SOSSI Goes Mobile
R S Frank

So you're getting ready to go to your local stamp bourse.  You've made a list of the Levy cachet numbers you need and off you go.  At the show you are lucky enough to find some Scout cacheted covers buried deep in a dealer's long lost box.  But the Levy numbers for these covers aren't identified.  Is this 18e which you already have, or the similar appearing 25d which is on your want list?

Help is on the way.  Simply direct your cell phone to www.sossi.mobi, make a few clicks, and you know.  SOSSI has moved a few thousand images of Scout stamps and covers to a newly created web community of sites with internet pages designed to be viewed on mobile phones.  You can try it on your phone right now and let us know what you think.

mobi Home Page Nokia N70     sample mobi Levy page Sony K750

What is this dot mobi?  While cell phones and the Internet are pervasive in today's society, few people are actually using their cell phones to surf the web.  Part of the reason is that accessing content on the web from a mobile handset is cumbersome.  Web pages were designed to take advantage of large screens and broadband speed.  The long download times, the massive amount of scrolling, the pull down, form, and text based navigation, and the large graphics have made phones and web surfing too difficult.

Dot mobi (.mobi) was created to address these problems by creating a new domain of sites which cater to the mobile web visitor.  The .mobi community is intended to remove these barriers and encourage site providers to make their content more easily accessible on mobile equipment.

Whether or not dot mobi (or the upcoming dot tel) will catch on with users is in question.  The design standards are immature and few sites are currently available.  But phones are becoming more capable and mobile phone use is becoming more prevalent.  One principle remains constant.  SOSSI will continue to search for ways to assist their members with adapting technology to improve the Scout Stamp collecting experience.