13th Annual Webby Awards: more .mobi than ever.
June 21, 2009
13th Annual Webby Awards: more .mobi than ever.
This week, the winners of the 13th annual Webby Awards were announced. In the mobile division , there were several .mobi winners:
The Best Use of GPS or Location Technology award went to Adidas Marathon Run Tracker at http://marathon.marvellous.mobi. The Mobile Entertainment award went to Discovery Mobile at http://discovery.mlogic.mobi. The Mobile Sports award winner and People’s Voice award winner went to ESPN Mobile at http://espn.mobi.
Also nominated for Integrated Mobile Experience was Virgin Atlantic’s Love from Above campaign (now retired but formerly at lovefromabove.mobi) and for Listings & Updates was previous award winner ZAGAT.mobi (which you can easily find at http://zagat.mobi).
Several other .mobi sites were named as honorees, including:
- http://arrivedok.mobi (ArrivedOK, the personal arrival tracker)
- http://muslim.mobi (daily prayer times for the global Muslim community with city locator)
- http://dolcegabbana.mobi (D&G Fashion Channel)
- http://radiodisney.mobi (Radio Disney)
- http://tinkfairies.mobi (Disney Interactive Media Group)
- http://udrapartments.mobi (UDR’s mobile apartment search)
- http://blackberry.mobi (Blackberry)
An application we’ve previously mentioned from mobiSiteGalore.mobi, which allows mobile users to build a mobile-ready site directly from their phones, was also cited as one of the Webby Awards’ honorees.
In all, this represents a very strong showing from .mobi users as well as representing a broad swath of uses of the .mobi domain — and is definitely a big step forward from the minimal number of mobile categories (and sites) that we saw only three years ago.
IDN.mobi agreement signed in China! To go LIVE soon.
June 18, 2009
Breaking News!
IDN.mobi has now been launched in China. 1.3 Billion people reside in China offering a great opportunity for .mobi as a domain to gain more traction with the world’s most populated country.
Dot Mobi have informed ‘OKOK’ that this was just a formal signing with CATR - the China Academy of Telecommunication Research.
(An internationalized domain name (IDN) is an Internet domain name that contains one or more non-ASCII characters.)
Already standard english words have been registered in China along with another 107 countries worldwide, in terms of the userbase for dot mobi domains.When idn.mobi goes LIVE in the coming weeks it will be interesting to view takeup, adoption and registration patterns.
Also different promotions by registrars, companies, mtld and Chinese authorities and commissions.
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Trey Harvin (CEO of Dot Mobi/MTLD) and Zou Lixing (ASSISTANT DEAN from China academy of telecommunication research of MIIT)
MIIT: MINISTRY OF INDUSTRY AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY OF THE PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF CHINA
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The ticker tape flies as Tre Harvin and other dignatories from MITT and other Government agencies associated with the internet celebrate in great style the IDN.mobi press conference and agreement signing!
As the sign above their heads say, “Opening the new era of Chinese addressing over the mobile internet.”
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On the 18th June 2009 the with Ministry of CATR industry and information department & the global top-level domain (. Mobi) management companies signed a strategic cooperation agreement. In accordance with the agreement, in the future, both sides will be able to receive applications from business users for the world’s Chinese. Mobi. (Chinese IDN)
In fact, on June 19 last year, the Ministry of CATR industry and information section, with the dotMobi company, signed a memorandum of cooperation. They made joint efforts to promote mobile Internet development in China. Today coincides with the first anniversary of the agreement betwwen the two sides. This launch for the Chinese name and address information utilizing the idn.mobi domain name is through joint co-operation with .Mobi and the Chinese authorities.
Registrations will be available for the new IDN.mobi format mobile domains sometime over this summer (2009). We will of course keep you updated and give you the official date for the launch and if any premiums will be held back.
dotMobi wins the Mobile Internet Innovation award
May 25, 2009
dotMobi won the Mobile Internet Innovation award at the Irish Internet Association’s Net Visionary Awards on Thursday night, 21 May.
dotmobi and their staff were thrilled to win the award.
We at okok would like to congratulate dotmobi, Dr.Tre and the gang on a well deserved success. More recognition and awareness for .mobi
Standing L to R: Andrea Trasatti, Pinkard Alan “Pinky” Brand, Catrina
Sheridan, Ronan Cremin, Trey Harvin
Seated L to R: Ashley Meegan, Claire O’Gorman, Huw Spiers
In South Korea, All of Life Is Mobile
May 25, 2009
A great article in the new York Times
Serving Sports Content to Mobile
May 23, 2009
This is a fascinating video. It’s an insight into how the biggest names in the world of sports news, get content to mobile. Sometimes in a matter of minutes, from the end of a match.
There are still many challenges for them and they are getting to grips with this new media. The biggest media the world has ever seen. Soon to be. MOBILE
A Guided Tour of Weather.mobi
May 23, 2009
This video has only has had 6 views on youtube at this time of posting, so we can virtually guarantee you haven’t seen this.
It’s a guided tour of weather.mobi by the vp of marketing at ‘the weather channel’.
It’s an interesting insight to some of his views about the mobile internet and how they aim to please their mobile customers.
Third World Text Banking
March 16, 2009
A banking system using mobile phones could soon help millions of the world’s poorest people to tackle poverty.
Branchless banking allows people to transfer money via text messages without the need for banks.
A three-year project led by the UK will build on an earlier money transfer programme set up in Kenya, the government has said.
Two billion people in the developing world have no access to any form of financial services.
Speaking at a meeting of banking and mobile phone technology experts, International Development Secretary Douglas Alexander said millions could be lifted out of poverty if they had access to a banking system.
