dotMobi

A unique use for a .mobi site: 2free.mobi

London has had its troubles lately. I'm not talking about the financial crisis, but about a shockingly high increase in teen-on-teen murders.

To help combat it, a woman in the UK named Jennifer Hughes has set up a special .mobi site -- 2free.mobi -- to encourage teenagers to find creative solutions to violence. That covers both literally creative, like making films, as well as creating dialogue among teenagers.

The choice of a .mobi was deliberate; the idea was to ensure that teens can access the site via the one piece of equipment they have with them at all times: a mobile phone.

You may have seen the site covered on TV by Guy Smith, the BBC Home Affairs Correspondent, on the UK's 10 O' Clock News on October 28. If not, you can read about it on the BBC News PC web site or on the web site of the Mirror.

Oh, and speaking of the BBC, did you know that there's a http://BBCRadio.mobi, so you can stream BBC Radio on your mobile phone?

ilovemobileweb Awards Awarded

In case you haven't heard elsewhere ... late this past week, the dotMobi Advisory Group (MAG) announced the winners of the first ilovemobileweb Awards. There were more than 50 submissions for consideration in six categories: Social Networking, Information, Entertainment, Corporate, Commerce and Retail, and Travel.

What really pleased me was that very big companies like the Associated Press, Zagat and News International were winners along with smaller operations like Idea Earth, Vizisoft and mobiguides. It's great to see that a good idea -- and a good execution -- still can make a splash.

Although I have only listed the wining sites below, all the sites which were submitted were very good -- not a clunker in the bunch. So a great big, and very sincere, congratulations to everyone who participated in the first ilovemobileweb Awards.

Here's the list of the first ilovemobileweb Award winners:

General Compliance Update

dotMobi rolled out its Premium Name Compliance program at the beginning of September. We've been encouraged by the feedback we've received; many domain holders have reached out to us asking for advice and information on available resources. We fully recognize that this is a learning process for many, and it's our desire to work with registrants and encourage them to develop their mobile sites to the best of their ability.

In a September blog post, we stressed the difference between Premium Name Compliance and General Compliance. As a reminder, General Compliance refers to the basic content formatting requirements -- no frames, use of XHTML and no "www" -- as set out in the dotMobi Style Guide and incorporated into every domain registration agreement with .mobi registrars. When an end-user chooses to activate a .mobi domain name and put up content -- which is not in itself a requirement -- that content, whether it's a parking page or a content-rich site, should adhere to the dotMobi Style Guide.