ZDNet UK


Skip to Main Content

ZDNet.co.uk - Winner of Best Business Website 2007
  1. Home
  2. News
  3. Blogs
  4. Reviews
  5. Prices
  6. Resources
  7. Community
  8. My ZDNet

 

ZDNet UK RSS Feeds


IT Jobs

Online business Toolkit

DotMobi offers 650 cities free mobile domains

David Meyer ZDNet.co.uk

Published: 10 Jul 2007 12:38 BST

  • Email
  • Trackback
  • Clip Link
  • Print friendly
  • Post Comment

London is one of 650 cities around the world that has been offered a free .mobi domain by the organisation behind the mobile-friendly domain name extension drive.

DotMobi (also known as mTLD), a consortium backed by operators, content providers and handset manufacturers, announced on Monday that the previously reserved names would be made available at no charge to the cities. The domains are expected to be used primarily by cities' tourism departments, and those taking up the offer will have to agree to put content onto the site and maintain it themselves.

"Eventually we'll be doing this with countries too," said Vance Hedderel, dotMobi's communications director, on Tuesday. "We are trying different things at different times, and, with city names, it seemed to be the right time to do it. Now there's been enough awareness of .mobi that we think people will know what to do with these names."

At the time of writing, the London mayor's office had not yet confirmed to ZDNet.co.uk whether or not it would be taking up dotMobi's offer of the free "London.mobi" domain.

Competition

Blogger at Large competition
Blogger at Large

The deadline's fast approaching on our contest to win a trip to San Francisco and a Centrino Pro laptop to blog from the Intel Developer Forum. To enter, just start posting entries to our On the Road group blog.

Read more +

The .mobi top level domain (TLD) is intended to be used only for websites which adhere to a strict set of small-screen usability standards, such as having no frames or pop-ups. It has been available now for over a year and almost 600,000 domains have been registered, but the scheme has attracted criticism from analysts who believe that, rather than having an extra domain extension for mobile-optimised websites, sites should be coded well enough to recognise what device they are being displayed on — Google and Amazon being examples of such sites. Speaking to ZDNet.co.uk, Hedderel acknowledged those criticisms, saying: "That is what should happen but, unfortunately, it isn't what happens."

"Coding shouldn't be the be all and end all," said Hedderel. "I understand why people seem to be vehement about it, but they are not necessarily looking at it from a consumer point of view. I think where .mobi comes into its own is not simply replicating information that's on a [PC-friendly website]. The idea of .mobi is the context of mobility. We use a very simple example: if I'm on Pepsi.com, I'm probably looking for a whole host of different things [such as corporate information]. If I'm on Pepsi.mobi, I may be looking for the location of a place where I can buy the new Pepsi product."

Asked whether .mobi was therefore intended to be a more successful WAP — the much derided yet long-standing standard for simple information pages designed for the mobile phone — Hedderel agreed. "Where WAP failed, .mobi is trying… a sensible approach using standards we know every phone manufacturer is writing to," he said. "Operators and manufacturers all agree this is a good idea. Handsets can obviously handle it much better at this point in history."

Hedderel also suggested that .mobi would help drive the use of mobile data among tourists, as .mobi pages tend to be smaller than those designed for the desktop, making them easier and quicker to load on the small screen. Asked whether high data roaming charges would be a hindrance to tourists' adoption of mobile web surfing, he even claimed that an increase in usage due to lightweight .mobi sites — such as those which might be built by cities — could result in a "drop in rates" over time.

A list of the cities that have been offered free domains can be found here.

  • Email
  • Trackback
  • Clip Link
  • Print friendly Print with Dell

Did you find this article useful?
6 out of 6 people found this useful


Full Talkback thread

0 comments


Company/Topic Alerts

Create a new alert from the list below:








Related Jobs

Web Developer Needed. Bromley. PHP / My SQL / HTML / CSS 30-40K

The successful candidate must be technically minded with a keen eye for detail when translating design concepts into functional websites. My client ...

Senior PHP Developer - Nottingham - PHP, MySQL,Flash - circa 30,000

You will also require experience in both developing websites and web applications. They currently have 26 employees and work with a number of high ...

VB.NET (ASP.NET) Developer Required - URGENTLY !!!

VB.NET/ASP.NET Developer required by our market-leading new media client to assist with the on-going development of a number of new and existing ...

Sentry Posts Blog

Mobile Security Expert: Your Camera Ph...

Mobile Security Expert: Your Camera Phone Got Hacked Author: Eric Everson, Founder MyMobiSafe.com Have you ever heard someone say “I’d like to be a fly on the wall in that room.”?... More

Post a comment

Skype - The Roach Motel

Here is an interesting article from The National Business Review, pointing out once again that you can never delete a Skype account. Never. Period. This is something I am familiar... More

Post a comment

The vPhone: Why Visa Should Go Mobile

The vPhone: Why Visa Should Go Mobile Author: Eric Everson, Founder MyMobiSafe.com With all of the success of Apple’s iPhone, there is a growing case to support a company like Visa... More

Post a comment

Featured Talkback

I wonder, who needs .asia domain? I cannot imagine, what would be useful for Microsoft.asia? Toyota.asia? Then let's register .europe (if .eu is too short). Or perhaps Microsoft.southamerica, Dell.australiaandnewzealand, Coca-Cola.africa... Sound funny? Then why not just use the global and country domains? Or perhaps it is time to drop the domains at all?

By: LadyRoot

Read full story:
Businesses advised to register .asia domains