New Domain Name -- .Mobi -- Could Spur Wireless Web

NEW DOMAIN NAME -- MOBI -- COULD SPUR WIRELESS WEB
[SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Li Yuan li.yuan@wsj.com]
Surfing the Web on a cellphone can be as difficult as surfing the ocean on a tiny board. Now, a company founded by Microsoft Corp., Google Inc., Vodafone Group PLC, Nokia Corp., and several other companies, aims to make it easier to browse the Internet on wireless devices such as cellphones or BlackBerries. Currently, few Web pages are designed to be accessed via mobile devices. Many sites can't be displayed on tiny cellphone screens, and most would take a much longer time to download than on a PC. Mobile Top Level Domain aims to change that in part by setting up a new domain name specifically for wireless Internet Web sites called dot-mobi. Just as dot-com is the domain name for many Web pages on the wired Internet, dot-mobi will become the suffix for Web pages that are formatted for cellphones and other wireless devices, the company says. Mobile Top Level Domain Chief Executive Officer Neil Edwards says the union of the Web and cellphones has so far been "a bad experience" that consumers and the mobile industry have failed to embrace. "Dot-mobi makes the Internet work on phones," says Mr. Edwards.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB114834861767160235.html?mod=todays_us_ma...
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