The Love Train

Adding to the Dot Tel launch hoopla was the infamous Ben.tel video depicting two hormone-laden Brits fighting for the attention of an uptown blonde – all while riding an intercity train. The one who scribbled “Ben.tel” on the window with his opponent’s latte won the girl.

If I only had one domain name, why it should be a .TEL

Sure, sure, I get why you wouldn’t have a website — I’m in small business myself. But if you (or your neighbours’ 15yr old) has the savvy to set up a wordpress account or a hotmail account or a facebook page, etc, then you can have a website + email on your own domain. And NO, it’s not going to cost you an arm and a butt cheek.

I bought my very own .TEL a few months back. My intent was to get a .MOBI – the reasoning being that I don’t really want to “mobilfy” my existing website. My personal website is pretty, well laid out and *BIG* (heh, my webpage is bigger than your webpage). Despite it being friggin awesome, it’s not too happy on a mobile device.

When doing the research, I found there are a number of restrictions on the .MOBI domain, which, if I’m not mistaken is probably the most restrictive of the TLD (top-level-domains). But when I stumbled on the dotTEL TLD and found out how you don’t need a web-host at all and it’s mobile friendly out of the box, well, lets just say that I *nearly* shat my pants.

Wait, wait — hold on. The domain name you buy with a .TEL extension requires no hosting? Yes. What’s more, is that it’s easy to set up, they have a wack of features and are constantly updating their service.

But what is it? I don't understand.

It’s like an online business card. Instead of handing someone a business card with all your info, send them to this page where they can view and interact with all your contact info. Store your phone number, fax number, facebook account, twitter information, ANYTHING! Somebody visits http://yourname.tel in their browser (PC/Mac/Phone/iPad/XBox/Wii) and they have all the details they need to hook up for a beer (business meeting or otherwise). I have a QR code on my business card so if I meet you, you scan it with your phone and a few swipes of the finger later, you’ve got all my details stored in your phone.

To the meat: Why a .TEL domain?

the meat: Why a .TEL domain?

* Low cost; $20/yr total. That’s less than $0.08 a day. Trust me, I used a calculator
* Easy; my grandmother could do it — no, really, that spry old bag has a .TEL domain
* Mobile; view or manage the site from a phone
* Expandable; use the same single domain for all your family members, or employees
* Sharable; links with social sites, creating a central “contact point” for you or your business
* Untapped; there are sooooo many .TEL domains still left, don’t miss out on your perfect vanity domain name!
* Monetize; use your Google Adsense account to display ads and make money
* Fast; get a professional looking website set up quickly and forget about it
* Convenient; a potential contact can download your details directly into their phone
* Customizable; change various settings to make it work the way you want, even add GMail for Domains to it!
* Safe; spam free, if you want it to be. You can choose to list in the .TEL directory, display all your information publicly or even hide certain information from public view unless the person requests to be a “friend of yours“


A case-study:

So, let us say your last name is Babbaganoosh. You have a big family run business, a butcher shop. You’ve been quoted $1,500 to have a vanity website and email address with some pictures of your shop and a customer order + contact page, etc. It’s just not in the budget in this economy.

So, cousin Vic says “I’ll bet you a porter-house I can make a website for the shop in 20min” – you take the bet, of course, because you want to see this joker sweat.

You set the timer and Vic pulls out his iPhone (of all things) to go to UseYour.Name and orders babbaganoosh.tel – after watching him fumble with his sausage-like fingers, you let him use the office PC and watch intently over his shoulder.

Some activation emails arrive and he confirms them and logs into the “control panel”. He creates pages for “butchershop.babbaganoosh.tel” and “pappa.babbaganoosh.tel”, “mamma.babbaganoosh.tel” and “cousinvic.babbaganoosh.tel”

He fills in the info for the “butchershop” page and finishes with 4min to spare. ”I want it cooked properly too.” he says at you, your mouth ajar. How did your Aunt Bella’s idiot son pull this off?! WTF? He put a little blurb at the top, picked a different template and even put a Google map of the store’s location on there.
Sold!

Sold!: Now what?

Good question. Start by getting your own vanity domain name. I’ll be posting all sorts of how-tos, videos and whatnot, so keep in touch (facebook, twitter, RSS, comment here, whatever). My customers love me, you will too. ;)


Source:
http://why.useyour.name/2010/06/08/why-dot-tel/

.Tel in eine gleichlautende .Mobi einbinden

Soeben habe ich eine neue Theorie ausgedacht, bei dem man eine .Tel-Businesskarte in eine gleichlautende .Mobi Handywebsite einbinden kann:
Die Kosten für das Einrichten und Unterhalten einer .Mobi Domain, wären somit so tief wie nur möglich, und das kann man als Laie selber bewerkstelligen.
Der .Mobi benutzer bekommt dann eine .Tel-Website zu sehen.
Der Benutzer wählt eher eine .Mobi, weil ihm diese Domain bereits vertraut ist. Da das Redirekting auf eine .Tel zur Zeit technisch nicht möglich ist (weil man keinen eigenen Host hat), wäre hiermit ein Problem schon gelöst.
Siehe auch die Diskussion:
http://www.toutpointtel.fr/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=222
Fazit: So schnell, einfach und kostengünstig, hat noch Niemand eine .Mobi Webseite erstellt und online eingestellt.

