Longest .mobi out there?

Well I came across  this the  other day and thought was a joke, thought would share for a few reasons. First and foremost the site is very well built and has a nice design. Also the purpose of the site and the people behind it are to be respected.

It belongs to ‘Società Romagnola di Mutuo Soccorso’

Please see screenshot below:

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Here is a translation of some of the site for you as is in Italian:

The “MUTUA” (*) - set up in Ravenna on 10/12/1992 - operates non-profit to its shareholders and intends to involve the same benefits of mutuality in accordance with the principles of solidarity and subsidiarity, with specific attention to the health, welfare and social security.
The activities of the Mutual, conducted exclusively in the interests of its members, is aimed in particular at:
Establish procedures for health care, in a supplementary and complementary to the National Health Service, and promoting accreditation agreements with companies public health and / or private in order to obtain the socio conditions or minor discomfort or activating mutual funds for the repayment of medical expenses …

Now, you’re probably wondering what the domain is?????

societaromagnoladimutuosoccorso.mobi

Damn that’s ugly!

Please somebody tell them short is sweet on a mobile.

SRMS.mobi & SRDMS.mobi are both free to reg!!!!

Sweden & .mobi

Sweden is a very tech savvy and organised place.

It’s also a place very dear to my heart. It gives me pleasure to announce a few interesting .mobi developments happening over in Sweden. I will try to update this post for coming weeks until it is time to start a fresh thread, as i anticipate there will be such a flurry of sites, i won’t be able to keep up, as is happening now. Finland’s next!

Now before you get excited, some big swedish players are using .mobi, but as of yet, no real PROMOTION of the url, many are playing safe with subdomains of existing urls, making for very ugly urls for their trendy young audience to remember.

Anyway, enjoy!

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Microsoft launch: GetTag.mobi

Microsoft have launched another .mobi site: Gettag.mobi

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Microsoft Tag: Microsoft’s own 2D barcode site on Gettag.mobi
microsoft.com/tag/Microsoft Tag allows data to be stored in a graphical bitmap using shapes and colors. They now have their own barcode technology.
Microsoft Tag is not just a clone of QR Code.Microsoft Tag is based on a whole new technology called High Capacity Color Barcodes (HCCBs), which was invented  by Microsoft Research. The difference is not using square pixels, but triangle shapes and colors to store data. See below why this is cool:

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Unlike other tag technologies too, the Microsoft Tags don’t actually store the information. It stores a unique ID which it then sends to Microsoft’s servers. This way, you can include much more information, and more variety of information, then if it was just on the tag itself. A nice side-effect of this is also the ability for publishers to gather reporting data on how many times it was seen.

To read these tags, Microsoft is making available today a downloadable application to a handful of mobile platforms including Windows Mobile, J2ME, iPhone, Blackberry, and Symbian S60 phones. A camera and internet connection is obviously required. To get the app, go to gettag.mobi.

If you are on a pc or laptop and wish to view the site as it would appear on your mobile, go to ready.mobi to use the emulator for gettag.mobi

Ultimately, apps and tags could deal quite a blow for domains in general. However , like for much of the mobile internet, many big companies are still finding their feet and are giving consumers a helping hand by supplying them with all the options. Being able to sms a link direct to their phone and also giving them a direct navigation url.

Pleased to say Microsoft is no different, and here they are promoting Gettag.mobi again:

See screenshot for: microsoft.com/tag/content/download/ below or click link.

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Fishing.mobi is quite a catch!

We have just received this press release from First Light Net about their deal with mtld, where they have taken control of Fishing.mobi via the rfp process .

Basically they will have shown to mtld that they have experience to plan and operate a top domain such as this. Via this process they do not have exclusive ownership of the domain forever, but it will be free for the duration on the understanding that FirstLightNet make good use of the name and add to the ‘ecosystem’

In many ways i think this is the perfect example of mobile domains and websites in use where all the answers are at your fingertips when in a remote place and where you will not want to navigate an expensive slow loading site, but an instant loading mobile, .mobi site. Very forward thinking by FirstLightNet and I look forward to seeing what site they develop. ………………………………………

Press Release:……………………………………………………………

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Spyware.com the ppc monster

I just came across an article by Sahar Sarid who owns Conceptualist.com

In this article he talks about the premium domain he owns: Spyware.com

Here is the article quote:

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“Below is a snippet from DNJournal/Ron Jackson’s May 2007 interview with me:

The next major development involved a domain we bought for $12 in mid-2000 on the drop, a name that had no meaning at the time. However, it started to generate traffic and revenues very quickly because it became a word/phrase that was seen, discussed or talked about nearly everywhere (we know the name, which is now a common computer related term, but Sarid did not want to publicize it). In 2003 we signed a contract to lease the domain for 30 days for $3,000 with option to sell for $60,000 at the end of the lease. At the end of lease, the lessee said his maximum offer was $30,000. We declined. Two years later this domain was generating $3,000 a day on PPC.

