Serendipity35

Do you know about .mobi? It's the top-level domain that is restricted to mobile devices and sites providing services for them on the mobile Web.

General registration for domain names - like njit.mobi - started in September, though industry members (it is sponsored by a consortium of companies including Google, Microsoft, Vodafone, Samsung, Ericsson and Nokia) got the first crack in May and trademark holders started registering in June.

Not much to look at online yet. Looking at those company sites, for example, turned up much of nothing, but Google (it figures) has some content. If you go to google.mobi (well, it's a redirect, but...), you can set up your phone to receive Google Mobile and use search, maps, Gmail, news and SMS (Short Message Service - AKA text messages).

Moodle even has a project going to allow you to access Moodle courses on your phone. "Moodle for Mobiles" is a project that currently targets Japanese mobile phones. 98% of Japanese phones utilize Compact HTML (CHTML) and MFM is a parallel interface to Moodle that works on a mobile phone.

I'm not sure anyone wants to - or should - take a course via their cell phone, but, using Moodle's "social forum" format, you could set up some interesting sites for clubs, teams, colleges and companies to deliver content and allow forums there.

Should universities be considering their .mobi presence? Absolutely. It may even be a bit late. Stop by a domain registration site like GoDaddy.com and put in your school and see if your school's unique URL is even available. As with other domains (like .tv, .net, .biz, .jobs), universities need to protect their "brand." Entrepreneurs have always bought up and "parked" domains in the hope of reselling them later.

Will colleges be delivering courses or their entire website for .mobi? Not any time soon, but they certainly should be ramping up for offering some content (admissions, news feeds, contacts, maps etc.) in the next year.