.mobi: The internet in the palm of your hand

The mobile community has launched the dot-mobi suffix for the growing number of websites designed to be accessed on a phone or PDA.

The Mobile Top Level Domain Initiative - a collective of industry heavyweights including the likes of The GSM Association, Microsoft, Nokia, Samsung, T-Mobile and Vodafone - has created a new joint venture to run the administration of the domain under policies set by Icann.

The venture, known as the mTLD Top Level Domain, will look after the registry of addresses for the dot-mobi domain during the next 10 years with domain name registrations expected to begin in the first half of 2006.

Following a 90-day sunrise period, where trademark owners will be allowed to register domain names relating to their brands, URLs will be distributed on a first come, first served basis.

As well as using the dot-mobi suffix to alert mobile users to websites that are optimised for viewing on handhelds, the mTLD Initiative is hoping to get web developers to tweak sites for phone users by offering style guides and best practice notes for building the dot-mobi websites.