dotMobi

Succeed in South Africa

Another bite of LA Candy

Here's the back cover of Lauren Conrad's bestseller LA Candy; note the QR code and the .mobi address ...

drugs.mobi

An interesting .mobi site that's recently launched is drugs.mobi. While simple in concept -- a consumer-level version (plus a "professionals" version) of the type of information historically covered by the venerable Physicians' Desk Reference -- the multiple ways the comprehensive site can be used is what makes it a site of note.

As we all know, doctors do their best to make sure you understand what you're prescribed and why -- but it certainly is good to have a resource to refresh your memory (especially a resource written for the lay person).

Second, given the sad world of celebrity deaths that are drug related (e.g., Anna Nicole Smith, Heath Ledger, Michael Jackson), having a resource that can explain what the effects are of the drugs in question can help put the tragedies into perspective. In fact, the drugs.mobi PC "sister" site -- drugs.com -- reported a 20,900% increase in searches for the prescription medication Demerol after the death of Michael Jackson.

And for emergency purposes, there is a pill identification wizard. If you ever been with a child who thought she was swallowing candy or with an acquaintance who is suddenly woozy after taking medication, you can easily imagine how useful it is to be able to figure out what a medication is, even if you only have a pill and not a bottle and / or label.

Also, the site scores 4/5 on the mobiReady.com report and it works on my lower-end Sony Ericsson TM506 as well as it does on my Blackberry 8800.

I can't ask more from a mobile site than utility, speed and relevant content.

We're Facebook Customized ...

As I mentioned in a comment a couple of weeks ago, dotMobi has an active Facebook page but -- at the time -- we did not have a custom domain. Well, after a lot of back 'n' forth ('n' verifications), I'm happy to report that you can now visit our Facebook page directly and become a fan at http://www.facebook.com/dotMobi.

You can also follow our tweets on Twitter @dotMobiOfficial.

If you're a LinkedIn member, you can also join our ongoing discussions in the dotMobi group.

If there are other social networking sites you'd like to see us at, please let us know in the comments section.

J.C. Penney Goes .mobi

Just to share ... today, I ran across this story, "JCPenney Launches Schooled in Style Back-to-School Marketing Campaign," and was very pleased to see that the campaign is based around a teen-centric site at jcp.mobi.

The site scores 3/5 on the mobiReady.com report but it loads OK on my lower-end Sony Ericsson (and looks great on my iPhone.) 

While it's part of a larger integrated campaign (and jcp.com/teen will be the "hub" of the campaign), it's great that mobile was not overlooked (and that the ad agencies involved chose jcp.mobi as the obvious mobile complement to jcp.com).

In Las Vegas ...

In Las Vegas, a .mobi fan spotted this car -- branded for Millenia's .mobi site; Millenia is a Las Vegas fine art gallery.

Nice mention in Inc.

I just saw the following dotMobi mention in the June 2009 issue of Inc. magazine, "dotMobi answers the call for simplicity with its Instant Mobilizer service, which automatically reformats your site for mobile phones. You will need a special .mobi domain name (get one from Go Daddy for $8 a year), but dotMobi takes care of the rest for free. At the top of each page, your mobile site will list both your phone number (for one-click dialing) and address (with a link to Google's directions page)."

The article is called, "How to Put Your Website on Cell-Phone Screens," and you can see the article in full on the Inc. Web site.