dotMobi

In case you're wondering ...

Vance P. Hedderel — 2009-10-29T22:30:07+00:00

... the sunrise launch of the .mobi domain / keyword bundle in China went off as planned earlier today. Everything is going as it should be and looks like it will continue to run smoothly.

A big congratulations to all the parties involved in making .mobi a part of the Chinese mobile landscape.

Just a week to go ...

Vance P. Hedderel — 2009-10-20T22:12:32+01:00

Here at dotMobi, we've been so busy preparing for the availability of our new Chinese IDN / keywords bundle next week that I didn't realize how quiet we've been on our blog.

The dotMobi / Huarui bundle of keywords and Chinese-language .mobi domains will be available beginning at 4 a.m. UTC on October 29, 2009, and will finish at 4 a.m. UTC on November 28, 2009. Immediately after on November 28, general registration will commence, and the keyword / Chinese-language .mobi domain bundle will be available at standard prices.

As you might guess, doing business in China is a unique experience, which is why this has absorbed much of the dotMobi team's time. But one very big plus we have by being an Ireland-based company is help from Enterprise Ireland, who work around the world to develop Irish businesses internationally. Their help was extremely valuable in preparing to bring our first China-specific service to market.

To kick-off the launch activities, there was a formal signing ceremony in Beijing on October 13, 2009. Below is a photo from the event. In front on the left is Yang Zemin, President of the China Academy of Telecommunications Research (CATR), and on the right is Trey Harvin, CEO of dotMobi. Behind them, left to right, are Ambassador Declan Kelleher, Ireland’s Ambassador to the People's Republic of China, Minister Billy Kelleher T. D., and Hugh Cooney, Chairman of Enterprise Ireland.

Mobile Media World 09 Live Streaming Webcast

Vance P. Hedderel — 2009-09-11T06:30:38+01:00

By the way ... if you can't make it to Toronto for the Mobile Innovation Week events starting on September 12, the organizers of the Mobile Media World event have gotten pretty innovative themselves.

They're making all of the panels and speeches available to anyone, anywhere via live Web broadcasts. So even if your travel budget's been slashed, you can still get what are sure to be some valuable insights from the many speakers who'll present there.

When you register, you can use the use the code "dotMobi" and get 10% off the broadcast costs.

Starting September 12, it's Mobile Innovation Week

Vance P. Hedderel — 2009-09-09T05:10:54+01:00

If you've never been, you won't necessarily believe me but Toronto is a cool town.

How cool?

Well, starting September 12, Toronto is dedicating a solid week to growing knowledge about mobility ... that's how cool.

Mobile Innovation Week will have workshops, conferences, symposia and networking receptions –- all focused on helping to driving new mobile business opportunities. And there are more "must hear" people who'll be there than at practically any other event this year, including:

Mike Wehrs - President & CEO, Mobile Marketing Association
Jonathan Carrington - Product Development Manager, CBC Digital
Upinder Saini - VP New Products & Content Development, Rogers Wireless
Paul Burns - VP Digital, Canwest Broadcasting
Aditya Khurjekar - Director New Business Development, Verizon Wireless
Bryan Segal - VP, comScore
Nauby Jacob - VP User Experience & Content, Bell Mobility
Brad Cressman - Director Sales & Marketing, Sympatico Mobile
Robin Dua - President, Enstream - Zoompass
Kent Johnson - Director AOL Advertising - Mobile, AOL

In short, highly recommended.

And thanks to our friends who are running the Mobile Media World event that's running on September 14-15, we're able to get you 10% off admission. Just use "dotMobi" as the discount code when signing up.

Talking about mobile Web and domains in Central and Eastern Europe

Francesco Cetraro — 2009-09-08T16:23:45+01:00

After completing a very successful visit to Russia with dotMobi's Pinky Brand last week, I am currently attending the Second International conference for ccTLD registries and registrars of CIS, Central and Eastern Europe, an interesting event organized by the Russian Registry in the beautiful town of Bled, Slovenia.

The conference is well attended by many Registry operators and Registrars from these areas that not always able to attend ICANN meetings, and is thus a very good occasion to get a pulse of the domain market and the development of the internet in these countries.

Central and Eastern Europe and the countries of the CIS are characterized by very high penetration of mobile phones. With a mobile-to-PC ratio in many cases close to 10 to 1, they are without doubt interesting markets for mobile Web solutions.

I was very happy to be invited to discuss the mobile Web and the great opportunities for growth and new useful services that it provides for businesses and end-users. I shared dotMobi´s experience in supporting open standards and accessibility, and talked about the importance of building mobile sites that are easy for users to find and that address the specific, unique needs of users on the go.

