NEWS The mobile community has launched the dot-mobi suffix for the growing number of websites designed to be accessed on a phone or PDA.
The Mobile Top Level Domain Initiative - a collective of industry heavyweights including the likes of The GSM Association, Microsoft, Nokia, Samsung, T-Mobile and Vodafone - has created a new joint venture to run the administration of the domain under policies set by Icann.
The venture, known as the mTLD Top Level Domain, will look after the registry of addresses for the dot-mobi domain during the next 10 years with domain name registrations expected to begin in the first half of 2006.
Following a 90-day sunrise period, where trademark owners will be allowed to register domain names relating to their brands, URLs will be distributed on a first come, first served basis.
As well as using the dot-mobi suffix to alert mobile users to websites that are optimised for viewing on handhelds, the mTLD Initiative is hoping to get web developers to tweak sites for phone users by offering style guides and best practice notes for building the dot-mobi websites.
Comments
There is 1 comment. Join the discussion
1. Paul Koan
Another step in making the "Top" in Top Level Domain redundent.
Clearly the top of the DNS tree should be the least specialised, not the most specialised.
If you buy a domain name, you are buying namespace in which you can do what you like. If you want a mobile plaform based version of your site, then add to your namespace a relevent subdomain.
mobi.zencore.com
If the namespace is going to extend at the other end too, then domain names should be sold as such, where you can add "subdomains" to the beginning and end of your domain, and DNS altered to handle it.
Which is clearly stupid. So instead what we have is a sunrise position where companies can scramble to get their trademarks for a new domain that serves to confuse the community, open more potential for phishing, and put more money in the coffers of domain name registrars.
Right... so if you want the website, type www.microsoft.com, but if you want the mobile website, type microsoft.mobi. If you want the ftp site, type ftp.microsoft.com.
Very consistent. Congratulations.