In 6 days you will be able to register .TEL domain names. But only if you have a registered domain name. If you don’t and just want to have a personal .TEL domain name you will have to wait until February 3, 2009.
The .TEL is different though. It won’t be used as ‘just’ a top level domain. The company behind this new extension, Telnic, has different plans and I’m not sure I totally get it.
What it comes down to is that you can buy a domain name but you won’t be able to use it for anything else expect to redirect it to their server where you will be able to host something that looks like a vCard. If people visit your domain in a browser or on a (supported) phone they will see your contact data.
Yep, that’s it. You won’t be able to use these domains for your blog, or host anything else on them.
Do you get it? I don’t. Maybe watching this video will help.
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UPDATE: The kind people at TelNic are taking the time to educate it in the comments and via email. I have received a test account here: thenextweb.vip.tel. Right now it isn’t working yet (“The server at telpages.pilot.tel is taking too long to respond.”) but that might be because the record is still new. The good news: I start ‘getting it’ now. As far as I understand now .TEL is basically LinkedIn or Plaxo for companies but with their own TLD. Sort of like if LinkedIn would start offering “boris.personal.info” as domain names. As Justin Hayward from .TEL mentions ”It’s difficult to introduce new uses of technology that have been around for a while and I welcome the opportunity to respond to your concerns”. So maybe I will ‘get it’ once they launch and I see it being used.
Failure by definition is my guess. But thanks for exposing this. Sometimes it is nice to hear that other companies or people have even worse ideas than I have :)
Hi Boris,
You’re more than welcome to sign up to a free trial by emailing vip@telnic.org to see the functionality. There’s also more information on Wikipedia including third party articles discussing the functionality that you might find interesting.
One point – the information is stored as data on the DNS, not on web servers. You’re pointed to a proxy page to get the contact information which is populated on the fly and personalized to the viewer depending on the relationship they have with the .tel owner (established through a universal password and friending mechanism, a little like social networking).
Thanks for posting though, and I hope you explore it a little further. Feel free to ask any questions.
Justin Hayward
Telnic
So it is like another telephone directory, but with room for website and skype-links and so on, where you get to buy the searchword to be listed under?
Hi Justin, in the example image we see the TelNic logo on that page. Can I put our The Next Web logo there? You mention here is “no branding whatsoever”. Do you mean no branding for you or me?
Also, generally successful standards/technologies are owned by no one expect the community. I get the impression that you are similar to a company like Plaxo or LinkedIn but with your own TLD. That surely gives you a head start but I users still have to adopt you and trust their data to you. Or am I wrong?
I don’t know Justin. The difference between “no branding at all” and “only the .tel logo” is huge to me. If I distribute my .TEL address people will start thinking I work at TEL.
Also, whether the data is hosted at the DNS or at the server makes a huge difference to you and every geek in the world but none to the end user. It is just hosted ‘somewhere’ and not at MY server. I see too much confusing information everywhere.
having said that, thanks a lot for taking the time to explain your product here and good luck with everything. We will be following your launch with great interest!
Hi Boris,
Thanks for the opportunity to explain further.
No – the proxy page is set, fixed and run by Telnic. Every .tel domain viewed either over a computer or phone browser is pointed to this proxy page. This is to ensure that the service is as fast and efficient as possible. When you view a .tel (e.g. telnic.tel) over a phone browser, you’ll see no branding whatsoever – just contact information that is ‘click to communicate’ – it’s all about communications, not web content. This is the main difference to every other top level domain. In fact, you can bypass the browser completely and search for .tel information directly from your address book using applications we’ve created (and which are free, open source and available in beta on http://dev.telnic.org) for the BlackBerry, iPhone, Windows Mobile and Microsoft Outlook. So it’s accessible over the web and under the web, without the need to host, maintain or build another website.
The second part is that .tel is an independent, supplier-agnostic, secure, dynamic, personal communications hub that today allows you to securely share your contact information by using just one address, accessible from any device connected to the internet. It’s far cheaper than a listing in a yellow pages directory for businesses, and technically much simpler for people to use to be discoverable online under their own domain than any other domain. Unlike other social networks, you don’t need to join a closed network to be able to access or share contact information securely with friends. It provides a granular level of security over your contact information so that only people you establish a relationship with get access to the information.
