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.

Say hello to world.mobi

You may remember -- exactly one month ago -- that Caroline Greer mentioned on this blog we'd have exciting news about our portfolio of reserved "cityname.mobi" domains. Well, it's here: say hello to world.mobi, a business partnership between UK-based web-design firm Fortune Cookie and dotMobi.

This partnership lets us bring together the travel-industry expertise of Fortune Cookie and the mobility expertise of dotMobi to create more than 600 sites, utilizing dotMobi's "cityname.mobi" domains for tourists around the world. Fortune Cookie is a heavy hitter in the travel industry with huge marketing reach and impressive resources -- and we are very excited to partner with them in this venture.

world.mobi is an extension of the City Names Application Process. Government entities are still entitled to apply for their city names but, in the absence of any application, world.mobi will provide the relevant city site. This is a major content roll-out, and one that should seal the deal in showing the value of a cityname.mobi site.

The partnership was discussed during part of a World Travel Awards event happening currently in Berlin, but the formal announcement and outreach is planned for a bit later in the spring because the partnership is still finalizing some of the work around world.mobi. In the meantime, Internet Travel News just published an article that will give you a bit more information about the JV and its plans.

If you have an existing or planned cityname.mobi site and would like to discuss becoming part of the world.mobi network of cityname.mobi sites in some way, you can contact world.mobi's general manager, David Ryder, via email.

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.

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.

Weather is #1 in USA

M:Metrics recently released a study that showed “weather” as the top genre of news and information accessed by mobile subscribers in the United States. And that was before the good news dotMobi issued this week about The Weather Channel becoming the first brand to secure rights to a premium .mobi domain via an RFP process. I’m sure that mobile users are now going to be visiting weather.mobi on a regular basis. The site is already live, looks terrific and works exactly as it should ... it’s a pleasure to use. Soon, it will be advertised on TWC’s PC-based site, so be on the lookout.

Here is a photo of (left) Louis Gump, vice president of mobile at The Weather Channel Interactive (TWCi), and Neil Edwards, CEO of dotMobi, when the agreement was finalized.

By the way, another interesting part of that M:Metrics report is that sports information –- especially football / soccer -– is the number one choice of Europeans. Otherwise, the US and Europe are more or less on a par with what they visit; for example, “news” is in the number two spot in both the United States and Europe. As the mobile internet breaks outside of the walled gardens, I suspect you’ll be seeing more variety among the most visited mobile information. By the way, if you’re European, be sure to visit espn.mobi or kicker.mobi. The former is the well-known sports brand while the latter is a German-language site dedicated exclusively to football.

And before the questions come rolling in ... the other names that dotMobi made available under this inaugural process –- ringtones, news and sports –- will not be awarded right now. Although proposals were submitted for these domains, the focus on how they would be developed for content was not as strong as these names deserve. Like all of the domains on the dotMobi Premium Names list, they will be made available once again through an equitable distribution process. But in the meantime, be sure to bookmark weather.mobi on your mobiles.

- Vance Hedderel, Dir. of PR & Communications

Does the iPhone keep dotMobi awake at night?

We've had a number of questions (and seen plenty of commentary) regarding the recent launch of the iPhone and how it might affect us and the mobile web in general

I posted some of initial ideas on this very blog back in January (it feels like an age ago!) - and, despite the fact that I personally don't yet own one :-), I pretty much feel that our original assessment holds up.

In a nutshell: the iPhone changes the way that tastemakers think about their online existence. Interacting with the web, clearly, is no longer a solitary, sedentary and constrained activity.

Now I've personally believed this for a while, so arguably it's no big deal :-)  - the long-term evolution of the web to become a largely mobile (and, by the way, subtly different) medium is inevitable.

With the iPhone, however, this vision starts to become reality for a broad population of users. Not because it's an especially great phone (I believe it is, although not without its flaws). Not because it's doing anything other handsets elsewhere haven't done before, or better. And not even because there's some significance in the way the handset's usage is packaged with sole carriers. (Phew! Coming to Europe soon...)

No, the iPhone is significant simply because mobile access to the web is now, well, cool. No longer are you branded a technogeek or crackberry addict when you pull out your mobile in public and start Twittering or Google/Readering. No. I'm getting down with the pinchy-fingered mobi generation. Could the mobile web really become as de riguer as white headphones?

Maybe. Probably. And if so, how can that be a bad thing for any of us?

(Certainly not a case of "iWhatever"!)

But what does that mean for the .mobi top-level domain extension? Does it mean the proposition is doomed? Why would I ever go to a .mobi site when my shiny new browser does a really admirable job with most (but oh, not all) web pages?

Well of course not. Only if you might naively think that .mobi is only about catering for the constraints of a particular class of browsers. And only if you think that the user's mobile context is not something interesting enough to warrant special attention.

