dotMobi

Announcement re: dotMobi Ownership

In case you haven't seen the good news elsewhere, the dotMobi company has been acquired by Afilias. 

For those of you who are unfamiliar with Afilias, it's a leading and well-established registry company that's been providing registry operation services for the .mobi domain since it launched in 2006. Afilias is also the registry for .info and .aero, and provides technical services in support of 15 top-level domains, including .org (under contract to Public Interest Registry), .asia, and ccTLDs. In all, Afilias supports about 15 million registrations across these TLDs. In short, Afilias is an expert at supporting and growing new TLDs. For them, this acquisition is an opportunity to capitalize on a high growth area of the internet — mobile usage.

The ownership change will be invisible from an operations perspective. The change you will likely see, though, is an increased emphasis on the .mobi domain itself, along with dotMobi's award-winning services like Instant Mobilizer and DeviceAtlas.  

While we have an extensive FAQ, there is one question many of you probably have, "How does this impact dotMobi’s relationship with its 14 founders?" 

The founders of dotMobi remain committed to the mobile Web and support dotMobi's central role in helping consumers find made-for-mobile content. They will continue to provide their expertise, background and support via a revitalized .mobi Advisory Group (MAG), along with individual working relationships that are in place. dotMobi's founders have contributed greatly to the success of the .mobi domain so far. Their oversight and input has been helpful in achieving .mobi’s status as the 6th largest gTLD. 

Early on, the value proposition of .mobi domains needed the vision -- and voice -- of key players in the mobile industry to ensure that the domain was embraced in a way that would advance the mobile Web. In 2010, the mobile Web has become a part of our daily lives, and an organization with proven expertise in the domain industry is needed to take the domain to the next level of growth. 

Since Afilias already has the industry experience and currently serves as the technical operator for the .mobi domain, the synergy between the companies for this acquisition was a perfect fit. And since Afilias is already providing registry and DNS services for .mobi, Afilias’ acquisition of dotMobi will be smooth and uneventful -- likely invisible -- for .mobi registrants, registrars and site visitors.

In case you're wondering ...

... 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 ...

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.

dotMobi Goes to Russia

 

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

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.

We're Facebook Customized ...

As I mentioned in a comment a couple of weeks ago, dotMobi has an active Facebook page but -- at the time -- we did not have a custom domain. Well, after a lot of back 'n' forth ('n' verifications), I'm happy to report that you can now visit our Facebook page directly and become a fan at http://www.facebook.com/dotMobi.

You can also follow our tweets on Twitter @dotMobiOfficial.

If you're a LinkedIn member, you can also join our ongoing discussions in the dotMobi group.

If there are other social networking sites you'd like to see us at, please let us know in the comments section.

Nice mention in Inc.

I just saw the following dotMobi mention in the June 2009 issue of Inc. magazine, "dotMobi answers the call for simplicity with its Instant Mobilizer service, which automatically reformats your site for mobile phones. You will need a special .mobi domain name (get one from Go Daddy for $8 a year), but dotMobi takes care of the rest for free. At the top of each page, your mobile site will list both your phone number (for one-click dialing) and address (with a link to Google's directions page)."

The article is called, "How to Put Your Website on Cell-Phone Screens," and you can see the article in full on the Inc. Web site. 

Hooray and Thanks!

Yay!

dotMobi won the Mobile Internet Innovation award at the Irish Internet Association's Net Visionary Awards on Thursday night, 21 May.

It was an honor just to be nominated and -- to be honest -- a much welcomed piece of recognition to have under our belts as well. 

A very big thank you to everyone who voted for us!

Video interview with Trey Harvin

For your enjoyment: an interview with dotMobi's CEO, Trey Harvin. The interview was conducted by Sarah Blue of bnetTV at the Las Vegas CTIA event this past April.  

dotMobi's WordPress Mobile Pack Now Live

This past week, dotMobi released a new, free product: the WordPress Mobile Pack -- a plug-in for WordPress users to automatically generate a mobile version of their WordPress site.

We've had requests for this for a long time and we're very happy that we're finally able to make it available. 

Approximately 2% of all Web sites are run on WordPress. There have been more than 4.5 million downloads of the software in the last six months alone. As you can see, the need for a WordPress mobile solution is a big one.

What does the WordPress Mobile Pack contain?:

•  Mobile switcher to detect mobile visitors and provide an appropriate experience
•  Base mobile theme for quick-and-easy XHTML-Mobile Profile compliance
•  Extended mobile themes so you can unleash your mobile creativity
•  Integration with the award-wining DeviceAtlas(TM) for world-class mobile adaptation
•  Mobile administration panel for when posts can't wait
•  Mobile ad widget to make you some money
•  Barcode widget to help users bookmark your blog

If you run a WordPress site, you'll likely find this pack worthwhile. Critics think so, too.

Full information on the WordPress Mobile Pack is on mobiForge.com.