Just ask yourself – have you ever wasted time going through call centre automated systems waiting for the right option to click? Wasted time searching through websites to find contact pages for companies? Searched on Google to find cached or out of date contact information or had to pay money to see contact information in a contact directory only to find it was out of date or a middle initial? Not known a phone directory service when you’ve been abroad? Used mobile search abroad and got clobbered with the bill afterwards for the roaming contract? Or lost touch with someone simply because they changed numbers, moved locations or left Facebook?
The .tel addresses all of these issues and more. But it can be as simple as the one place to share your contact information, under your control, without the onerous terms and conditions of other social networks.
Everyone’s more than welcome to sign up for a trial account by emailing vip@telnic.org. And we welcome feedback.
It’s difficult to introduce new uses of technology that have been around for a while and I welcome the opportunity to respond to your concerns – many thanks again.
Justin Hayward
Telnic
Linda – yes to directory, no to buying keywords – you get these for free and due to the structured information, it’s search engine optimized as well. And it’s under your own control i.e. you can change the information any time you like, unlike other services. So if you move offices, jobs, drop your cell phone into a bucket of water and need to swap it, need to publish an emergency number or swap call centre numbers, etc you can and the information will be almost immediately accessible.
Justin
Hi Boris,
The .tel logo is the only branding that will be used on the proxy page. There are no other proxy pages bar this one and the mobile one (which has no logo on it – not ours or the .tel owners). The .tel logo is used to provide people accessing the information the knowledge that it is a .tel domain.
We’re absolutely opening this up to the community – both .tel owners and developers. All of our APIs are on our developer website for them to use. However, there are major differences between us and Plaxo/LinkedIn. Firstly, we’re not a web service, we’re an internet service. That means we’re not web-based, but you can access the information over the web. It’s not stored on web servers as html. It’s data in the DNS. And it can be encrypted, providing more security for the user (using 1024 bit encryption). Secondly, the .tel is supplier agnostic – the customer can move suppliers at will. Thirdly, the functionality within the .tel means that it has much more than just contact-sharing abilities – but more of that in the future. If they encrypt the contact information in their own domain, no one – not Telnic, not the registrar, not the viewer – can see it unless they share it with people. And finally, you don’t need to be a member of a closed network to gain access to private contact information from the .tel owner. They can share it with you under their own approval and at the level of a single piece of contact information. That means if you or I look at the .tel domain of a shared friend, you will see different information to me if they want to share different things. And that’s why it’s important to have the proxy page locked, as it’s populated on the fly.
Trust is obviously key. However, I’m delighted to say that the registrars selling the .tel are seeing great interest, pre-booking and excitement from end users. And as it’s search engine friendly, people will start discovering .tel information from February 3rd when the first domains go live.
Justin
Thanks Boris. The difference for the end user is when you access it over a mobile device, significant, in terms of data cost and speed. And the data (not the proxy) WILL be able to be stored on your DNS server in the future.
The .tel branding is no different from having Google at the top of a search page. The results come back in links and point you to the right web pages. I don’t think this is a show-stopper at all :-)
We’ll keep you posted anyway and thank you for allowing me the space to try to address your concerns – it’s much appreciated.
Watch Justin explain it all during DEMO: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=JnRwniqqiCE
It actually is Plaxo via the web!
Web bases, DNS based, it is all the same for 99% of all users.
If it works in a Web browser is is part of the web. Doesn’t matter of the protocol is RSS, FTP, HTTP or if the content comes from a DNS. In fact; by accessing a DNS server through a browser you could argue that you simply downgraded that server to act as a web server.
I understand that it makes your company more unique and valuable to position it like this but the downside is that it all becomes way to confusing for us, the end user.
And please keep commenting here. I’m sure people enjoy hearing from you.
It’s not web-based Boris, it’s DNS-based – we can bypass the web completely :-) And yes, Plaxo does some of the stuff that we do, but there’s much more to the eye (live location information, search engine optimization, key words, click to connect contact information, and the ability to personalize web services through API interaction under the secure management of the .tel owner) but it’s a neutral platform under the domain owners control.
Last word, I promise :-)
Try Skydur http://www.skydur.com/
Its much faster than other VPNs and proxies.
Its very simple, works out of the box, sets proxy automatically for you.
* Web surfing acceleration
* Anonymous web surfing
* Encrypted connection
* Starts as low as $16.99 (3 months service)
Well, maybe it is really cool but we just don’t see it? I hope someone will explain us what we are missing…
Thanks for explain it a bit further.
My first question: can users host the proxy page on their own server?
Second: What is the benefit for user to limiting this to just their contact data?