In Japan (by far the most successful market for mobile internet) most adverts now feature a 2-d bar code (“QR-Code”). This encodes the URL, so all you have to do is take a photo of it with your camera phone and you’re on the website. The URL can be fairly long, and the TLD used doesn’t matter. As for enforced standards, you’d hope any service that cares about their mobile presence would do some serious compatibility testing anyway.

I was quite pleased to see my N95 came with an application for reading these codes, but it’s not much use until it becomes a standard feature on other phones. I’m surprised nobody is really pushing QR-Codes here – they make casual mobile internet use much less hassle.

John

Going on what you are saying… ” In short, .mobi is designed to indicate a trustworthy mobile experience. (Not the only experience, of course, but a trustworthy one.)”

What has a .mobi extension got to do with being trustworthy? I think that’s not a valid argument for added expense to the developer (by that I mean company).

I just don’t see the point in having yet another layer of complication for the user to remember. Everyone remembers .Com but people struggle with .Net and .Org.
I think that the mobile web should be inclusive and not put barriers in front of people just for the sake of it.

With processes like WURFL it’s really unnecessary for a .mobi extension at all.

I honestly believe that this is a money making exercise for those who run it and not a lot else and what frustrates me is that in the end the man on the street knows nothing about .mobi

Regards

Mark

Then why should people bother to shell out for a .mobi domain?

Because “Unlike m.site.com or site.com/m, etc., enforceable standards ensure a .mobi site works on a mobile and represents a brand as it wants to be seen.”?

Enforceable standards… like those enforced on flowers.mobi?

And by the way, it turns out that it’s the same number of keypresses to enter m.domain.com as it is to enter domain.mobi.

As for “$850,000 raised, well done to them for not a lot of work done …” I think the users of http://ready.mobi, http://site.mobi and http://dev.mobi would disagree. These resources are made free to the mobile developer community … and we’ve been able to do so by using auction proceeds like these.

$850,000 raised, well done to them for not a lot of work done….

“I’d-rather-use-m.mobi”

See: m.jaiku, m.youtube, m.facebook

*sigh*