dotMobi

The Mobile Internet ... Now in Book Form!

As you can probably guess, everyone at dotMobi loves the mobile web. And when we're not building new sites and services for the mobile web, we're often writing about it. Sometimes on this blog. Sometimes at mobiThinking.com or dev.mobi. And sometimes in a brand new book called Mobile Internet for Dummies.

dotMobi's VP of Technology, James Pearce, is a co-author of this new Dummies book, which is designed to help consumers best use their mobile phones to access made-for-mobile Internet content and services.

 

James is part of a top-notch author team that includes John Levine (author of Internet for Dummies), Jostein Algroy (industry adviser / journalist based out of Toronto), Daniel Appelquist (a mobile web thought-leader at Vodafone and Mobile Monday London co-founder) and Michael O'Farrell (Chair of the dotMobi Advisory Group).

The book covers a variety of subjects, including text messaging, email, blogging, games, music, pictures, shopping, banking and building mobile web sites. The book also includes tips on finding the best deals on phones and carrier network plans for mobile Internet use. The authors have started a blog at http://mifd.mobi to help users find more services in the mobile web space.

 

Mobile Internet for Dummies is in bookstores now and is also available for online ordering from Amazon or Barnes & Noble (USA) or Indigo/Chapters (Canada) or directly from the publisher.

autism.mobi

Today, dotMobi announced the launch of autism.mobi, the result of a project lead by Steve Edelson, Director of the Autism Research Institute in San Diego, in collaboration with dotMobi.

autism.mobi was a Premium Name and one which we were delighted to release as part of a closed Request for Proposals process.

The content which is being made available to end users ticks all the right boxes: it is practical, informative and helpful and the ARI, the oldest autism research institute in the world, has demonstrated that it understands the needs of today's market by adapting its information and making it accessible on mobile devices. It already does a fantastic job of disseminating information and research findings across various mediums, and it is now targeting the huge number of mobile phone users with features such as its Autism Treatment Evaluation Checklist, which is designed to evaluate cognitive, communication, sensory, and social skills of individuals on the autism spectrum.

In other Premium Name news, dotMobi recently issued the Premium Name why.mobi via RFP to online forum Mobility.mobi who have since developed the domain as a educational site. dotMobi is also currently working with some other RFP candidates and hopes to announce some additional site launches shortly.

Horn Tooting

As you’ve heard many a time, "It’s an honor just to be nominated."

And while that’s true, winning is nice, too.

In that spirit, I wanted to take a minute and congratulation our friends at ZAGAT Survey, who -- earlier in June -- won the Best Listings & Updates site of the year for zagat.mobi in the Webby Awards' People's Voice Awards.

We’ve been talking up the zagat.mobi site since it launched because it’s an excellent example of adapting web-based content to a mobile user’s needs and ensuring those users can easily locate the content with a .mobi domain.

While the other .mobi nominated entries didn’t win, it’s still great that they were recognized. The folks at The International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences -- the people behind the Webbys –- are stringent judges, so it is indeed an honor just to be nominated.

But they’re not the only winners this month ...

No Mistaking It

You've been hearing us talk about "dotMobi Thinking" for months now. The ideas behind good mobile web sites are simple but the execution isn't always so easy. Many of us are still thinking of mobile web sites as small versions of their PC-counterparts. That's simply the wrong approach. We've reviewed this and other pitfalls in mobile web marketing to produce a new, free eBook called Ten Mistakes in Mobile Web Marketing.

In addition to highlighting some traps to avoid, we've shared great examples of best site practices from some of the mobile web's biggest brands including Bank of America, Smirnoff, Virgin Atlantic, BMW and Jaguar. Keep your eyes out for more from us on that on mobiThinking.com because we're just getting started. You can stay up to date by joining our mobiThinking email list.

A new era of easy mobilization is coming

In case you haven't seen the press release, today dotMobi announced that it has acquired the IP assets of Mowser, which is a content adaptation engine created by two Bay Area mobile pioneers, Russell Beattie and Mike Rowehl.

Everyone in dotMobi is very excited because having access to this technology will give us ways to let owners of existing PC-based sites quickly and easily utilize those existing assets to create .mobi-compliant sites designed specifically for the needs of mobile web users.

One question I've already heard is, "But won't having a tool that can convert a PC site to a mobile one mean there's no need for a .mobi domain?"

Hertz doesn't think so. Hilton doesn't think so. Amtrak doesn't think so. 1-800-Flowers doesn't think so. And I certainly don't think so.

Those brands (among many others) use similar tools to create .mobi web sites that address the needs of on-the-go users. They've thought about the mobile context and want to assure their users that their sites will work on a mobile phone and that they won't encounter a frustrating desktop PC site (poorly) transferred to a phone.

That's one reason I think that bringing user-controlled content adaptation to "the masses" will be a significant accelerator for .mobi domain usage.

Another reason is that I don’t think businesses will want to hide their mobile sites. Even with all the cool technology we have, it can take a bit of effort to think through and create a great mobile site.

The Nielsen top ten web mobile sites use multiple URL conventions, but .mobi is the one most frequently used to ensure that their sites can be found because brand.mobi is the most easily guessable convention.

So welcome to a new age of easy mobilization ... and more .mobi domains than ever.

How small businesses are thinking really big

In case you didn't get the memo, April 21-25 is National Small Business Week in the U.S., sponsored by the Small Business Association. And while it's true that big brands with big budgets are most visibly promoting how they're using "dotMobi thinking," increasingly big numbers of small businesses are showing leadership in bringing innovative ideas to the mobile web. 

As I heard one panelist describe it at ad:tech last week, the mobile Internet is the "connective tissue" of our technology-driven and busy lives -- keeping us in tune with with the vital functions we need to thrive both personally and professionally. It's no wonder it's forecasted half the world's mobile phone subscribers will be browsing the web in just three years (Informa 2007) ... and 85% of iPhone users already do so. Now is the time for any business owner or marketer to seize the day.