Es macht nun auf einmal viel Sinn, .Tel und .Mobi Domains zu registrieren (vorzugsweise, paarweise, mit je einer anderen Domain-Suffix .mobi/.tel).

In anderen Worten, heisst das, dass man viel Traffic auf seine .Tel-Data erhalten kann, aber nicht auf seine .Tel-Domain selbst. Was auch nicht allzu schlimm ist.

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Integrate .TEL into your Website using iFrames

Since the release of .Tel last year, many people have asked "what can I do with my .Tel name"? There are many great ways youmcan use it, but here's a new development that got me excited.

Telnic recently released a string of code to easily integrate .Tel on your website using iFrames.

An iFrame tag (eg. <iframe> ) defines an inline frame that contains another document.

The code is EXTREMELY easy to incorporate and took me less than 2 minutes to setup (no joke) on my personal website which uses a modified WordPress blog template. 

Take a look: http://ramifilms.com/contact

By integrating your .Tel name into your website you can effectively change your contact information simply by updating your .TEL. Once it is setup, you just login to your .TEL interface and make changes to your contact information and you are done.

Picture a company with 100 employees who each use a .Tel name. By integrating all their Tel names on one website, you can easily build an online directory that is independently updated by a 100 different individuals.

Can't picture it? Here's an example of a small .Tel directory embedded into a Webnames.ca WebBuilder site.

To embed your .TEL into your website, just follow Telnic's easy integration instructions:http://telnic.org/tools-website-integration.html.
 

Source:
http://blog.webnames.ca/tel/

.tel of the Week: ecycler.tel

To demonstrate the functionality and what can be achieved with a .tel domain, Telnic will be selecting examples, which it will promote on this page. We are primarily interested in .tels that are helpful, well-populated and discover innovative ways to keep in touch.

This page will feature a new .tel domain each week. Please note that ".tel of the week" is not sponsored by any .tel domain owner, and is based exclusively on arbitrary choice of Telnic as the registry operator. If you would like your .tel to be featured on our site, please write on our forum. Not all submitted domains will be featured.


.tel domain: ecycler.tel

Description: – innovative recycling business

Link: http://ecycler.tel/

Converting from Dot Mobi to Dot Tel: Mobile users tell their story

I guess it has been about 3 years ago I started working with the mobi domains. For my windshield repair business, it seemed like a natural fit. After all if you’re out on the road and you get a chip on your windshield, you could get the information you need on your cell phone.

I knew though, that there was one weakness to the mobi domain; it was a website that could be set up with a sub-page written for mobile devices. Some examples of an alternative way to create mobile content would be, ”m.example.com” or “example.com/mobile”.

As I see it, another problem was a host that would provide the program to meet mobi specs. Besides being limited at best, I was faced with either a good price and limited ability, or a high price. To solve the problem, I found an open source that cost nothing as long as I provided the storage. The storage wasn’t an issue as I have 40 gigabyte of storage through my company’s website host, not to mention several hundred gigabyte of bandwidth each month. When you consider, that by mobi specs, a page is limited to 20 kilobytes of data, using my existing host for storage wouldn’t be an issue.

As time has progressed, cell phones have gotten better and can handle a lot more data. This I believe has had an effect on mobi, because the restrictive requirements aren’t needed for the newer smart phones. As a result earlier this year, dot mobi was sold. Based on what I’ve read about the reason for the sale and all of the above issues, this showed me that storm clouds were forming.

Dot tel, another domain, also is a way to provide mobile content at a competitive price. Shortly after the dot tell domains were opened for sale to the public I purchased a dot tel for my windshield repair business and have seen my business grow due to customers using it on their cell phones.

Since the mobi sale, on several occasions I found a portion of all 3 mobi sites I have, didn’t function properly. On every occasion I had to go in and fix code that mysteriously had changed. While I know that the change of ownership of the domain had nothing to do with the code problems, it appears there are more issues.

Recently I received notice that the open source provider of the mobile program would soon be charging for the service. That in itself wouldn’t be a problem, the price being charged is. How ridiculously high? Well consider that the storage and bandwidth is a very small fraction of what I use for a conventional website. Yet the cost to keep my mobi sites up would be nearly 2 ½ times what I pay for my conventional website.

Okay, the question then becomes what should I do with WipeOutMS.mobi. Moving that material to WipeOutMS.tel was one option. Placing the material on OnCell411.tel another site I own that is dedicated to providing information while out on the road was a second choice. I had placed MS information on the mobi version of that website.

After thinking it over I decided to merge the information on WipeOutMS.mobi with OnCell411.mobi and put it on OnCell411.tel. Doing this I believe will create more awareness of multiple sclerosis (MS) and help the cause. A second reason is that to get to MS events you need to travel, and this website is designed for travel.

So what becomes of the old mobi domains? Well I’ve pointed OnCell411.mobi at OnCell411.tel, so if you use OnCell411.mobi you will end up at the new website. WipeOutMS.mobi is another story, efforts to redirect that domain with the current registrar has failed. A transfer to another registrar is taking place which will give me total control of the domain. I expect that to be completed by the coming weekend. Finally when I tested the new website with ready mobi it scored a 4, which means it will still load on most cell phones.

OnCell411.tel is still under development so if you have a problem please let me know. My hope is that this project will bring more MS awareness and more support to find a cure to Wipe Out MS-like diseases like polio has been.

Source:
http://www.wipeoutms.com/blog/_archives/2010/6/28/4565478.html

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