Porn on dot-mobi

It's another sign that the mobile Web is really taking off and will soon be on a phone used by a teenager near you. "The .mobi domain is aimed specifically at websites designed to be viewed on mobile phones," the BBC reports. "The name was approved by Internet regulatory body ICANN last year, but businesses have not been able to buy one until this week." [The BBC adds that the Web's creator, Tim Berners-Lee, doesn't think it's a good idea. He says dot-mobi will have the effect of fragmenting the Web. He'd rather see sites designed so they can "recognize" the kind of device on which they're being viewed.] Another sign the cellphone Web is going mainstream is porn. With the porn industry increasingly targeting its content at cellphones, "many technology companies have begun developing real-time monitoring and filtering applications to block adult content from being viewed by underage cellphone users," the Wall Street Journal reports. It's not easy, though, the Journal adds. "Experts in blocking software say identifying porn on cellphones is much more difficult than on computers because wireless Web sites usually have very little text and the images are much smaller." So, although all the major US carriers offer some basic parental controls, none can actually offer real-time filtering as on computers. So far, parents have two choices: allow or disallow Web access on a kid's phone.