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TLD
08-21-2007, 06:29 PM
who says mTld does nothing.. this may serve for an interesting discussion. the whole thing seems too dramatic and both sides do not appear to use the proper tone. see who's throwing the tomatoes ...
:tomato::eek2::tomato::damnmate::motz::viking::fig ht:

http://www.gomonews.com/pushing_the_barrier/2007/08/five-reasons-to.html
August 17, 2007

Five reasons to hate dotmobi

Rating: cold, hot, ice-bloody-cold
by Bena Roberts (http://www.bkimedia.com/)
GoMo News is known for its wicked tongue – but because my mate Georgina Hart at Edelman (now also at Orange) raved on about dotMobi to me for so long – I gave in to pressure. Got a gomonews.mobi name and gave the whole thing a go.
We now own: http://bkimedia.zinadoo.mobi (http://bkimedia.zinadoo.mobi/) and http://www.gomonews.mobi (http://www.gomonews.mobi/)
So, what happens?
All bullish of my new domain and sexy new WAP design I start clicking around dotMobi sites and god only knows I must have signed up to something or another to warrant this response:

Bena – I was happy to read on your site that gomonews has gone .mobi, and thank you very much for your submission to the showcase. However, according to http://ready.mobi (http://ready.mobi/), gomonews.mobi is not .mobi compliant and scores only a 3/5 on the report because it does not use XHTML Mobile Profile and Valid Markup, and – conversely – because it uses frames. (And a side note: “www” is not necessary – nor in compliance – with dotMobi guides to make getting to a site easier).
For more information on making your site adhere to these specifications, please see http://dev.mobi/node/200 (http://dev.mobi/node/200) for XHTML Mobile Profile information and http://dev.mobi/node/198 (http://dev.mobi/node/198) for Valid Markup information. You may also want to take advantage of the templates at http://dev.mobi/node/10 (http://dev.mobi/node/10).
Also, I don’t know if you’ve tried the dotMobi Site Builder at http://site.mobi (http://site.mobi/), but it’s a very easy tool to use and to build sites. I’d be interested to hear your feedback.
Thank you for your understanding and for your ongoing interest in the .mobi domain.
-- Vance
Vance P. Hedderel
Director, PR and Communications
dotMobi (mTLD Mobile Top Level Domain Ltd.)

Earth calling dotMobi.. can you hear me?
What we think?
Five reasons to hate dotmobi
1. This is pure arrogance
2. GoDaddy – where I purchased the domain did not tell me anything about the www issue. Was I suppose to guess this or do you need more than the two degrees that I have to get a dotMobi address.
3. How many links did he send me? Like I have time now to correct all of this and go back and sort it out?
4. *** ****** ************ ****!?! and I should have listened to Russell Beattie (http://www.russellbeattie.com/blog/)
5. Please feel free to add own comment here.
Lastly - I just checked and the site works automatically with or without the www.
see: http://gomonews.mobi (http://gomonews.mobi/)



Posted at 09:03 AM in Mobile Content (http://www.gomonews.com/pushing_the_barrier/mobile_content/index.html) | Permalink (http://www.gomonews.com/pushing_the_barrier/2007/08/five-reasons-to.html)
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Comments

I'm sorry that you found what was intended to be friendly note on helping make gomonews.mobi be the best possible mobile presence it can be as "arrogant."

dotMobi's site showcase submission form at http://mtld.mobi/sitesubmit (http://mtld.mobi/sitesubmit) -- where I received notice of your site -- says, "For consideration, all sites must receive a 5/5 on the http://ready.mobi (http://ready.mobi/) report and all sites must be compliant with .mobi standards and best practices."

I think your readers need to have that context to better understand the note I sent you (and you posted), which was in reply to receiving your site submission.

What is special about .mobi as a domain -- and no other formulation like mobile.site.com or site.com/mobile can offer -- is that we can police
sites for technical specifications to ensure that all .mobi sites work on all internet-enabled mobile phone.

This special feature of the .mobi domain was granted to us by ICANN to ensure that end-users always have a good experience when accessing a .mobi site. The compliance rules are simple:
1. XHTML Mobile Profile
2. No "www"
3. No frames

The note I sent was to indicate that number 1 and 2 above were not met.