The domain I talked about was Spyware.com, the one that we will be putting on the auction block relatively soon. As the term is now mainstream, traffic slowed down, revenues as well. It is still doing extremely well and is one of our top 10 PPC performers.

Every single day we get emails from users who are having issues with Spyware, asking for help with existing software, or asking what software to buy. All that without a developed site. We know the potential to build is there, we know we’re offering it for a very cheap price (especially our ridiculous reserve), however, we do believe if we put a very low reserve the market will come forward and we will get the full price for the domain. Whether we are right or wrong about the strategy, only time will tell.

More on this domain and auction details at a later point. ”

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Early web days revisited.

I stumbled across an interesting article on wikipedia.org the other day. I will post the article in its entireity so that you have the actual wikipedia links to click on anything of interest to get more information.

Now bear in mind the first domains started being registered in 1985, basically almost nothing happened in terms of domain registration and website building for best part of 10 years! Then things started to pick up, but even in mid 1994 there were only 2738 websites !

The year previous  there had only been 623 websites. The total of websites in the last quarter of 1994 quadrupled though from the summer total. From then on like any mathematical equation, it grew, and grew exponetially!

It’s very interesting to note the type of sites and people getting involved in those early days, it is also very interesting to see the first main mobile websites becoming mainstream NOW. Whilst there is only one net/web, what people want on a mobile device and on a pc are two very different things. One day the mobile web and its content will be king.

1991

Gopher Search Engine

The Gopher Search Engine; one of the internet’s earliest search engines.

CERN

The link is a snapshot of the CERN site, the first website, as of November 1992. The Web was publicly announced (via a posting to alt.hypertext) on August 6, 1991.

World Wide Web Virtual Library

Originally Tim Berners-Lee’s web catalog at CERN.

Digital Picture Archive on the 17th Floor

First operating from Delft University of Technology as an anonymous FTP site, then a gopher server and finally a WWW server, this collection of miscellaneous digital images was one of the first image repositories. By 1994 it had to be throttled back because the traffic was overwhelming the networks at Delft.

Stanford Linear Accelerator Center

Paul Kunz from SLAC visited Tim Berners-Lee at CERN in September 1991. He was impressed by the WWW project and brought a copy of the software back to Stanford. SLAC launched the first web server in North America on December 12, 1991. 

 1992

National Center for Supercomputing Applications

The National Center for Supercomputing Applications site was an early home to the NCSA Mosaic web browser, as well as documentation on the web and a “What’s New?” list which many people used as an early web directory.

Fermilab

Second web server in North America, following in the trend of high-energy physics laboratories.

SunSITE

Early, comprehensive archiving project. Project as a whole started in 1992 and was quick to move to the web.

1993

By the end of 1993, there were 623 websites, according to a study by MIT Researcher Matthew Gray.

Doctor Fun

First webcomic, noted by the NCSA as “a major breakthrough for the Web”.

The LANL preprint archive

Web access to thousands of papers in physics, mathematics, computer science, and biology; developed out of earlier gopher, ftp, and e-mail archives at Los Alamos. Now housed at lanl.arxiv.org

Global Network Navigator

Example of an early web directory, and one of the Web’s first commercial sites. Created by O’Reilly Media.

The Internet Movie Database

Founded in 1989 by participants in the Usenet newsgroup rec.arts.movies, the IMDB was rolled out on the web in late 1993, hosted by the computer science department of Cardiff University in Wales.

Internet Underground Music Archive

Created by students at the University of California, Santa Cruz to help promote unsigned musical artists. Music was shared using the MP2 format, presaging the later extreme popularity of MP3 sharing and Online music stores.

JaysHouse MOO

Perhaps the first web-based MUD (multi-user dungeon), ancestor of today’s MMORPGs.

SITO

After a start as an anonymous ftp-based art gallery and collaborative collective, the OTIS project (later SITO) moves to the web thanks to SunSITE’s hosting.

The MIT Tech

The MIT campus newspaper, The Tech, claims to be the first newspaper to deliver content over the Web, beginning in May 1993. 

MTV

The music television network’s domain was registered in 1993 by VJ Adam Curry, who personally ran a small unofficial site.

PARC Map Server

Arguably the earliest precursor of MapQuest and Google Maps. PARC Researcher Steve Putz tied an existing map viewing program to the web. Now defunct.

Principia Cybernetica

Probably the first complex, collaborative knowledge system, sporting a hierarchical structure, index, map, annotations, search, plenty of hyperlinks, etc. Designed by Francis Heylighen, Cliff Joslyn and Valentin Turchin to develop a cybernetic philosophy.

Trojan room coffee pot

The first webcam.

 1994

By mid-1994 there were 2738 websites, according to Gray’s statistics; by the end of the year, more than 10,000.

Art.Net

“Art on the Net”, created by Lile Elam in June 1994 to showcase the artwork of San Francisco Bay Area artists as well as other international artists. It offered free linkage and hosts extensive links to other artists’ sites.

The Amazing FishCam 

A webcam pointed at a fishtank located at Netscape headquarters. According to a contemporaneous article by The Economist, “In its audacious uselessness—and that of thousands of ego trips like it—lie the seeds of the Internet revolution.”

Bianca’s Smut Shack

An early web-based chatroom and online community known for raucous free speech and deviant behavior.

Cool Site of the Day

Founded by Glenn Davis at InfiNet in 1994, who selected one ‘cool’ website per day to highlight. InfiNet ceased operating it in 1998. The site is currently a promotion service, which charges $27 for a site to be ‘reviewed’.

Einet Galaxy

Claims to be the first searchable web catalog; originally created at the Einet division of the MCC Research Consortium at the University of Texas, Austin. It passed through several commercial owners and is now run by Logika Corporation.

First Virtual

First “cyber-bank”.

HotWired

Website of Wired magazine with its own unique and innovative online content. Home of the first banner ads, for Zima and AT&T

Internet Shopping Network

First internet shopping mall.

Justin Hall’s Links from the Underground

One of the earliest examples of personal weblogging.

Lycos

Early search engine, originally a university research project by Dr. Michael Mauldin.

Museum of Bad Art

Website of a museum “dedicated to the tongue-in-cheek display of poorly conceived or executed examples of Outsider Art in the form of paintings or sculpture.”

The Nine Planets

“A Multimedia Tour of the Solar System”, created by Bill Arnett. One of the first extensively multimedia sites.

Nando.net

One of the first newspaper sites, the online presence of the Raleigh, North Carolina News & Observer.

Pizza Hut

The pizza delivery restaurant allows people in Santa Cruz, California to order pizza over the Web. 

Sex.com

Subject of a twelve-year legal battle that established parameters of domain ownership.

The Simpsons Archive

The very first fan site for The Simpsons television show.

SpinnWebe

Early humor site, called “a window on the weird” by The New Yorker.

The WWW Useless Pages

Perhaps the first site which showcased bad or eccentric websites rather than ‘cool’ ones.

World-Wide Web Worm

Another early web crawler, opened in October 1994.

Yahoo!

Originally started as “Jerry’s Guide to the World Wide Web”; later Yahoo without the exclamation mark.

 

Full article courtesy of the wonderful wikipedia.org

 

If you would like to view wikipedia on your mobile go to wapedia.mobi

Marketing Fools at Mapquest

Well, seeing as it’s the start of 2009, time to hand out the craziest waste of potential on a domain name award for 2008. Coupled with how to confuse the hell out of your customers and confuse your brand.

Here we go.

MapQuest.com is a hugely successful site. It is pagerank 8 and alexa rank of 209!

See below a segment of screenshot from the homepage of mapquest.com

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Ok. Everything fine up to now. Here’s the problem. They are promoting their mobile site at top of site, GREAT!

They even feature it on the right hand side of the hompage, look!

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Ok, everything fine, but look at that pig ugly domain, with no relevance to their brand! mq4m, i ask you, i still cannot remember it even though have tried it and doesn’t resolve correctly before adding the, wait for it, m. at the start too! Like it’s even needed lol, if you have a separate domain!

How to confuse your customers!

What is nuts is they own MapQuest.mobi for Lord’s sake, and it resolves to the fullblown site! Now obviously i think this is the best way of keeping simple for themselves and their customers, having a dedicated mobile site at MapQuest.mobi, now okay i’m biased, but at the very worst i would promote m.mapquest.com

These are the 2 choices most are going to. Lord if you want to be straight forward confusing just point them to mapquest.com/mobile, but lets have a look at that promotion box and ugly domain again!

What a farce! And they even mention Mapquest TM above it in bold to confuse the viewers even more. I wonder if they will read this and realise their marketing team have a training need?

Here’s the award Guys, ENJOY!………………………………

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Feel free to email their team and ask them ‘what are they doing?’

The sign of a great team would be that they would realise what a gaffe they had made and capitalise upon what they are sitting on, and what other major players are doing.

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On top of that m.mq4m.com & www.mq4m.com don’t resolve from a pc, I know says point mobile browser, but even still!

Gets a 3/5 on ready.mobi and 7 fails!

It just says, “we’re sorry, Map Quest 4 Mobile is not built for all phones.  Our engineers are busy working on many new builds ….blah blah

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but, if you don’t see your phone on list or have a problem, give us an earful: mq4m@mapquest.com

These guys are leaking traffic like I don’t know what! There would be a few job losses over there if i were in charge I can tell you!

