The .TEL Discussion Thread

[brendan52190]

Hi

For this, let's assume that .tel will not be a total flop.

What type of keywords will be most valuable for this extension? Will it be geographical keywords, like newyork.tel, losangeles.tel, etc, or what else?

 

[tech4]

Ofcourse it does make sense that a country with more cell phone usages does have more internet usage. But to what extent like how many hours on the cell phone going on internet would be questionable considering the limitations in which you agreed that cell phones today are not made for internet and does not cover the same breathe of information.

Why would distribution through DNS be a killer feature is cell phone access is limited (speed, accessibility compared to computer conveniences)?

What kind of market do you think the .tel will take? I think this is an important question that the registry hasnt' answer. They can boast that it will be development free, which to say is very limited. The important question is, how many ways to monetize the extension, and how many ways to use it. As of today, I think we have a problem with bottle neck due to limitation of cell phone usage.

 

[plaggypig]

Ofcourse it does make sense that a country with more cell phone usages does have more internet usage. But to what extent like how many hours on the cell phone going on internet would be questionable considering the limitations in which you agreed that cell phones today are not made for internet and does not cover the same breathe of information.

Here's the whitepaper summary for 2008. I haven't read it myself yet, but I'll try and read it later tonight and write a shorter summary in answer to your questions.

Why would distribution through DNS be a killer feature is cell phone access is limited (speed, accessibility compared to computer conveniences)?

Because pulling (cached) records from your provider's DNS resolver beats trudging further across a network to grab a more cumbersome XML document. The result is that navigating a .tel directory structure becomes far more responsive.

What kind of market do you think the .tel will take? I think this is an important question that the registry hasnt' answer. They can boast that it will be development free, which to say is very limited. The important question is, how many ways to monetize the extension, and how many ways to use it.

There are just as many, and some different, ways of monetising a .tel domain than there are for any traditional web page. It's arguable that people actively seeing contact information are pre-qualified leads, closer to the sales stage than what we think of today as web surfers, who may be seeking information for an all manner of different reasons.

How many ways to use it? How important are telecommunications to our civilisation? The sky's the limit.

As of today, I think we have a problem with bottle neck due to limitation of cell phone usage.

I agree, there are problems, but this is changing rapidly.

Which country do you live in? Your experience with mobile internet would suggest to me that it's not North America or Europe, and/or that 3G is either unavailable or still prohibitively expensive.

BTW. In case you missed it, More SEO/SEM comments from Henri.

 

[tech4]

North America...unlimited web access plan. Verizon LG plan.

 

[plaggypig]

North America...unlimited web access plan. Verizon LG plan.

What kind of mobile device are you using? Have you seen the applications produced by Telnic for iPhone /Blackberry/Windows Mobile? I would be interested in your comments on any of them, if you're able to try them out.

 

[tech4]

I saw the applications for them.
I have not used it and I dont intend to due to my slow cell phone. I prefer to use my computer with a large keypad and faster speed.

What do you think about them plaggypig?

 

[plaggypig]

I saw the applications for them.
I have not used it and I dont intend to due to my slow cell phone. I prefer to use my computer with a large keypad and faster speed.

What do you think about them plaggypig?

I'd like to know your thoughts especially because of your complaints regarding the general slowness of access that you've experienced - wondering whether you might be pleasantly surprised

 

[tech4]

I be suprised if the internet has uses for dot tel.
Looks like I have wait.

So what's your thoughts on the softwares supported by .tel? Share your interesting thoughts about it.

 

[plaggypig]

I be suprised if the internet has uses for dot tel.
Looks like I have wait.

So what's your thoughts on the softwares supported by .tel? Share your interesting thoughts about it.

I can't offer a comprehensive review because I don't own an iphone/blackberry/wm device, but I've seen the iphone/blackberry apps in use and they look great.

 

[tech4]

Are you talking about the .tel app which you provided the link to look great or apps in general?

 

[plaggypig]

Are you talking about the .tel app which you provided the link to look great or apps in general?

I meant that I've seen the iphone and blackberry .tel apps in use, and they both look great. If you have one of these devices, you should definitely check it out.

 

[hasseily]

Speaking of .tel apps... I'm the guy who wrote the iphone ones. Currently I've got 3 of them in various stages:
- a sample very simple lookup app that showcases the use of an SDK I wrote for looking up .tel domains
- an app called LocateThem that reads your address book and finds friends with a .tel url, and tells you which ones are closest to you. It also allows you to look up their info and make calls.
- an app called My.tel that is pretty close to being your one-stop shop for managing your own .tel from your iphone.

I've used all the apps very often with my iphone 2G on a crappy (I mean CRAPPY!) GPRS connection in Lebanon of all places, and .tel lookups are snappy. The My.tel app relies on the HTTP JSON interface to the Telhosting software, so it's clearly slower, but still quite usable. I often change my contact data as I board a plane.