You told me in a separate note that you constructed your site via a tool from a company called Wapple. While I see on their site that they say, "Wapple Canvas(tm) is already .mobi standard compliant," dotMobi has not actively worked with Wapple and cannot guarantee that its output is compliant.

dotMobi makes a free site builder available at http://site.mobi (http://site.mobi/) as do vendors like Nubiq and Akmin, all of which output .mobi-compliant content. (For example, your other .mobi site -- http://bkimedia.zinadoo.mobi (http://bkimedia.zinadoo.mobi/) -- is fully .mobi compliant and scores a 5/5 on the http://ready.mobi (http://ready.mobi/) report)

For your comment about "www," this isn't usually an issue; this was intended as an "FYI."

And in regards to your links concern, I sent five links, which -- if you develop mobile sites on a regular basis -- you will find useful. I can shorthand all of those into http://dev.mobi, (http://dev.mobi,/) the dotMobi Developer Forum, where this information is
contained.

These slight road bumps aside, I think you'll find the mobile web is a tenable proposition for many people. Since December 2006, more than 3.2 million pages of .mobi content have been indexed by Google, and I look forward to seeing how http://bkimedia.zinadoo.mobi (http://bkimedia.zinadoo.mobi/) and http://gomonews.mobi (http://gomonews.mobi/) progress as part of that content wave.

Posted by: Vance Hedderel, Director of PR & Communications (http://www.typepad.com/t/comments?__mode=red&user_id=1093604&id=79978113) | August 19, 2007 at 08:15 PM (http://www.gomonews.com/pushing_the_barrier/2007/08/five-reasons-to.html#comment-79978113)

Vance - thanks for your clarification - I didn't realise that I submitted the site or I forgot it. Its only that I have been really trying to support .mobi might have gotten the wrong end of the stick.
I suppose I should push bkimedia.zinadoo.mobi for showcasing then!
regards,
bena

Posted by: bena roberts (http://www.typepad.com/t/comments?__mode=red&user_id=1093604&id=80036297) | August 20, 2007 at 02:48 PM (http://www.gomonews.com/pushing_the_barrier/2007/08/five-reasons-to.html#comment-80036297)

Regarding the frameset issue, I can see that the way your url is configured is to use what is known as web forwarding.
Simply put, your site is running inside a frame rather than directly onto the page. IMHO this is a despicable practice and all domain name resellers that do it should be lined up and shot. I’ve been caught out in the past by this kind of affair and I can tell you from experience that it’s not nice.
I'd suggest that you contact whomever you set this up with to resolve the issue. Tell them that you bought the domain name and you would like it pointed directly at your site.
Once you fix this issue, there is one more thing outstanding. I notice that you are using the rss feed function to read in your news articles. In order to maintain compliance your rss feed must also be compliant with the rss 2.0 specification. I can see that one of your articles contains an ‘&’ which is not valid markup (rss is xml and requires &s to be encoded as ).
With these two issues resolved your site will meet the requirements.
The current site running beneath your gomonews url was built and is hosted on our earlier platform ‘Console’. Our new platform ‘Wapple Canvas’ (tm) has a number of advantages over this previous platform.
With Wapple Canvas (tm) you are able to create far richer mobile internet sites than on any other site building platform. I would suggest upgrading your site as soon as possible and our support staff will be happy to help.


Posted by: Rich Holdsworth (http://www.typepad.com/t/comments?__mode=red&user_id=1093604&id=80057339) | August 20, 2007 at 06:22 PM (http://www.gomonews.com/pushing_the_barrier/2007/08/five-reasons-to.html#comment-80057339)

Scandiman
08-21-2007, 07:17 PM
Fascinating to watch such a dramatic back pedaling by the OP. It went from 5 reasons to hate .mobi to , oh, I must have forgot I submitted it....BS.

Compliance is helping people make better mobile sites. Instead of learning from the feedback, the OP goes on a tirade.

Gerry
08-21-2007, 08:50 PM
Just go to show we got mo problems to work out and edumacatetion to be do.

Pred
09-16-2009, 10:42 AM
their mobi is looking pretty nice imo

www.gomonews.mobi

coast
09-16-2009, 11:53 AM
This does go to show why mTLD is nervous about enforcement, but I think Vance did an excellent job explaining compliance. Also, wapple is an expensive service (I looked into it), so one would hope they are giving a truly compliant experience. If they're not, I hope they fix it.

youmo
09-16-2009, 03:38 PM
Yeah this perfectly illustrates why enforcement is a problem. Imagine this kind of misunderstanding x 100,000 sites. mtld would become the scourge of the mobile web. No way Vance can correspond with all those companies to clarify. There would be a backlash.

