Dot Mobi Domain extensions

It's coming soon so they say:

http://www.mtld.mobi/

Would you register a .mobi domain for your WAP site?

We will, I'm on the mailing list for this and as soon as they are fully released I'll be getting a few to cover our trading names.

What's everyone elses thoughts on this? Is it a good idea or will it never take off?

I remember I was at an XML conference a couple of years ago now. Tim Berners-Lee was talking to us about WML/XML and mobile potential. He was dead against the .mobi thing. I suppose:
1) because it is an extra character to type and
2) it means making multiple websites

The main thing is that content should be be different or scaled down dependent on device. A mobile users needs are different from the normal web browsers'. Having separate content for devices is necessary and I suppose the difference between http://www.site.com/mobile and http://www.site.mobi is negligible. The main thing is the purpose of the site. Phone or device capabilities such as SMS, amongst other things, need to be separated form normal web browsing.

However, content rendering dependent on device is pretty simple once you get the hang of it, or have focused exactly how you want to do it. There are a few applications that do this already : you mentioned WURFL already, I am sure that would allow most people to achieve at least some device separation or rendering that would fit the needs of most people. Why guess if there is a .mobi on that domain name or not?

Domain names in general are a bit of a strange issue I feel. If I want to go somewhere I always type in NAME and CTRL+enter when I am using a web browser. However, when I was speaking to a few friends back home, they will try the .co.uk domain first. Times are a changing!

So, to answer you question in a long-winded sort of way - I won't. I have a mobi.domain.com subdomain already for mobile devices, but any device can view my www site. But then again, I am not selling anything yet. Time will tell......

Well I have to say I agree that it is an extra character to type, I think .mob would have been a much better move.

I often to the same CTRL+enter trick and if that fails just go *****.co.uk

.mobi may be specific for mobile devices but this will result in people bagging the domains and just building a normal website there, in pretty much the same way as the .eu is supposed to be for registered trademarks, being an honest bloke I actually never registered ringtones.eu and ringtone.eu as they are not our trademarks. I whois'd them sometime back and had the ordering scren up. They could have been mine.

Someone went and got them the next day, nor were they their trademarks. People will just treat it as another dot thingy I think. It will be abused.

You're right about the multiserving, it's easy once you get the hang of it. WURFL and WALL do help but it may be beyond the scope of many who would struggle with WML let alone have to get to grips with a tag library. I will say it's worth every penny!

I don't like the idea of it, it offers no advantage really to either the user or the publisher, it's just add to the confusion of is it a.com, .net,.biz, .eu etc..