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BlackBerryToday > News > dotMobi Set to Auction Premium Domain Names dotMobi Set to Auction Premium Domain Names
By James Alan Miller
DotMobi has been allocating top level names for the new .mobi domain (or Web address) created just for mobile devices since May, when a sunrise registration period began for trademark holders. Last month, it started to open up the process to the public, before officially beginning general registration only a week ago. The list above, a compilation of what the organization has determined are commonly used words and phrases, has supposedly been set aside for equitable allocation, as an alternative to what has been until now a first come, first serve process. DotMobi said it would distribute batches of additional premium names through 2008. "Given the strong demand for .mobi domain names, bidding at this initial auction will most likely be exciting," asserted dotMobi CEO Neil Edwards in a statement. "We anticipate that the winning bidders of these Premium Name sites will develop relevant and useful content for mobile Internet consumers." According to dotMobi, 13,000 trademark company's signed up during the Sunrise period and over 150,000 .mobi domains have been registered since the general registration period began a week ago. Since .mobi is supposed to signify a site has been formatted for cell phones and other mobile devices—to ensure consistency and make its goal of a more mobile Web a reality—dotMobi has established best practices, style sheets, standards and tools. The dotMobi Switch On! Guide for Web Development contains rules, for example, and is based on open standards so that sites can be viewed and navigated by any wireless devices, the organization says. Pushed by the likes of Microsoft, Nokia, Vodafone and Samsung Electronics, .mobi won approval from the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) in July 2005. Nokia first proposed a domain extension for mobile devices back in 2000, but ICANN rejected it because of the lack of technical details in the application. Nokia persevered, however, garnering industry support, before re-submitting it as .mobi in March 2004. .mobi has met with some criticism, including from the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the group's director and Web inventor. They would prefer a system where a single site (.com) is built and optimized pages for mobile devices are sent only when a cell phone, for example, accesses that site. Whereas .mobi works by creating two Internets in their opinion: one for mobile devices (.mobi) and one for desktops (.com). Related Links:
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