Obama mobi
Senator Barack Obama, the Democratic Party candidate for President of the United States, is now using a dot mobi domain name to reach supporters and potential supporters on their mobile phones. ObamaMobile.mobi is the latest in a series of technology tools implemented in the campaign to keep in touch, along with text messaging, facebook (Computer Link), twitter, LinkedIn (Computer link), and a myriad of other Web 2.0 tools.
Obama’s mobi site includes a biography, news, wallpaper, an option to forward to a friend, and a political poll where users can provide their opinion to the candidate. There are also sections for videos and ringtones.
For the developers reading this mobi blog, the Obama mobi site uses tables for structure (perhaps the next version will use CSS) and therefore appears to be designed for iPhones and Blackberry devices, both of which can view tables for structure (a fail on ready.mobi). The Obama mobi site scores 2/5 on ready.mobi. It also has a fail for page size, which means people who do not have unlimited data plans may find themselves with a large phone bill after downloading the site. On the plus site, there appears to be different graphics sizes, which may indicate there are separate files for device detection.
The decision for Senator Obama to use a .mobi site over a .com mobile name is another milestone for the young domain extension. We’ll keep you posted.