Well, you have the email now! Give them what for!

Top 100 .mobi Sales

Most of us are familiar with the old list of top 100 .mobi domain sales posted over at soldnames.com

Thing is it hasn’t been updated in well over a year from what I can see.

What I would like to know are the new entries in the top 100? What domains need to be relegated.

I can start with ‘Games.mobi ‘ which sold for $44,000 (originally sold for $400k +)

also Music.mobi was undisclosed but certainly 6 figures.

See old list below:

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Ok, i was just looking at 2008 Top overall 100 domain sales over at http://www.dnjournal.com/ytd-sales-charts.htm , and it reminded me of a few:

Porn.mobi $110,000

Tickets.mobi $60,000

Property.mobi $26,000 (CHEAP!!!!)

Own.mobi $22,500

Vegas.mobi $20,000

Shows.mobi $20,000

Mortgage.mobi $18,000

Broadway.mobi $17,000

Hollywood.mobi $16,000

Domain Registration Booming

Interesting article below, of particular note:

“growth of mobile internet and .mobi”

 

MAP Research Releases Groundbreaking Global Domain Registration Industry Report

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28363509/

Updated 3:32 a.m. CT, Tues., Dec. 23, 2008

MELBOURNE, Australia, Dec. 23, 2008 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Melbourne-based research company MAP Research has released the world’s first report on the size, state and future of the global domain registration industry.
MAP Research’s results show that by the end of 2008, the overall industry will have a market value of $3.6 billion (all figures in $US), forecast to increase to $5.3 billion by 2011.
According to the report, whilst the overall market size of the global domain industry is expected to increase over the next three years, growth will be at a slower rate than previous years and a drop in average revenue per domain is forecast.

And although growth in global top-level domains (ie .com and .net) will slow, growth in country code top-level domains (ie .au and .uk) is expected to increase in developing countries such as Brazil, Russia, India and China (BRIC nations).
The research also predicts trends in the domain industry such as consolidation to gain market share; a growing emphasis on bundling services; growth in demand for ‘domain parking’; growth of mobile internet and .mobi; and a new internet provider platform, IPv6, dramatically increasing the number of available domain names.
“Domain registrars are now becoming ‘one-stop-shop’ service providers, offering their customers variety of services such as domain registration, domain management, web hosting and domain resale,” said Marco Marcou, MAP Research Director.
“With the contractions of the top-level market, many of the global domain registrars are diversifying their revenue base by providing a number of related value added services to the provision of domain registration,” he added.
“These additional services are increasingly being bundled with domain registration and include web hosting, domain parking, pay-per-click advertising and selling domain portfolios,” said Marcou.
As part of the research, MAP Research interviewed a number of the top 20 domain registrars globally.
Key points from the MAP Research Global Domain Industry Report
* Registered domains total 185 million, a growth of 20.8% over 2008, expected to reach nearly 297 million by 2011. * Overall size of the industry is $3.6 billion (all figures in $US), expected to reach $5.3 billion by 2011. * The generic top level domain (gGTLD) market has grown 15.1% over 2008 to a value of $1.83 billion. * Domain registrars are diversifying into value added services such as web hosting and domain management. * Country code top level domains (ccTLDs) will grow by 21% to a value of $1.81 billion in 2008, driven largely by stronger demand in the BRIC nations and Eastern Europe. * MAP Research forecasts stronger demand in BRIC nations following increasing internet penetration rate, growing economies and also increasing online advertising market. * GoDaddy is ranked number one in the world, with a market share of 27.9% in the gTLD market.For this and other industry research reports, please visit www.mapresearch.com.au.
For more information on the report and to interview Marco Marcou, Director of MAP Research, please contact Nichola Patterson on +61 411 516 517 or nichola@propellerpr.com.au
CONTACT: Propeller PR Nichola Patterson +61 411 516 517 nichola@propellerpr.com.au

Adsense for Domains

This is ‘new’ news as far as i’m aware.

What Google are offering here used to be just the conserve of larger domainers, domainers with hundreds of thousands or millions of uniques a month.

Seems like Google has opened the door for regular domainers now! We all know the parking companies are taking a battering, well a few will go under no doubt now. Payouts are less and all but this one process of taking a middleman out will help google and the domainer you would think.

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The above screenshot from .google

One thing to note, quote:

”
Please be aware that AdSense for domains is currently available to publishers located in North America with English-language accounts.”

So not everyone can use at the minute. Personally i can’t wait until Yahoo’s adsense comes out of beta, wtf is taking them so long, they have effectively lost billions, but then they’re good at that, especially when losing billions in Microsoft deals!

Enjoy, let’s see how this pans out.

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