The best mobile web sites acknowledge that we want utility -- usefulness -- out of our mobile web experiences that bring convenience to how we manage our day-to-day lives. Small conveniences immediately translate to customer satisfaction, and that means increased loyalty, and deeper & richer customer relationships. We all know it's far more efficient to keep a customer than to acquire a new one. And in this economic climate, retention needs to be foremost in any marketer's mind -- especially for small businesses who need to be even more judicious with their marketing spend.

And many small businesses are using "dotmobi thinking" to deliver satisfaction to their customers by providing utility - in simple and small ways that just make sense. For example, Heritage Texas Properties in Houston offers a mobile web site for out-and-about prospective property buyers. Accessing their site from your mobile device, you can view Houston listings, get contact information for any of their offices or agents, review local city information like news, weather and dining, and even calculate your estimated mortgage using their mobile-friendly calculator. When someone is in a car and viewing property, these kinds of simple features and useful applications really deliver.

Restaurants are also making small steps towards delivering great experiences. Nottingham's Restaurant & Tavern in popular ski resort Big Bear Lake, California uses their mobile web site to offer hours of operation, the menu, directions from local areas, a calendar of upcoming musical events and a quick link to call them; after all, a phone makes calls, too.  Nottingham's has obviously thought about what their customers want to access while in a boat on the lake, on the chair lift or strolling through town. The content is straightforward, but it's sure to result in lasting relationships with customers.

Both sites also use some best practices from both a technical and marketing perspective. First, they each score a perfect 5 out of 5 on http://ready.mobi for mobile performance, simply meaning the sites will work well on most phones. Second, they each advertise their respective.mobi sites on their desktop web sites! After all, how are your customers going to know you have a mobile web site if you don't tell them? It's important to differentiate yourself as a small business and show you provide this added convenience.

If you have a small business and are ready to establish a mobile web site, I have five tips to get you started:

What a difference a year makes ...

This year in Barcelona, the Mobile World Congress -- formerly known as 3GSM -- proved to be an interesting place for seeing the acceptance and growth of the .mobi domain. So many people sought us out to ask about developing their sites, advertising their sites or to debate us about different mobile devices.

A year ago, people who stopped by asked us “What’s a .mobi?” or “Why would I want to go mobile?” or -- as happened several times -- “Can I access the web on my phone? How?”

What brought the most people to us this year was the announcement of DeviceAtlas.

Dublin scores with .mobi ...

The planned launch of Dublin.mobi took place last week in time for the first Six Nations Rugby match hosted by the city. This has been the result of several months work with Dublin Tourism who will now be actively promoting the site both locally and abroad. The Rubgy weekends are a high point in Dublin's sporting (and social!) calendar and thousands of tourists pouring into the city will now be able to find their way around Dublin using some of the cool features on the site. Hopefully this was of some consolation to the unlucky Italians!

Check out the recently launched Frankfurt.mobi as well, and look out for some more city.mobi site launches in the coming weeks (including one next week at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona). And we have some exciting news regarding the City Names Process up our sleeves. Stay tuned!

Improved site building goodness: site.mobi goes 3.0

If you've purchased .mobi domains but haven't gotten around to putting content on them, I think you'll be interested in the just-released verison 3.0 of site.mobi.

site.mobi 3.0 has a batch of new features that will make building your sites even easier and will help you monetize those sites once they're live. Among the most interesting new features are Google AdSense and AdMob for mobile advertising, PayPal and Google Checkout for mobile commerce and mobile RSS for content syndication.

site.mobi also now has SMS and email invitations so you can tell your clients and customers, friends and family, that your .mobi site is live. And be sure to let us know about it, too, for consideration in the dotMobi site showcase.

Android and the Open Handset Alliance

Unless you've been down a mine all week, you'll have seen that Google, one of our investors, announced a new mobile software platform this week. It's called Android and the announcement also revealed the creation of the Open Handset Alliance.

Since we at dotMobi also constitute a mobile consortium of sorts, we thought it would be worthwhile talking about it a little. Certainly there are many facets to making the mobile web experience the success it deserves to be, and so the OHA is very welcome to the party.

The most amazing thing about this announcement was that a 34-company deal was kept so secret. But to be honest, after months of speculation, the rest wasn’t as surprising. The project has even kept the Android name, that of company that Google acquired back in 2005 to start the project.

To dotMobi followers, the big question is how well Android will help the growth and acceptance of the mobile web. Certainly it is set, like the iPhone, to increase the industry buzz and interest around the making the internet a truly mobile medium.

It will be important to see how it will be welcomed by the developers and owners of content, and of course, whether it is set to be a platform that also hits mainstream consumer consciousness, as the iPhone has done.

Whilst OHA plays the "Open" card very strongly, the addition of any new platform into the mobile space creates waves of new diversity, which are not necessarily a good thing in the short term. Nothing becomes de-facto overnight.

Of course, in the longer term, if Android becomes a dominant platform, then diversity diminishes and user experience will increase. (Think of the operating system homogeneity in the PC world, and the relative ease that brings to developers). But that would have to come at the expense of other, dominant market players - many of whom are notably absent from the OHA, and to be fair already have fairly open platforms of their own.

While Google has been able to position itself as a leader in the Internet space – despite what many originally thought was coming to that party a bit too late – there's too much at stake in the mobile world for ubiquity and uniformity to happen overnight, or even smoothly. This dynamic of device diversity is a very particular curse for the mobile space. And, incidentally, why we've been working so hard on mitigating it with our device database initiatives.

So the announcement was interesting and positive. We await further progress with great excitement.