The Department for International Development predicts that with the use of mobile branchless banking one billion people could benefit in the next five years.
Remote
People who are too poor to use traditional banks, or who live too remotely, could use the service to save and transfer money between themselves as well as receiving money sent from family members in other countries.
In Kenya, where mobile phones outnumber banks by 25,000 to one, there are already five million subscribers to the M-Pesa money transfer service. It is now being expanded and used to pay salaries and bills.
Once a Sim card in the phone is registered, users can deposit money with an M-Pesa agent, send a text message to the person they wish to pay and this person can then collect the money from their local agent.
The service can be also used to pay for utility bills. A small number of shops and taxi companies also accept it as an alternative payment method.
The average transaction is around £27.
Andrew Bailey, chief cashier at the Bank of England, said that developing countries were more advanced than the UK in using mobile phones for payments because their technology had leapfrogged some of the developments that the UK banking system had been using.
Expanding system
Other countries around the world are beginning to use mobile phones to transfer money.
Vodafone, which developed M-Pesa, regarded it as a success and created a similar system for use in Afghanistan where travel was difficult and infrastructure damaged.
Yet, it has not followed the same path as the Kenyan model.
“It is a different, more corporate offering. We are seeing companies use it to pay their staff,” said Caroline Dewing, of Vodafone.
Tanzanians have also been able to pay using M-Pesa since early 2008. This system works in a similar way to the service in Kenya but the take-up has been slower, according to Vodafone.
Sending money via text message may soon be in use in the UK. A pilot project run by Vodafone and the money transfer company Western Union is set to allow customers to send money across country borders.
UK workers will be able to send money back to Kenya using the M-Pesa service.
“This will provide Kenyans with an opportunity to receive small values of cash from abroad in a fast, safe and affordable way,” said Michael Joseph, head of Safaricom, Vodafone’s Kenyan partner.
Dave Birch, chairman of the Digital Money Forum, believes consumers in the UK will one day use their mobile phones to pay for things using a range of different applications.
“If you look forward, I don’t think it is controversial to think people will be walking out of their home with their mobile phone and using it as their wallet,” he said.
Full BBC Article:world’s text bank plan
Could cash go out of fashion? BBC Video
Deals drive mobile money services
March 16, 2009
“In many African nations, more people have mobiles than bank accounts
A series of deals looks set to turn handsets into mobile wallets in many developing nations.
South African mobile operator MTN is launching a banking service for its customers in 21 nations that will let them transfer cash.
It comes after four other initiatives were announced to help handsets carry out many basic financial transactions.
One initiative is backed by Bill Gates and puts $12.5m (£8.6m) into a plan to create a mobile banking service.
Read more
New Samsung Phone has ‘.mobi button’
March 16, 2009
I have just been shown the samsung mobile phone ‘instinct’.
Now this is a beautiful full smartphone but with one interesting addition. It has a one touch button to select domain extension when surfing the net. There is the choice of .com, .mobi, .org, .edu etc.
See picture of phone screenshot:
This is a very interesting addition as it not only saves surfers time, but it will introduce some surfers to extensions they may not hve been aware of before like .edu & .mobi for example. This is sure to raise awareness, it will also help traffic across the board.
The .mobi button in this case has centre billing, and is directly above the ‘www.’ and is centre of vision. At this stage we are not sure if this is programmable.
I think we can look to other phone handset manufacturers to follow suit. Particularly .mobi sponsors, like Nokia
See the video below which is a superb introduction to the new samsung ‘instinct’
In particular watch from 3 minutes 50 seconds onwards for info on the button in particular.
Nokia launch ‘email’ app on .mobi website
January 16, 2009
Nokia have launched another really useful website at a subdomain of their nokia.mobi go to: email.nokia.mobi
Here’s what they have to say:
- Easy to get started.
Mobile email is available on many of the most popular Nokia devices. You can start getting email today. - Easy to set up.
Enter your email address and password, and you’re done. - Automatic delivery.
Once you’ve set up your email account, emails are delivered automatically. - Up to 10 email addresses.
You can access up to 10 of your personal email accounts. Set up Gmail TM and leading global and local Email Service Provider (ESP) accounts. Each email arrives in its own mailbox, and you can access all emails in one place.
Couldn’t be easier!
Check the screenshot:
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Nokia have already made their mobile nokia site a default bookmark in every new nokia phone, now they have made it easy for the owners of nokia phones, who are in their billions, to access email easily, as a significant proportion may not, know how to do this easily. Now they can!
Here’s a little more about Nokia, courtesy of wikipedia:
Nokia is the World’s Largest Manufacturer of Mobile Phones: its Global Share device market share was about 38% in Q3 of 2008, down from 39% in Q3 2007 and down from 40% sequentially. Nokia produces mobile phones for every major market segment and protocol, including GSM, CDMA, and W-CDMA (UMTS)
In 2006, Nokia generated revenue that for the first time exceeded the state budget of Finland.
Finns have ranked Nokia many times as the best Finnish brand and employer.
The Nokia brand, valued at $35.9 billion, is listed as the fifth most valuable global brand in Interbrand/BusinessWeek’s Best Global Brands list of 2008 (first non-US company).
It is the number one brand in Asia (as of 2007) and Europe (as of 2008), the 23rd most admirable company worldwide in Fortune’s World’s Most Admired Companies list of 2008 (tied with Exxon Mobil; second in Network Communications, fifth non-US company), and is the world’s 88th largest company in Fortune Global 500 list of 2008, up from 119 of the previous year. As of 2008, AMR Research ranks Nokia’s global supply chain number two in the world.