For users, the .mobi domain plays a pivotal role in building confidence by making made-for-mobile content easy to identify and access. And thanks to tools like Instant Mobilizer, the .mobi domain complements an existing desktop presence. I also talked about our unique ability to work collaboratively with ccTLDs.

After my presentation, I received several inquiries about Instant Mobilizer and DeviceAtlas -- a clear sign that the market needs simple, effective solutions to make mobile Web publishing more accessible. Many Registrars here understand that mobile Web will have a very strong role in their future growth, and dotMobi is working actively to establish long-term partnerships to support these efforts.

Instant Mobilizer: Double Shortlisted!

Vance P. Hedderel — 2009-09-07T02:00:40+01:00

A lot of times, the real fun for the year starts after the sunny summer vacations ... because September is the kick off of awards season! As proof, Instant Mobilizer has just been shortlisted in two different award competitions.

This past year, a lot of engineering work went into the launch of Instant Mobilizer, and we've seen that the efforts are paying off in use of the service as well as in recognition of the technical excellence of the service.

On 10 September, we find out if Instant Mobilizer will be named as "Best Technology Innovation" in Visiongain’s Mobile Content Awards 2009. The others on the Best Technology Innovation shortlist are RIM (Blackberry), Novarra, Wapple, and Acision.

A little later in the season, on 25 November, dotMobi will discover whether or not we've won "Best New Service" at Total Telecom's World Communication Awards 2009. For this one, we’re in competition with Banglalink, BT, TeliaSonera International and Zain.

Fingers crossed. Wish us luck!

Addendum on 10 September 2009: Just found out that dotMobi's Instant Mobilizer took the silver prize in the "Best Technology Innovation" category at Visiongain’s Mobile Content Awards 2009.

dotMobi Goes to Russia

Vance P. Hedderel — 2009-09-03T16:16:09+01:00

On 2 September 2009, Pinky Brand and Francesco Cetraro from dotMobi went to Russia to participate in a press conference hosted by Russia's largest registrar of domain names, RU-Center.

The primary reason for the conference was to introduce the availability of Instant Mobilizer to Russia via RU-Center.

If your Russian is strong, you can read this article about the event, as well as see a video recording of the complete event (it's 70 minutes long.) The machine translation of the article is located here (via Google Translate).

By the way, based on that Google translation, it looks like Russian words for "Internet domain" also means "blast zone." I can't help but think there's symbolism in that.

DeviceAtlas and mobiReady Updates

Vance P. Hedderel — 2009-09-01T01:33:50+01:00

While the .mobi domain is the centerpiece of everything we do as a company, we offer many other services and tools to help drive the growth of mobile content. (Because without good mobile content, there's not much for the .mobi domain to do.) So to that end, on Thursday, August 27, dotMobi launched significant enhancements to both our DeviceAtlas and mobiReady product sites.

DeviceAtlas
For Device Atlas -- our market-leading, award-winning device detection database, we:

Created DeviceAtlas "use cases" to help developers and content providers generate ideas on different ways to use DeviceAtlas
Added a case study / testimonials section
Developed a new, dedicated product page with an easy-to follow matrix, including more details on our Enterprise offering
Redesigned the back-end for more responsive pages.

mobiReady
Users can now post markup directly, which means users whose sites are still under development and/or which are not on a publicly accessible server can use mobiReady. And that means more sites can launch pre-tested to work with the widest possible variety of handsets,

Other new features include an updated interface, improved user-friendliness of mobiReady's site testing capability and the addition of HTTP response headers along with test results.

Even if you're only interested in one aspect of what dotMobi does, I hope seeing the full range of what we do helps shed a little light on the burgeoning -- but still young -- mobile Web.

player23.mobi TV Ad

Vance P. Hedderel — 2009-08-13T23:52:04+01:00

http://player23.mobi

On Saturday, July 25, dotMobi's Dara Ingoldsby was watching the Tri Nation 2009 New Zealand vs. South Africa rugby match on Sky Sports. And what shows up on the pitch but this ad for player23.mobi ...

MarksAndSpencer.mobi Now Live

Vance P. Hedderel — 2009-08-13T23:42:15+01:00

Marks and Spencer Orange Juice Bottle

Marks and Spencer is one of the UK’s leading retailers, with more than 21 million people visiting their stores each week.

And now, many of those millions will see "http://marksandspencer.mobi" on their packaging, as in the "live" example here of an empty orange juice bottle that's part of their "Food to Go" line, which is why the URL here reads, "http://marksandspencer.mobi/ftg".

(And yes, I know it's hard to read in this shot, but I promise that's what it says.)