Anyway, they're not 100% there yet:
- sampleTelApp won't ever be released to the app store, it's just a sample app for developers
- LocateThem needs some refactoring (recoding) to remove a hack that I used to display embedded maps. I now have a much better solution. I'll also want to add privacy handling at some point
- MyTel needs me to finish privacy group management. If I'm not too busy at the ICANN conference here in Mexico City, I'll try to finish it there.

Whoever's got a jailbroken iPhone, you can point Cydia to the http://dev.telnic.org/iphone/ repository and pick the apps up from there right now.
I'll put My.tel and LocateThem on the app store as soon as I'm certain Apple won't punt them because they consider them "beta".

 

[siga]

I've been following the rate of registered .tels more and more of the ones I had for GA are being taken... to a rate of two or three of the names I had on my original list are left. One of the types of domains I was interested in were triple repeat letters. If anyone is interested I just ran a quick scan and all have been taken bar JJJ and HHH there were quite a few left last week.

So if you were holding out for rare combos such as this at GA. They probally wont be there.
Go get them if you have the funds and want to take the risk.

 

[phase111]

I was just about to secure kkk some time back when available and then it was gone a couple hours later when I decided to try and register it, what a shame...but not sure what I woulda done with it as im not a member, lol.

I've been following the rate of registered .tels more and more of the ones I had for GA are being taken... to a rate of two or three of the names I had on my original list are left. One of the types of domains I was interested in were triple repeat letters. If anyone is interested I just ran a quick scan and all have been taken bar JJJ and HHH there were quite a few left last week.

So if you were holding out for rare combos such as this at GA. They probally wont be there.
Go get them if you have the funds and want to take the risk.

 

[Billy2009]

I was just about to secure kkk some time back when available and then it was gone a couple hours later when I decided to try and register it, what a shame...but not sure what I woulda done with it as im not a member, lol.

Hehe, I love it!

jjj.tel is gone now.
Some LLLL.tel's left and many LLLLL.tel's left

For a bit of fun I started with xxxxx.com and kept adding x's until a .com was available. I got to about 12 before I gave up. How would you make money off xxxxxxxxxxxx.com? Is it given preference above xxx.com in search?

 

[justinhayward]

Hello all,

Sorry - I was indeed flying (not fleeing) to Mexico for the ICANN meeting, and we're here now.

I saw a request for our marketing plans in a thread further back. I'm not going to outline all of these in public and I hope you'll understand some of the reasons, especially regarding the ability to surprise people and gain further media coverage from the announcements.

You have seen that we've been well-funded. We have the budget and a strong team that is focused on making it a success. I will where possible keep updating the community - both supporters and skeptics - on our plans.

Regards from Mexico!

Justin Hayward
Telnic
justin.tel

 

[steveteva]

Agrrrrrrr, I'm very very very angry, all you here that don't believe on .tel must think twice.
.tel is a real success, I can tell you that I have a huge list of great generic and some are not even generic or in other languages (french, spanish, german...) and all was available 2-3 weeks ago. I did not check until today (have more time this sunday) and what a bad surprise, 75% of my list were not available!

Now I'm thinking cashing $300 per name for the rest of my list but unfornunately, I can't because I've just book my vacation to New Zealand with my entire family in a 5 star hotel Suite room and my Windows PC (I hate PC) at home is bugging every hours (blue screen and self reboot), have reinstall system 3 times now since january and change components but fail again so I have to buy a MAc Book Pro (I use mac at work without any problem). I'm stuck!

Hello all,

Sorry - I was indeed flying (not fleeing) to Mexico for the ICANN meeting, and we're here now.

I saw a request for our marketing plans in a thread further back. I'm not going to outline all of these in public and I hope you'll understand some of the reasons, especially regarding the ability to surprise people and gain further media coverage from the announcements.

You have seen that we've been well-funded. We have the budget and a strong team that is focused on making it a success. I will where possible keep updating the community - both supporters and skeptics - on our plans.

Regards from Mexico!

Justin Hayward
Telnic
justin.tel

Justin, I can't wait to see your marketing plan and I'm sure will work. I'm in marketing business since 1999 and visiting your telnic site and studying your business plan, I'm totally confident.

 

[AnthonyH]

Investment in the green economy is growing by the day and .tel is going to play its part replacing the wasteful paper trails. Marketing is going to be crucial and I am glad to read Justin's comments in this regard. However, all of us who have invested in .tel have a part to play getting the message out there that the digital phonebook has arrived!

 

[Tribulatio]

While I see the potential interest of .tel for some uses (starting with having one's own information available in one place and having just to print myname.tel on a business card, without the need to add anything else, at some point in the near future), I am somewhat perplexed by the idea of buying LLL or LLLL .tel names. If this can be shared, which kind of use do you have in mind when buying such names unless they are acronyms for your name or your company's name? If some who do buy such names could explain, this would interest me!

 

[Billy2009]

Just from a newbie; it is their limited supply (investment). And ease of remembering. I don't know if you would actually use it.

 

[Tribulatio]

Just from a newbie; it is their limited supply. And ease of remembering. I son't know if you would use it.

Thank you. That's obvious to me for other types of TLDs. But considering the use one can make for .tel, it is slightly perplexing - hence my question about uses people have in mind.