(If you do think that, you've obviously not yet become a mobile web user! Go get yourself an iPhone!)

"Mobile Content for the Mobile Context" is what a .mobi domain is all about. And whilst the iPhone browser removes many of the constraints of today's average mobile browser, there's no Jobsian magic that can suddenly turn the world's web corpus into something contextually compelling by default for mobile-users-at-large.

You've probably heard me give examples of genres of web sites whose constitution would ideally change based on the mobile context. Some are glib perhaps. But think about it. If you've ever accessed a traditional (I'll say sedentary) web site on a mobile device, you'll know exactly what I mean: you nearly always come away just a little dissatisfied: wishing that the search engine or the sites that you used had somehow, let's say, cut to the chase.

"I'm mobile, goddamnit! I don't have time for your sedentary context! When I asked about coffee, I didn't mean I want to read research papers about the growth of Coffea Canephora plants in Brazil! I meant I need caffeine! Now! So where's the nearest cafe?!"

For the seasoned mobile web user, that's the sort of frustration that will immediately sound grimly familiar. Surfing about on regular web pages with my phone is a neat trick, but rarely meets my expectations in terms of a high-demand user. (At least not without a fair degree of persistence and patience on my part, which I always feel is merely my professional obligation to have to tolerate!)

Yes, I can't wait to rotate my iPhone about, and wipe my sweaty fingers around on the screen to zoom, pan and scroll. But that's playing. Pretty soon, the novelty is going to wear off. And I'm going to be left looking for sites and services that are so exciting that I'm compelled to use my expensive new toy to access them, rather than waiting a few hours until I am sedentary again ;-)

So the main reason that I'm excited about the iPhone is that these frustrations and challenges are going to be exposed to a far larger, trend-driven propulation. And with the size, motivation and influence of the Apple cult (both on the user and developer sides of the equation), the iPhone's greatest legacy may well be the catalysm of the world's site owners and developers doing something about it.

With the mobile web's historical challenges of cost, speed, browser (and fashion!) removed from the equation, I hope we'll now see an explosion of interesting, innovative, mobile-centric services burgeoning. The "iPhone mobile web aftermarket" you might even call it.

Will this be a movement that understands the value of the .mobi domain? A way of letting site owners state their mobile credentials? A way of letting the user indicate their mobile context by default? A way of large brands providing competive and differentiating services?

Well, of course we hope so. Certainly nothing about the iPhone breaks that logic.

Ultimately, the TLD's context-centric proposition is as strong as ever - and with spectacular phones like the iPhone continuing the mobile web's unstoppable aggrandizement, it seems to me that these are all winds blowing in the same direction.

I've never been more excited about the future.

How A Tragedy Teaches Us How Dependent We Are On Mobile Communication

Many of you may know that dotMobi's US office is based near Washington DC in Virginia. Exactly a week ago, the residents of Virginia, and indeed the nation, were horrified to learn that a gunman had massacred 32 students and teachers on a rampage.  Our hearts go out to the families touched by the tragedy.

It’s fair to say that the "six degrees of separation" rule applies.  In other words, search long enough and someone here knows someone else who has a son or a daughter at Virginia Tech and was frantically trying to reach them, most often via their mobile phone.  It was no different here.

Many of us who are old enough remember having to find a public payphone (and having enough change), or having to wait until you found a land-line to make the call.  Thankfully times have changed and in the events of emergencies such as these, many were grateful to be able to make contact with their loved ones.

I know it is easy to play "Monday morning quarter back" and I am not intending to do that here.  But I have to believe that there are lessons learned in this tragedy for all of us.  I cannot help but wonder about the extent our schools, government, and public facilities take advantage of the mobile technology to deliver information.

An easy way to do this is to capture mobile phone numbers as key contact data for emergencies, and disseminate text messages as alerts and updates.  In fact, George Washington University has such a system as part of their upgraded alert plan, as recently discussed by the GWU president Joel Trachtenberg on NPR.

Further: What if the information was targeted, say, using the capabilities of the phone (such as those with built-in GPS) to alert only those affected and give them a specific information without causing unnecessary alarm and panic amongst the larger population?

Yes, I know there are a lot of issues to solve still (privacy, data protection, new phone technology), but think back 10 years ago.  A lot of what is possible today was but a dream.

All I am proposing is that we learn from tragedies such as this to understand how best to utilize the resources we already have and plan for how they should be used.

First Mobile Webbys Nominees Announced

Some good news to share: last week, the Webby Awards announced the nominees for their first mobile Webby awards. Three .mobi sites made the final list: Travelosa.mobi, Dada.mobi and Otto.mobi; that represents 20% of the nominees. And that means two of the first three mobile Webby awards could go to .mobi sites! (Two of the sites are in the same category).

