.tel, what the tel am I missing?
A few friends have added the new super trendy .tel domain to their already super trendy .mobi domains. I had a long twitter discussion with Michele Neylon of the Blacknight who host this blog and come highly recommended on the pros and cons.
Michele suggested that I give it a try and gifted me a .tel domain
Well here it is
What happens now?
This is the part I really don’t get, the people who already have my contact details now have them in a different place
What the .tel am I missing?
Any thoughts?
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Chi.mp does all of this and more already. I don’t think .tel is particularly useful.
Pat, I agree that one can share one’s contact details in other places. Indeed one can use technologies like OpenID to identify the requester (last time I checked, .tel uses its own identity though they could also use OpenID) and share specific set of information.
There is another advantage: storing in your own page will inherit your page rank status; it is not clear how .tel will inherit your page rank or how to influence .tel’s page rank. This will have direct impact on general discoverability.
Finally it is not clear how dynamically the information in .tel can be changed. For example, it will be nice to emulate single number service that is available from services like Google Voice. It is simple to do that if the information is stored in your page and your contacts query your page every time they want to call you.
Hi Pat.
You can point people to your .tel as a place where they can always find your preferred contact numbers & methods. Easily accessible from any internet enabled device with click through on all contact methods. No HTML to slow down page rendering or cause pages to mis-format on some devices.
Profiles to allow you to change what’s available when & privacy to protect specific data from allcomers. No reliance on third party websites that come & go. No need to decide which contact details to give people – just tell them to go to your .tel.
You could create a page with your local MAXroam numbers, e.g. local.patphelan.tel, so your contacts can easily find their local number for you.
Lots of reasons to use a .tel!
Interested in how well they will integrate with outlook and win mob, ability to search from email/phonebook for a contact you don’t have details for and send email/call without having to do an internet search for their site/details and copy/pasting their details.
trying out the plugin available for outlook 2003, search for patphelan, get a lookup error, and only very limited info pulled down from your extensive .tel.
Would be handy if it worked properly, screenshot @ http://markvader.com/pics/patphelandottel.JPG
Seems to work for a few people, info returned matches web.tel e.g. michele neylon
Off to look up some more internet celebrities and add them to my phone book.
Mark
Welcome to .tel! While there are other similar effect products on the web, there’s nothing else like .tel. Once the platform is completed, you’ll notice why .tel is so revolutionary.
While sites like chi.mp consolidate your online social bookmarks, only .tel is accessible from any device with click to connect features.
It seems a similar mis-direction of talent and effort as dotMobi. .tel and .mobi have good ideas and best practices that should be applied to existing domains, not a whole new TLD.
Hopefully we can copy the good bits of .tel and start applying them to our existing domains.
An excellent post, and a better question. I’ve been in on the Chi.mp beta for a while now, but have yet to really figure out what it’s for. Anyone who finds me online in the various places usually ends back up at RickyCadden.com, where there’s a prominent ‘Contact Me’ link at the very top. Of course it’s email, but my email goes to my phone, which is always on me – there’s no reason they should have any other form of contact, IMO. Email me with your number and a quick reason for me to call, and I likely will.
I don’t see the point in purchasing another domain, just like I don’t see the point in purchasing a .mobi when I can give you a mobile-friendly version of my .com just as easily.
The trouble here is going to be a lack of standards. In theory routing calls by dns sounds like a good idea but if we need to use different vendor specific solutions there could be slow takeup. Nominet in the UK are trying to put something out there as well called Enum http://www.nominet.org.uk/enum
Lets watch the space…
I guess the .tel is to provide a very easy way for people who don’t have your contact details to access them – but with a website in your name i don’t know that people couldn’t look there. The privacy option does allow for people to be able to grab more contact ways if you give them the password but, so far, none of this is enticing me.