Hotel Giant ‘Westin’ launches mobile site : ‘westin.mobi’

Huge hotel chain Westin Hotels and Resorts has launched a mobile-optimized Web site to let consumers make reservations via their handsets, anytime, anywhere.

Westin Mobile gives guests access to key features of Westin’s PC site, which supports making and managing reservations. Users can either search westin.mobi or visit Westin’s PC site, which will automatically redirect to the mobile-optimized version.

“Westin’s mobile site offers all the same features and functionality as Westin.com, while providing customers, especially business travelers, with the additional value of on-the-go and instant reservation access,” said Jason Taylor, vice president of mobile products at Usablenet, New York.

more from article: mobilemarketer.com/cms/news/

Bing Go Mobile - Bing.mobi

Bing.com the search engine giant ranked as the 20th most popular site in the world, has gone mobile with their search engine. The bing mobile site can be found at Bing.mobi

_________________________________________________________________________

_________________________________________________________________________

The website is indexed and standalone on Google and other search engines: www.google.co.uk/bing.mobi

When searching on bing.mobi on the pc, the url strings returned are formatted with bing.mobi but don’t know if this is mirrored in some way from .com site. More needs to be looked into.

When searching ‘bing mobile’ on google, the m.bing.com result is shown though, i would need to check my smartphone to see if the .mobi is returned in serps.

The  ready score for Bing.mobi is a fantastic 4/5 though and i also checked on my smartphone too: http://ready.mobi/results

_________________________________________________________________________

_________________________________________________________________________

This is great news and a step forward from a lowly redirect, however it won’t be big news in the mobile and .mobi world until promotion by microsoft occurs at some point. The good thing is that it is indeed possible. Microsoft have a number of .mobi websites and do promote them, they are backers of the tld financially also. Best thing I can say is ‘watch this space’. We’re always the first to bring you the .mobi news

Jets.com bought for $375,000

Today Jets.com has been reported as being sold by Sedo.com

The sale is listed on the homepage of their site in reported sales section. See screenshot below:

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

There is no indication who the buyer is yet as the whois is still showing ’sedo transfer service’. The domain was registered in 1997 and whilst the sale price is higher than i would have expected, it fits nicely into an example i often give non-domainers into why domains can be worth so much.

Particularly, ‘if’ this domain is going to be developed and used for the sale of private jets, then how many sales will it need to recoup the initial outlay? 1? 2?

You get my drift, targetted traffic on a TOP end product like this, however small the traffic , could result in big sales profits. Developed this domain should do extremely well, also there is the subdomain possibilities……………….

Lear.Jets.com  , Private.Jets.com , Business.Jets.com etc.

I’m surprised this name has been left to rot as a lazy sedo parked page for all these years though, especially a sedo one, as they seem to be amongst the ugliest, and they have the worst payouts in my own personal experience.

Sedo seem to be breaking all sorts of records this year though, in the number and size of their sales, especially during a recession.

The domain industry is alive and well, about time regular domainers woke up to this.

___________________________________________________________________

Image courtesy of: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Raytheon.hawker.800.arp.750pix.jpg

Mobile Banking is the future and the here and now

Mobile banking is set to be the most widely used banking channel in the UK, according to a survey of 1,000 people.

It looks likely to achieve the fastest rate of mass-market penetration in history, even outpacing banking channels like credit cards, ATMs and online banking, according to the research from the Future Foundation and mobile money specialist Monitise.

The survey found that 11% of 35 to 44-year-olds use their mobile phones to manage their money. Those who have already adopted mobile banking are also using it more frequently than before, with nearly half (49%) of all existing customers claiming to have used the service more extensively over the last year.

Seventy per cent of consumers said online or mobile phone banking would help them run their budgets more efficiently. Two-thirds (64%) agreed (or strongly agreed) that it was important to be able to manage their money 24 hours a day, seven days a week

Alastair Lukies, chief executive of Monitise, said, “As consumers tighten their belts they are demanding that they are empowered with more control over their money. The banks have recognised this and most have rolled out mobile money services over the past 18 months.

More from this article here: http://www.computerweekly.com/Articles/2008/12/08/233775/mobile-banking-to-take-off-in-a-big-way.htm

An example in Mobile Banking

Imagine you are a bank with no branches or ATMs, almost three million customers and only 195 employees in total. This is e-bank Japan, which provides 24-hour real-time electronic services. With a corporate vision that mobile computing can give customers their own personal branch in the future it is an example of a company that has totally automated its business using the latest technology. Japan may be the first to adopt this kind of technology, but it is something that could make sense in the UK too. After all, e-bank Japan has about 200 staff, of which 30 are internal IT staff, yet it manages almost three million customer accounts. The combined attractions of reduced costs and increasing customer demand could drive mobile banking adoption in here post credit crunch.

“Asia is a major success story for mobile banking,” says Robert Morgan, consultant at Hamilton Bailey. “Many rural people in countries such as India do all their banking by mobile. The West has been lackadaisical because we like to touch things.”

He says banks in the UK can accelerate the adoption of mobile banking as the credit crunch forces them to cut costs. By automating more of the banking processes more staff cuts can be made. “The way the credit crunch has gone, with banks making cost reductions, mobile banking is on the horizon. The age of mobile banking will allow banks to make front office savings.”

So how does it work at e-bank Japan? “Most of our services can be completed by PC, so we just focus on the transaction processing system to keep operating smoothly,” says Kaz Saiki, head of public relations at the bank. “That is why we can manage 2.8 million customers’ accounts with fewer than 200 staff.”

more on this article  computerweekly link

Newly Dropped .mobi domains

Welcome to our first post of filtered domain drops.

