Death knell for mobile web?

[Ehsan]

Rubber You invested in IDN's so as fellow domainer i just wish you good luck with your investment , hope it turns out good for you

Cheers

Ehsan

Nobody is arguing that there are not issues with making this work, but things are moving forward, and the evidence from elsewhere is that this will happen in Pakistan pretty soon.

When I first started looking into IDN Urdu wasn't even on the horizon. For Chinese most of the sites were still in Pin Yin. Now over 99% of Chinese sites are in Chinese Unicode characters. Many many sites in Chinese are only in IDN although they are still hampered with the slow uptake of IDN enabled browsers. This won't get into full swing until IE6 is dead in the water, but seeing Paypal are now talking out black listing obsolete browser including IE6, that day cannot be so far off.

India has been much more proactive than Pakistan in bringing local scripts, but Urdu is a very big language in India. It is now possible to register Urdu domains under dot IN I believe, it is certainly possible under dot Com. There are numerous Urdu sites. It is possible to SMS in local languages, as well as create web-pages. Yes, I would agree that most of the Indian web is still in English, but it is widely recognised that expansion of the Internet in India is dependent on localisation of the Internet including the URLs. This move is not only being backed strongly by the Indian Government, but also by all the Multinationals that are active in India, including Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, Nokia and many many more.

The related technology will undoubtedly spill over into Pakistan. Don't forget that most of the Urdu speakers will be fellow Muslims, so there is really no cultural barrier here.

It is fundamentally incomprehensible how anyone that promotes the use of local scripts as I have done could be fundamentally racist. By contrast you are subscribing to colonialist attitudes that meant everyone was expected to communicate in the tongue of the colonial master. I am not saying that there is not a place for English. There is. However, people will chose to browse the Internet in the language that they use socially or in the home. They should be given the facility and opportunity to do so. And it will happen.

If you choice to squander the undoubted advantages you have to capitalise on this transformation. Don't come crying to me. I am trying to present you with an opportunity.

 

[Rubber Duck]

Not just me, DCG actually has more than I do!

 

[mibworld]

I have allways been skeptical of .mobi extension. As technology advances most cell phones will be able to browse the web with the usual .com sites, and at some point in the future almost all phones will be smart phones. However, this doesn't mean that .mobi is dead, nobody can be 100% certain of the future...

 

[Rubber Duck]

I have allways been skeptical of .mobi extension. As technology advances most cell phones will be able to browse the web with the usual .com sites, and at some point in the future almost all phones will be smart phones. However, this doesn't mean that .mobi is dead, nobody can be 100% certain of the future...

You will have to prise a lot of the dot Mobis away from their cold dead hands. :lol:

However, that alone won't make it a commercial success.

 

[MAllie]

I'm confused about all this anti-mobi stuff. If you don't like it, can't you just ignore it and let those who do get on with it? There's something almost like fundamentalist fervour in some of the anti-mobi postings. Perhaps mobi is affecting the domaining business in some way that I'm too raw to understand.

 

[Rubber Duck]

It is not so much dot Mobi as the endless pumping and dumping of ever more meaningless extensions. This problem is likely to become much worse as ICANN plans to bring literally hundreds of new TLDs onstream.

ICANNs motivation is probably to try to minimise the premium set on rare domains. In reality it will tend to make people focus more on what are perceived as Gold Standard extensions.

The problem is that domaining is a bit like the Klondike. Most of the Gold Claims were gone before the majority of stampeders even set out.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klondike_Gold_Rush

 

[bwhhisc]

Not just me, DCG actually has more than I do!

I remember when Adam began registering IDNs in first quarter 2006. He sent out a post to all DNF members that he had invested in that space and recommended members to take a look and make up their own minds. I'll bet 99% of the members here ignored him, maybe a few dozen max took the advice. Guess will will see how things play out over the next 18 months as the idn.idn rollout picks up steam, and browser support via IE7 for idn.com etc. is finally provided via auto update.

 

[MobileDesigner]

Rubber Duck,
i forgot to reply to your "local script" part.
Yes, i have quite a few. Some good ones actually. but simple english like "navigation", "umpc", "bookstore" and "MusicVideo" in local script and English (which are mine in the japanese extension) are some of the few that Japanese do know.

But the cool thing about idns is that when we type in both japanese and English, we have to switch 2 keys between the languages. sometimes we forget to type back to english in the url. This is where idns come in handy.

i dont just focus on one type of domain, i focus on domains that are useful for users. i dont just think about myself and what i want, i also think about users. we all need to do this instead of staying on one type of domain, right?

 

[DomainsInc]

The thing i never understood about idn's is why they still use .com,.net. Seems kinda silly to have to type part of the url in language characters and the exention in english.

 

[bwhhisc]

The thing i never understood about idn's is why they still use .com,.net. Seems kinda silly to have to type part of the url in language characters and the exention in english.

That was ICANNs decision, not the end users for sure. They did the testbed for .idn urls last year, and are in the process of implementing them beginning later this year, and over the next few years. The answer quite simply is that ICANN just got around to implementing .idn extensions. There are some idn.com holders that want to keep their .com simply because of the strength of the .com brand. Since it has been used for over a decade, it is recognized worldwide as the top website url.

IDNs have been around for 8 years, but without built browser support to make them "work" they have been sidelined. Most top keywords have been held most of this time, or at least since 2004. Verisign introduced idn.com, idn.net etc. back in 2000'. The also proposed DNAME equivalence mapping for to .idn but the final form of how "alising" will be implemented is yet to be worked out. (see link below)

Verisign has the rights to make idn.com to equivalent of idn.idn (transliteral or translation of .com in various languages). There is pretty clear wording for their rights to keep .com, .net etc. as outlined in the GNSO working group documents. The same protections are there for the registries that own .cn, .jp etc. to get their equivalents in their countries languages. Exactly what will be the outcome of new .idn extensions is still to be determined but some are on what ICANN calls a "fast track" program.

http://www.icann.org/announcements/proposal-dname-equivalence-mapping-tld-12dec05.pdf

 

[touchring]

I remember when Adam began registering IDNs in first quarter 2006. He sent out a post to all DNF members that he had invested in that space and recommended members to take a look and make up their own minds. I'll bet 99% of the members here ignored him, maybe a few dozen max took the advice. Guess will will see how things play out over the next 18 months as the idn.idn rollout picks up steam, and browser support via IE7 for idn.com etc. is finally provided via auto update.

Matter of fact is most people here 99% are not investors, but speculators.

No one invests in dot mobi, no one invests in LLLL or LLL, everyone is just speculator. To speculate, you follow the domainer crowd, because where the domainers go, the price will shoot up many folds in a short period of time. That's why when RS went into dot mobi, every sheeple followed.

For IDNs, you invest in end users, foriegn language speakers, something that most people will not do because they can't be bothered to wait, got no capability or money or patience to hold out. Some of the IDNs i invest in, i intend to hold for 10 years or more.