobi domain: mandatory rules for registrants include the requirement that the site can be loaded without typing "www." (a pain on a numerical keypad), and a complete ban on cellphone-browser busting frames. Time will tell whether or not the bar of entry has been set high enough, as all of the tips in the "Highly Recommended" section of the style guide are optional: for example, registrants don't even have to test their website on a mobile device. A giant leap for cellular mankind this is not, but it's certainly a step in the right direction.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Steve @ Sep 27th 2006 11:43AM
Posted about this (not bragging, I swear) a couple days ago, and had an interesting comment.
".mobi is a real pain in the ass to type on a mobile device as well.
on my cell phone I need to type 6(pause)66622444 to get ‘mobi’ ‘com is 222666(pause)6
if they were serious, they would have made it .m (6) or .wap (927)"
apeguero @ Sep 27th 2006 12:02PM
Maybe they'll also update these cell phones, like the Cingular 2125, where they'll have the .mobi as an option. For example, to get to Engadget.com all I have to do is type engadget on pocket IE and then select it from the options given. But to get to engadget.mobi I'll have to type the whole thing out.
Shannon J Hager @ Sep 27th 2006 1:53PM
The best step in the right direction is the one that Engadget took: http://www.engadget.com/2006/09/26/engadget-done-right-for-your-cellphone/
Nobody needs to remember or type or guess extra TLDs, just use the normal ones. If the domain owner cares, it will work. If they don't care, they certainly wouldn't bother making a new version of the site at .mobi