TechWire

Dotmobi heads for flopsville

Irish companies are ignoring a new internet domain name which was launched last week. According to industry executives, the take-up of dotmobi (.mobi) web addresses among Irish companies has been negligible, leading to fears that the new domain name may prove to be a flop.
"There isn't much from our customer base,'' said Eoin Costello, managing director of Novara, one of the largest Irish domain registry companies. "But it might be bigger in the US than in Ireland.''
But figures from dotmobi.org, the domain's official regulation body, show that just 13,000 completed registrations have been accepted, worldwide, for a dotmobi address.
"We got a few e-mails about it a while ago, but no more than 20,'' said David Curtin, chief executive of the Dot Ie Domain Registry (IEDR), Ireland's dot ie regulator.
Dotmobi has been developed specifically to help companies identify their websites as mobile phone friendly. The domain name is being backed by industry heavy hitters such as Vodafone, Nokia and Microsoft.
The low number of registrations could reflect scepticism about the value of online services offered to mobile phones. However, others have attributed the low interest in dotmobi to "domain-name fatigue''.
"There's no particular need for dotmobi,'' a senior lawyer for US telecoms company Verizon said in a statement last week.
"A lot of the new domain names just compound the problem of trademark infringement and fraud.''
Irish companies are still smarting from the negative experiences suffered during the launch of the doteu (.eu) domain name earlier this year. Thousands of companies reported instances of cybersquatting by internet fraudsters seeking to sell companies' doteu domains back to them for an inflated price. This led to companies having to engage in ``defensive registrations'' to avoid having their name registered by others.
"That concern will be there with dotmobi,'' said Curtin. "It is going to be a free for all. If there is one impact of the .eu landrush it is that a lot of companies were caught napping and there's no doubt that there are a huge number of defensive registrations.''
However, dotmobi.org has raised the price of dotmobi registrations to try and combat cybersquatting.
"I would hugely welcome dotmobi as a new domain, because it allows you to be mobile on the internet,'' said Curtin.
"When you combine that with the growth of wi-fi and 3G, it promises to let people be truly location independent.''

To HD or not to HD

About 4,500 Irish people have signed up for high definition TV services to date, according to Sky Ireland. The rollout has been slow and signing up to the service is expensive (extra subscription + new TV + new set-top box = €1,500 upfront). The most popular services have so far proven to be sport, reckons a spokesman for Sky in Britain.

Dyson launches a hand-dryer

Well, here it is -- Dyson's latest: a pub hand-dryer. The Airblade spins air around at 400mph and dries hands in under 10 seconds. It does, too -- the Dyson people wheeled one in to Sunday Business Post headquarters 15 minutes ago for a show 'n' tell.
It's completely touchless, activating once it senses your hands within the drying slot. That slot is 5.5 centimetres wide which the Dyson executive assured me would fit even the fattest, most obese hand -- that remains to be seen. It's meant for use commerically in pubs, restaurants and kitchens, which is reflected in the €850 (ex Vat) price. So far, The Westbury Hotel and Fitzers restaurant on Dawson Street have been using them as test clients.
In terms of the technology, it doesn't use a heating element, even though the air is warm, as the speed of the air circulating heats the air up naturally. So it uses a lot less electricity than a normal hand-dryer, because its motor is only 1600W (a normal hand-dryer is 2000W plus a heating element). It's also designed to cope with beer, puke, urine and anything else likely to be ejected in a public toilet (or restaurant kitchen).

McAfee lashes Microsoft

-- says that the Windows giant is making life more dangerous for computer users

Security anti-virus firm McAfee has taken out full page ads savaging Microsoft in some of today's British newspapers. The ad, which appears in The Financial Times and other journals, claims that Microsoft is shutting off access to the core of its new operating system, Vista. This means that anti-virus firms like McAfee can't write new programs aimed at Vista users. Vista will replace Windows XP sometime next year. The European Commission isn't impressed, with action against Microsoft over Vista now threatened.