Next Monday, 10th December, Mobile Monday will be taking place in downtown Dublin.

James Pearce, dotMobi's CTO posted the following to the Mobile Monday group:

When: Monday 10th December, 6:30 for 7:00
What: Bob Last and Chris Moisan, Taptu
Where: The Porterhouse, 16-18 Parliament Street
http://www.porterhousebrewco.com/templebar.html

We're thrilled to be able to hear about mobile search from Taptu
(http://taptu.com/ and http://taptu.com/blog/).

Taptu has been hot news in mobile this year, and the service has had
rave reviews in such illustrious places as the Scoble Show, WAP Review,
and Mobile2.0. Now they're coming to a pub near you!

So... if you thought that the mobile version of the search game was
wrapped up already, come and hear Bob and Chris dispel a few
assumptions. Mobile's a little different, right?

If you're interested in attending let them know so they can gauge numbers

Posted by Michele Neylon at 12:48 PM | Permalink

As a domain registrant you have certain rights. Unfortunately those rights can be abused by companies that don't believe in ethical business practices.

It would be nice and simple if the whois display were the same across all TLDs (ie. domain extensions), but they're not.

A basic right is for the domain to be registered to you and under your control.

That means that the domain details should show yours. For example a .ie domain registered to me shows:

status: Active
nserver: NS.BLACKNIGHTSOLUTIONS.COM
nserver: NS2.BLACKNIGHTSOLUTIONS.COM
source: IEDR

person: Michele Neylon
nic-hdl: ABG182-IEDR
source: IEDR

person: Blacknight.ie Hostmaster
nic-hdl: AAM456-IEDR
source: IEDR

For some TLDs, such as .eu the command line whois will give out varying amounts of information and you may need to go to the web based whois server to get the full details.

In either case the registrant is listed somewhere, even if the public cannot see it easily.

If the registrant wants to move their domain between registrars that is their right.

Under ICANN rules registrars are obliged to provide the EPP codes to registrants in a timely fashion (bearing in mind that you cannot transfer newly registered .com's etc., between registrars immediately)

If they want to update their domain's nameservers then they should be able to do so.

Unfortunately this does not happen.

The reality is that a disproportionate number of companies are denying registrants basic rights.

In some cases they may be doing this by accident, but in other cases it is 100% deliberate.

There is no valid reason for your web designer or developer to put their details all over your domain. None.

If you have asked your designer / developer to register a domain for you and paid them for it then it should be registered to you (which is one of the reasons why .ie domains are attractive!).

Over the past couple of years I've seen some crazy things, including a particular "registrar" that registers ALL .co.uk domains to themselves regardless of who has requested the domain.

Another company warehoused hundreds of .eu domains "on behalf" of their clients ie. in the hope that the clients would want to register the domains at some point in the future. Of course it wasn't clear if they would be charged a premium for this "service".

If a provider won't update the DNS for a domain then there is something wrong somewhere.

(If they can't update it due to the DNS not being loaded that is the registrant or their provider's issue!)

There's no good reason to delay handing over an EPP key.

If a registrant wants their co.uk domain retagged simply do it.

Why make people suffer?

Posted by Michele Neylon at 11:19 AM | Permalink

In case you haven't heard the cost of .com/.net/.info/.biz domains will be going up later this year.

I got an email from the registrar we currently use about the price increases last night, so I thought I'd share the news.

The price increase isn't welcome, but it comes from the domain registries NOT from ICANN or the registrars. Unfortunately the registrars have to pass on some of their costs to companies like ourselves (although we are an accredited registrar for several TLDs we still aren't accredited by ICANN).

We've always priced com/net/org/info/biz in a "sane" way. We've never been the cheapest in the world, but we've always been able to maintain our prices. This isn't going to change, though it does mean that our margins will be slightly tighter than before.

If you're used to registering domains directly with us, then you have nothing to worry about, as we don't intend to increase our prices in the foreseeable future.

If you're using other companies to register .com etc., then you may need to keep a watchful eye on their pricing. Some of the registrars have been pricing themselves so low that an increase will be inevitable. If you're using one of those registrars I'd recommend you look at renewing domains for multiple years now before the price increases kick in on October 14/15.

Posted by Michele Neylon at 10:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Over the course of the next few weeks I'll be doing an occasional series of posts on making the most of your dotmobi domain.

If anyone has any suggestions or ideas that they'd like to share please let me know!

The topics I intend to cover will include things like building a site, checking it, making money from it and any other topics that people suggest to me.

Posted by Michele Neylon at 11:44 AM | Permalink

What's the deal?
We are running a sale on dotmobi (.mobi) domains starting today.

How much will they cost?
Registrations of .mobi domains will cost a mere 10 euro per annum, so you can make big savings by registering your domain for up to 10 years.

What is .mobi (dotmobi)?

Dotmobi is the domain for the mobile web.

If a company publicises a .mobi site it should work on your mobile device and you should be able to make full use of it.

How can I test my dotmobi site?

You can test your .mobi site to see if it will work properly on a mobile phone using the ready.mobi suite of tests.

Who is behind dotmobi?

Dotmobi is supported by some of the biggest names in mobile and general technology including Ericsson, Google, GSM Association, Hutchison (3), Microsoft, Nokia, Orascom Telecom, Samsung Electronics, Syniverse, T-Mobile, Telefonica Moviles, TIM, Visa and Vodafone.

How can I register a .mobi?
You can check if your chosen domain is available by doing a search here

Posted by Michele Neylon at 9:35 AM | Permalink

Starting Monday 10th September 2007 we'll be running a special promotion on new dotmobi domain registrations.

I've mentioned dotmobi in the past.

It's the domain for the mobile web.

Forget about WAP - think of browsing and using the internet and online services on your mobile device - be that a Nokia tablet, an n95 or even on an iphone.

It doesn't have to be a painful experience!

In any case we'll provide more details of the offer on Sunday night / Monday morning.

Posted by Michele Neylon at 1:19 PM | Permalink

We registered a couple of .mobi domains earlier this year for two reasons:

• Brand protection
• Branching out
• We're a bit geeky!

As the .mobi registration rules are quite different to those of other TLDs we were going to be obliged to actually use the domain for mobile content of some kind (which is a good thing!).

However, after meeting several people from .mobi in LA and also talking to other people about the entire mobile space I thought it would be a much better idea to actually use the domains productively instead of merely shelving them.

So there are now two .mobi domains pointing at our mobile site.

I think we're the first Irish hosting company to put a .mobi site live! So that's another little first for us!

The site is not a copy of the main Blacknight site, nor was it my intention to even try to make it a copy of the current site.

It's sole purpose is it to provide some basic info about us if anyone happens upon the site while using their mobile phone.

At some stage I'd like to see us using the site to actually offer services, but it's not very high up on our ever-growing "todo list".

It would be nice to see more Irish companies embracing the .mobi TLD and doing "funky" things with their dotmobi domains, so if anyone has done something cool I'd really love to hear about it.

The guys from .mobi have found some really nice examples of mobile sites that provide useful information and services.

I was browsing some of their "picks" on my Nokia this evening (at no cost thankfully, since it connects to my wireless network) and I was truly impressed.

I've always loved The Godfather so I was delighted to see that Paramount's mobile site has plenty of content up for grabs. Unfortunately it won't work with an Irish phone, but I love the idea (maybe I can bribe an American colleague to get some of the content for me?)

So if you'd like to find out more about .mobi, then let us know or simply register one today - they don't cost that much!

Posted by Michele Neylon at 12:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)