Sharing the Love: Introducing the ilovemobileweb Awards
A while back, you may remember us talking about the ilovemobileweb initiative.
As the next step of proving how much we love mobile web, we're giving awards to the best of the best .mobi sites as part of the Informa Telecoms & Media / dotMobi Advisory Group's Mobile Web Europe 2008 event.
The rules for the ilovemobileweb awards are simple and, best of all, entry is free. You just need to enter your submission at mobilewebevent.com/awards before Friday, August 22, 2008. You can submit in one of six categories:
- Corporate
- Entertainment
- Information
- Travel
- Commerce and Retail
- Social Networking
There will be a winner in each category, and each winner receives:
- a delegate pass to one of the Informa Mobile Web events in 2009
- dotMobi Advisory Group Observer Membership (or credit against current year's membership if already a member)
- a "next-gen" smartphone from one of dotMobi's investor companies
- international media exposure for you and your winning site
Full details are at mobilewebevent.com/awards ... and I am looking forward to seeing your entries.
Paul Walsch claims that .mobi said that it's wrong to use .com for mobile site development. I cant imagine Mtld having said that and I cant find it anywhere. So is Paul Walsch sucking things out of his thumb?
Here's the article where he releases his pent up frustration.
Mobile awards not independent, says mobile web standards expert
05.08.2008
A founding sponsor of the W3C MWI (Worldwide Web Consortium Mobile Web Initiative), Paul Walsh, has lashed out at what he says are unfair and narrow practices in relation to the upcoming industry event Mobile Web Europe 2008 where sole sponsor dotMobi is concerned.
Walsh said the Dublin-based dotMobi, which manages the .mobi domain, is not only sponsoring the event but also on the judging panel, “and mandates the use of its guidelines and domain name as part of the entry criterion.
“When hosting industry awards, one of the most important aspects is to ensure they are open, inclusive, transparent, fair and above all, independent.
“By independent I mean free from influence by outside contributors such as sponsors and media partners. Naturally, headline sponsors should have a say in a number of areas, but it’s important to restrict their influence,” said Walsh.
Walsh said he would not have an issue with any of this, including the fact that submissions to the awards require the site to be built on the .mobi domain, if the event name reflected this but the awards are “being pitched as independent.”
On the other hand, dotMobi does quite clearly and transparently outline that the Mobile Web Europe Awards 2008 is the official event of the dotMobi Advisory Group with dotMobi also clearly listed as sponsor.
It also has other media partners and official bodies such as the GSA and FMCA listed endorsing the awards themselves and dotMobi does not run the awards itself.
While dotMobi has every right to recommend usage of the .mobi domain, the inventor of the worldwide web, Tim Berners-Lee, has oft stated that any domain, be it .com, .net etc, should be acceptable from desktop, mobile handset or otherwise.
Walsh claimed dotMobi does not just recommend using its domain but actually states it is wrong to use .com when developing web sites that work optimally on mobile phones.
“My advice to dotMobi? It should sell what it thinks are the benefits of buying a .mobi domain, just like we see with .org, .tv or any other domain should. It should simply focus on the advantages.”
By Marie Boran
http://www.siliconrepublic.com
Posted by: fred | 05 August 2008 at 11:46 AM
Ps. .Mobi works just fine on from a desktop.
Posted by: fred | 05 August 2008 at 11:48 AM
Fred -
This article was an adaptation of two blog posts that Mr. Walsh wrote last week (and which dotMobi responded to).
What he left out of his blog -- and what isn't in the story above -- is that the comments were part of a presentation on our "Ten Mistakes" eBook (available at httsp://mobithinking.com/tenmistakes).
The slide he refers is literally as follows:
---------
MISTAKE 4: using a .com name for a .mobi experience
.mobi says “mobile-friendly site for what you’re doing right now”
differentiate your mobile site from your .com
show that you’ve thought about the mobile experience
think about the whole brand
what’s to the right of the “dot” says a lot about what’s to the left
---------
The point we're making -- as you can see in the whole eBook -- is that developers and marketers need to bring a different thought process to creating a good mobile site than the thought process of creating a good PC site.
And are we saying it's "wrong" to use a .com for a mobile site? No, but we don't think it's a best practice for conveying to an end-user that a site is designed for mobile consumption.
As I've recently noted, there are more than 80,000,000 .com / .net .org sites and less than .5% of those are mobile friendly. I think a consumer can certainly benefit from knowing that a site will work on a mobile phone before visiting it ... and that is what the .mobi domain does for consumers.
-- Vance
Posted by: Vance Hedderel, Director of PR & Communications, dotMobi | 05 August 2008 at 03:27 PM
Thanks Vance,
Nice to know the complete picture.
Regards
Fred
Posted by: Fred | 05 August 2008 at 11:24 PM