I find Vance's emails to be perfectly fine, but as we have seen two parties taking offense at them recently- gomonews and pitchman (in another thread on this forum), I think maybe he needs to go that extra step in friendliness and tone of message?

Andres Kello
09-16-2009, 05:27 PM
This is over 2 years old.

What this case perfectly illustrated is not why enforcement was a problem but rather why not clearly informing your customers about compliance at the Point of Sale was a problem.

Any misunderstandings about compliance and enforcement can be attributed to a failure in communication at the POS (Registrar), nothing more.

Meeting compliance isn't difficult, but if the simple criteria is only alluded to via a link buried inside a 15,000 word agreement (https://www.godaddy.com/gdshop/legal_agreements/show_doc.asp?pageid=REG_SA&prog_id=GoDaddy&isc=goaz2001ai) at checkout that nobody reads, then there is your problem.

It is not fair to blame the customer for not doing something they didn't know (and were never explicitly told) they had to do in the first place.

If any of you don't agree, then please register a .mobi at GoDaddy (the largest .mobi registrar by far) and tell us where the 3 very simple Compliance rules are found.

Scandiman
09-16-2009, 05:34 PM
This is over 2 years old.

What this case perfectly illustrated is not why enforcement was a problem but rather why not clearly informing your customers about compliance at the Point of Sale was a problem.

Any misunderstandings about compliance and enforcement can be attributed to a failure in communication at the POS (Registrar), nothing more.

Meeting compliance isn't difficult, but if the simple criteria is only alluded to via a link buried inside a 15,000 word agreement (https://www.godaddy.com/gdshop/legal_agreements/show_doc.asp?pageid=REG_SA&prog_id=GoDaddy&isc=goaz2001ai) at checkout that nobody reads, then there is your problem.

It is not fair to blame the customer for not doing something they didn't know (and were never explicitly told) they had to do in the first place.

If any of you don't agree, then please register a .mobi at GoDaddy (the largest .mobi registrar by far) and tell us where the 3 very simple Compliance rules are found.

Agreed Andres, the age also illustrates the difficulty in implementing compliance after years of this poor communication. Not saying it couldn't be done, but is yet another factor that complicates things.

Accent
09-17-2009, 04:01 AM
1. XHTML Mobile Profile
2. No "www"
3. No frames

Completing a sale, from the seller's point of view, is a series of objections the customer puts up. The successful salesman resolves those objections, the honorable salesman accepts that sometimes an objection is valid and lets that sale go.

Before every single .Mobi domain is sold the customer, largely unconsciously, reviews their objections:

Do I need a domain?
Can I afford it?
What about a different extension?
Maybe I should think about it a while....

And so on. Compliance adds three more:
1. XHTML Mobile Profile
2. No "www"
3. No frames

No, it adds a whole range of additional objections:
What the he|| is XHTML?
That looks expensive.
Can my developer do that?
Will I regret buying this restricted domain?
But my other site uses frames - more expense? -- Or even possible to change?
What if my customer types in the WWW?

on and on. Each question is a barrier to a sale, each barrier causes a percentage of sales to drop away. Even the objections that are based on lack of information still lose sales. Think of drive through fast food. Who would have thought 50 years ago that people object to getting out of their cars to buy a burger - but remove that obstacle and you increase sales.

If there are solid reasons why compliant sites are better, and those reasons can be simply explained to both the domain buyers and their customers, then compliance becomes an attractor, bringing in business that otherwise would go elsewhere - but that is a huge education job for which DotMobi most certainly does not have the resources.

pcaero
09-17-2009, 04:52 AM
All very valid and good points.

Ultimately I think Paul put it best...Can’t find the post

Some companies will NOT make mobile friendly sites on their mobi’s.
Thus they will have little or no mobile presence and more than likely little to no traffic

I think Mobility.mobi might be the only exception as it's probably viewed 99% of the time on PC's
Even though it's pc and mobile friendly.

The audience/customer will dictate the experience they are looking for. They will gravitate to what is easy, readily available, and simple.

It be mobi / m.dot or anything else

gogo
09-17-2009, 06:30 AM
Yes, since this article there have been more on gomonews - here's the most recent - which also says they are preparing another article on this - http://www.gomonews.com/trouble-in-dotmobi-paradise/

Mobineer
09-18-2009, 02:25 AM
Yes, since this article there have been more on gomonews - here's the most recent - which also says they are preparing another article on this - http://www.gomonews.com/trouble-in-dotmobi-paradise/


Well, I have to admit....oh, never-mind ---- :dontknow: