why should the programmers of .mobi sites be restricted to laziness? When you build a site in another tld you:
1:Adjust the css for various browsers i.e. safari, ie6, firefox, ie8 parameters have to be put in for each various browser to make the user experience the same on every browser.
2:Adjust the background image so it looks good on 15 inch monitor and a 24inch wide-screen.
3: You also adjust ads by locale, browser etc.
With as you suggest .mobi do is make a basic+ site and its the same on every screen. They should do the same thing so the site takes full advantage of all browsers or mobile phones. I agree your sites do all look the same across all fronts but why your neglecting the user. In your books words your are making me think. If I stumble across your site in a normal browser I would make fun of it (okay only if I was a regualr person not some one who knows what .mobi is.)
Again, read the book
Don't Make Me Think.
Many points that you make are no longer valid.
Those two sites referenced are made by a non-technical programmer and with Joomla template.
Another to look at is Lyme dot mobi. Again, this is what is going to appear on every device. Made by someone else, this is another ad-free site for people to get information on Lyme disease.
There is nothing lazy about these site. It is all content and nothing but relevant content. I chose them because there are no ads on it. You need a quick reference for doing CPR on someone and you have to scroll through RingTone Banners???
What you equate to laziness is fiscal sense to many. As you pointed out, iphone.foxnews.com vs. foxnews.mobi. So, make a site for a specific product each and everytime a new product hits the market?
Plus, what market share does iPhone own? 17%??? If iphone users are using iPhone.foxnews.com, how many others people are not going to use such a site - the other 83% of your market.
So, what you call laziness is what many are going to term fiscal responsible by creating FoxNews.mobi for the other 87% of the market. Inside that programming genius is the ability to detect the device someone is on. That is why anyone anywhere can use FoxNews.mobi - even you right now on your PC.
How does it look? Well, bare. But what you don't have is all the "noise" of the ads flashing, scrolling, playing, and shouting for your attention. What you have is what you were looking for - news. There is nothing lazy about this site. The marketers and creators at FoxNews probably have a cell phone or two among themselves and asked - what do I not want on a 2 x 3 screen?
If you or anyone else misses all the ads and want to keep scrolling and scrolling through page after page of content on your iPhone then by all means - use a full PC site on your iPhone in order to satisfy yourself. I am not sure what they call "scrolling" with all the iPhone swiping and forward and backward and finger opening and repositioning. It is a form of scrolling.
I do not own the iPhone. I have the Helio Ocean which I love. I do now have two iPhone Touch. I love them. But I surely do not enjoy trying to find what I am looking for on a full PC site. Once that novelty wears off of doing it a few times, then its time to get to the meat of sites.
You can make fun of the site, I won't be offended. As long as you did look at each site on the PC, on the Laptop, on the Blackberry, and iPhone that you own.
All of these points have played out over and over for the past three years. Disdain for the dot mobi extension was expressed on this very forum as early as 2004.
Point is, it is here, it is still here, and it is not going anywhere. With the 400-500 extensions about to come out, I wonder how people will know a site is mobile or not? Sure, we can talk about all the technology and auto detect and how it is going to render all of that mobile stuff useless.
But there is one problem to that argument - the internet is not going to wait for technology to catch up with it. We are getting ready to see a very crowded and chaotic way of getting on the internet. The release of the new TLD's is not waiting for the technology mentioned. Yes, some of it is here now. It is a pretty crazy time and next spring and fall of 2010 is going to be a big shock to most internet users.