If you aren't yet versed in the .mobi language of mobile web browsing, the holiday shopping season may be motivation to brush up.

The URL extension lets you know immediately that a site is mobile-compatible. Often, if you go to a regular www site on your mobile you'll get re-routed to that entity's m. site. But with .mobi, you know you're getting direct access to the most expeditious mobile viewing.

Browse Amazon.mobi and read reviews before selecting books, software or music for a friend. Check out Modernist.mobi for home accessory gifts or ToyArk.mobi for educational toys.

Maximize your public-transportation commute by doing holiday shopping on your mobile. Save gas money and avoid the mall with handheld shopping. For more mobi site ideas, check out this showcase.

Think that takes Internet shopping to an extreme? Imagine what you could accomplish sitting in the car while your spouse stands in line at the superstore…

More on .Mobi
dotMobi is the informal name for mobile Top Level Domain Ltd (mTLD), the consortium charged with managing .mobi. Pushed by a number of big names in the high-tech industry - including Microsoft, Nokia, Vodafone and Samsung Electronics - .mobi won approval from the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) a few years ago.

Nokia first proposed a domain extension for mobile devices back in 2000, but ICANN rejected it because of the lack of technical details in the application. The phone maker persevered, garnering industry support, and re-submitted it as .mobi in March 2004.

.mobi has met with criticism, including from the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the group's director. They would prefer to have Web sites recognize when a mobile device access them, only sending pages that are optimized for handhelds to them, basically maintaining .com for all types of Web content.

Whereas .mobi works by creating two Internets in their opinion: one for mobile devices and one for desktops.