Surf any .com with a text message?
A company called DotGo has launched a service it says will enable mobile phone users to access specially built web-based services using SMS text messaging.
This is (borderline) relevant to the domain name industry because DotGo has obtained the phone numbers that spell out DOTCOM, DOTORG, DOTNET, DOTEDU and DOTGOV when typed on handsets.
Using the system, developers use the company’s custom markup language to create a text-based service, for example a news feed, which they dump into their web server’s root directory.
Consumers can then access this service by sending the name of the service’s domain, minus the extension, to the number 368266 (DOTCOM).
So for cnn.com, you’d send the message “cnn” to 368266. CNN would then reply with a list of headlines from its RSS feed, say. You’d then reply with the number of the story you want to read.
Or you could text “weather 94110” to the same number to quiz weather.com about the forecast in San Francisco.
If this sounds overly complicated, there are a few demos you can try in a normal browser that may explain it better.
The DotGo service has been around for about 18 months, but it’s only today that the company has launched its suite of tools for developers.
The service appears to be ad-supported, free to both developers and users at the basic level with subscription-based upgrades available.
It’s all very clever, but will anyone want to use it? I hear there’s a thing called an “iPhone” nowadays that does a pretty good job at bringing the web to mobile users.
The service seems to be only available in the US (though the web site is pretty vague on that count) and no, DOTMOBI isn’t an option.
Recent Comments
"Company well-known for abuse of personal data has insatiable appetite for personal data" - what a surprise.... read more
If 7 figures for MMX includes a decimal point you may be accurate. At this point with the success of new TLDs , could ... read more
SO what you are saying is most don't defend, but when they do its expensive and they win. So in most cases the ones that... read more
It is still in their Universal Terms of Service: "GoDaddy also reserves the right to charge you reasonable “administr... read more
In point of fact, several registrars charge their customers an administrative fee for handling UDRP disputes. -----... read more
The idea of having respondents pay $500 has a couple of flaws. First, in many of these dead-on cases the respondent n... read more
Respondents also incur an economic cost when due to a UDRP process with multiple layers of bias in favor of TM interests... read more
"Registrants, on the other hand, pay only for their own defence, if any." Mr. Wood ignores the fact that domain regis... read more
The key factor in the decision was a "Teflon survey" demonstrating that 75% of consumers associated booking.com with a p... read more
Page, see a separate comment below where I basically expanded on your statement, and presented an example where such a d... read more