Russell Beattie Notebook - Why .mobi is a Good Thing:

location based services

"I’ll admit I’ve gone back and forth on my opinions of the new .mobi TLD. But I’ve finally made the firm decision that it’s definitely a step forward for the mobile web. Sometimes I’d wonder if we really needed Yet Another Domain Name or if a new domain name would cause confusion, or if separating out addresses for the mobile web was really a good idea. But I have finally decided once and for all it’s a Good Thing(TM). Here’s why in a sentence:

We’ll finally have a standard format for initial mobile web navigation: companyname.mobi

This is the thing that’s really missing from the mobile web. There’s been no way to know exactly what the URL was for the mobile URL. There’s a bunch of redirect or handset detection magic that happens, but the end URLs are all over the place. Here’s some examples from some of the most popular mobile sites in the US (and BBC news too):

* Yahoo!: http://wap.oa.yahoo.com
* AOL: http://mobile.aol.com
* MSN: http://mobile.msn.com
* Google: http://google.com/xhtml
* ESPN: http://proxy.espn.go.com/wireless/espn/
* Weather Channel: http://xhtml.weather.com/xhtml/
* BBC: http://www.bbc.co.uk/mobile
* ABC News: http:"