In the interest of full disclosure, dotMobi is the Founding Mobile Sponsor of the 11th annual Webby Awards. Sponsorship aside, dotMobi had no influence in the nomination criteria or on which sites were chosen for the competition. The International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences is a scrupulously impartial organization, which makes the nomination of these sites a happy surprise for us.

Two other .mobi sites -- Dir.mobi and eIndia.mobi -- were named as "official honorees" (That translates to "honorable mention" but it's still good to be recognized, I say).

All of this is more remarkable when you consider that developers have been working on the .mobi domain for only six months. Looking at it that way, it's impressive to see five .mobi sites recognized as examples of good mobile design against sites that have been around much longer.

You can vote for your favorite .mobi nominees in the Webbys' People's Voice competition until April 27. In fact, you should vote right now.

.xxx vs. .mobi? An Informed View

I do not know how many of you recall the commercial by "Syms", a discount clothing store in the late 80's and 90's.  The ad was stark, with clearly un-media savvy execs s-l-o-w-l-y declaring that "At Syms, an educated consumer... is our best customer."  Although the ad was amateurish, there was a lot of wisdom in those words.

Which is why I take the time again and again to set the record straight.  To have an informed market, and therefore customers, one must presume that the sources of news and  information must be at a minimum factual and accurate.  This means undertaking a minimum level of due diligence and frankly homework. 

Case in point:

In an article reporting the demise of the .xxx domain, the writer accusses ICANN for practicing a bit of hypocrisy (emphasis mine):

"Compare the rejection of .xxx to the approval of .mobi. ...Several ICANN directors who voted to reject .xxx did so because they believed there were "credible scenarios" in which ICANN would be forced to answer for content regulation under .xxx, which is not its mission. Its mission is the technical stability of the DNS.  These same directors had no such concerns when unanimously approving .mobi, which proposed to regulate the content of a mobiles-only top-level domain. The .mobi domain was approved despite convincing arguments that it "broke" the spirit of the DNS by using top-level domains as protocol denominators."

Where do we say, or have we ever said, that we regulate the "content" of a mobile site?  The fact is that we enforce three mandatory rules (Is it in xhtml? Is it a second-level? Does it have frames?), all of which are automated and can be machine-tested without anyone ever knowing the content of the site.  To compare .mobi and .xxx using this criteria is ill-informed, and a disservice to the user.

The writer goes on further to draw a distinction between .xxx and .mobi in terms of the "sponsored community".  Here is an excerpt:

ICM's community would have consisted of pornographers. A pretty distinct group of folk. The .mobi community by contrast was "restricted" to everybody on the planet who owns a mobile phone -- a higher percentage of the population of Earth than those who own a PC. The gated community of .mobi ergo has a potentially broader audience than .com.

Ok - where to begin? First lets lay out the hierarchy: Sponsor, community, end users. The sponsor part is easy. The community we serve is any individual or business who would like to extend their reach into the mobile channel and do so cost-effectively. So we provide the domain name as well as a whole host of tools and resources -- free, BTW, and open to anyone regardless of whether they use .mobi or not.  We do this so that the end-users, anyone with a mobile phone, can easily and cost-effectively use the Internet.  This fits in nicely with ICANN's own definition.

There is confusion here between the definition of sponsors, the community it benefits (porno industry) ,and end users. I will not get into the merits of .xxx or ICANN's decision (later post perhaps) but the key point here is:  How does .mobi compare in any way with .xxx?

I urge any writer, blogger, pundit: Please... do a bit of fact checking.  Our website has a whole host of information on our policies, progress, initiatives etc.  Without such preliminary and much needed due diligence, opinions parade as facts, facts become blurred and submerged, and we end up with an uninformed public and, by definition, an uninformed market.

BTW - Did you notice our newest investor?

Last week at CTIA the CEO and President of Visa, John Philip Coghlan delivered the keynote.  Stating that the concept of turning the cell phone into a credit or debit card, is "inevitable", he announced Visa's investment in dotMobi.  Visa now joins thirteen other companies as the latest investor in dotMobi. 

If you glance at the names, Visa stands out as being the only one not traditionally associated with the mobile space.   And its a welcome addition! Why? it simply underlines that dotmobi is not just relevant to a select group of "mobile" companies, but rather to a larger base of companies, who see mobile as a the next iteration of the Internet and not simply as a technology.

At the same time that the announcement was made, the dotmobi team was split across the Atlantic. Part of our team, including our CTO and our development team were attending CTIA, while I attended ICANN in Lisbon along with the rest of the sales and operations team.  (That is, where we finally were able to watch the announcement on YouTube.)  Though we have been somewhat understated about this announcement and have simply posted the release on our site, we strongly believe this is huge news. 

As evidenced by the reaction of one of our channel partners at ICANN upon hearing the news: "With these level of (investors) companies ... mobile commerce is bound to happen".  We certainly hope so, and now we are well positioned thanks to our latest investor.