We search through recently expired domain lists and filter the best domains in our opinion, so that you don’t have to trawl through long lists. There are no guarantees the domains will still be available as people subscribe to our site and rss feed and may be quicker than you! Check back daily to see what treats we have for you. The fee? Zero, nada, it’s free. Just bookmark us and come back regularly .

We try to only include pure generics and great acronyms…………

Here are some really nice .mobi domains that have just dropped today, some just a few hours or minutes ago!

lather.mobi

accordian.mobi

erratic.mobi

airbrushing.mobi

tracksuit.mobi

noses.mobi

testicular.mobi

locomotion.mobi

sculpt.mobi

freeloaders.mobi

grandfathers.mobi

colourist.mobi

sheikhs.mobi

starvation.mobi

studentcouncil.mobi

gallipoli.mobi

starring.mobi

All about 2 letter.com’s

I found a great resource all about 2 letter .coms

.com domains that fall into the LL.com format. This is the familiar term known by domainers. Once upon a time 2 letter .com’s were free to register, circa 1992.

They were still available to register after that, but for a mere $100 a pop with Network solutions. In fact there was a time when single character .com domains were free to register, and most were dropped as people did not see the point in owning and couldn’t afford when the yearly renewal fees increased!

Icann then introduced new rules so that single and 2 character .coms couldn’t be newly registered. All that were left registered were honoured but as soon as any dropped, that was it. They never returned. This is still the case, and for .org and .net

It was generally the original cyber geeks who registered these domains along with the largest companies on the planet. It’s a very interesting look to see who got it, who still gets it, and who owns what!

Here is a sample screenshot below of the page at vb.com and a link so that you can enjoy the research.

________________________________________________________________________

________________________________________________________________________

Incidentally, what do you think vbulletin or anyone else come to that would pay for vb.com?! http://www.vb.com/short.htm

Baidu launches mobile site at Baidu.mobi

Baidu the 600 pound online gorilla has launched it’s mobile website at baidu.mobi

It was noticed back in 2007 that Baidu launched a .mobi site, so this isn’t new news.

However baidu.mobi is indexed on google and stand alone.
http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=bai…ient=firefox-a
http://baidu.mobi/

translated
http://translate.google.co.uk/transl…ial%26hs%3DguZ

I see zero promotion though.

They need to get the word out, or even mention on one page of their main site about the mobile version.
the .mobi is on baidu.com nameservers, so legit. Also whois checked.

Tell your friends about baidu.mobi spread the word.

Baidu.com has an alexa rank of 9 so this is a monster  .

For the uninitiated, Baidu, Inc. , incorporated on January 18, 2000, is a Chinese search engine for websites, audio files, and images. Baidu offers 57 search and community services including Baidu Baike, an online collaboratively-built encyclopedia, and a searchable keyword-based discussion forum. In October 2008, Baidu ranked 9th overall in Alexa’s internet rankings. In December 2007 Baidu became the first Chinese company to be included in the NASDAQ-100 index.Baidu provides an index of over 740 million web pages, 80 million images, and 10 million multimedia files. Baidu offers multi-media content including MP3 music and movies, and is the first in China to offer WAP and PDA-based mobile search.

Please see screenshot below of mobile site:

__________________________________________________

Huawei launch their mobile website at huawei.mobi

Huawei have launched their mobile website at huawei.mobi

Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd.  is the largest networking and telecommunications equipment supplier in the People’s Republic of China. It is headquartered in Longgang District, Shenzhen, Guangdong.

About:
Established in 1988 by Ren Zhengfei, Huawei Technologies is a private high-tech enterprise which specializes in research and development (R&D), production and marketing of communications equipments, and providing customized network solutions for telecom carriers. Huawei serves 35 of the top 50 telecoms operators and puts 10 per cent of revenue into R&D each year. In addition to the R&D centers in Shenzhen, Shanghai, Beijing, Nanjing, Xi’an, Chengdu, and Wuhan in China, Huawei also has R&D centers in Stockholm, Sweden; Dallas and Silicon Valley, U.S.; Bangalore, India; Ferbane in Offaly, Ireland; Moscow, Russia; Jakarta, Indonesia and Netherlands.

huawei.mobi

Financial Highlights

In 2008, Huawei continued to achieve steady growth, with global sales exceeding USD 23.3 BILLION, a year-on-year increase of 46%. Our internationalization efforts continued to show success and markets outside of China now account for over 75% of our total sales.

The outstanding growth shows that Huawei has become an international company with steadfast operation, which will help us build a long-term and stable partnership with our customers.

http://www.huawei.mobi/wapen/abouthuawei/4.do

Kimberly Clark launch mobile campaign with pottyprint.mobi

Kimberly-Clark launched a mobile campaign for its Huggies Pull-Ups training pants brand that is designed to help mothers potty train their kids.
Pull-Ups created a program where moms are able to text in from a call-to-action on-pack to order the potty training kits. Using their mobile phones, moms can arrange for Cinderella or a Cars character to call their phone at a designated day and time.
“The Pull-Ups brand is about big kid success and we are helping the moms and children succeed in the potty-training process,” said Geoff Golub, shopping marketing manager for the Pull-Ups brand at Kimberly-Clark, Dallas. “Mobile allows us to communicate with mom right at the shelf.
…
The mobile Web site for the campaign is pottyprint.mobi.
An insert arrives in the mail along with the Potty Print Kit and drives moms online to schedule a call.
Pull-Ups chose mobile for this particular promotion because it provides instant access to consumers and develops a one-to-one communication for the brand.
This is Pull-Ups’ first mobile marketing effort.
“We are still learning our way through this,” Mr. Golub said. “We also see the campaign as way to learn how moms interact with the brand.”

______________________________________________________________

______________________________________________________________

Next Page »