mycrappyphpapp.com/listings/smallbusinesses/flowershops/indenver?flowershopid=2409987

cuz that would fit real nicely on a window decal.

You say it is senseless to spend $10 for a .tel domain. Isn’t it more senseless to spend $30 for a box of business cards for an employee, of which he gives out half before you promote or fire him and have to do it all over again for a replacement?

Just because it’s a simple idea, doesn’t mean it’s a stupid one. In fact, usually it’s the opposite.

At the risk of disagreeing with Michael Arrington and looking stupid, I think dot tel has real value in the way in which you can organise your personal information, display it and have it accessed.

Where I agree with him is that its too expensive. From what I have seen, it’s going to be more than $10 even during the General Availability phase that starts in March.

Whilst dot tel is undoubtedly a clever system, they are still asking people to pay a not unsubstantial annual recurring charge indefinitely – when you can currently just use other free online address books, where you can be found via Google on a name search. Most people use Google when they want to find other people.

For instance, you can get a free listing at WikiWorldBook which enables you to be easily found via Google, and messaged via the website. You can publish as much or as little of your contact information as you want.

The website’s message gateway allows users to be contacted without having to reveal their email address. After checking any messages for spam, the message system forwards on the messages to the registered user’s email account, so they don’t have to return to the site. Uniquely, the person contacting them doesn’t have to be registered, thus enabling people to reconnect as easily as possible.

Social networks are still walled gardens – they are not a reliable address book tool where you can be contacted by anyone.

Ben Leefield
CEO
WikiWorldBook

I think you think you know more about Google than you actually know.

You speak about facebook connect, microsoft passport/live solution, openid, … all of these are effectively also plateforms to store your personnal information.

BUT, the real difference, is that information in .tel is not owned by any company nor government, you don’t need to wory about whether someone can access your data or not, whether a company may exploit them to sell them or not, …
In fact, noone owns your information but you, as it is directly stored in the DNS with a 1024bits encryption system.

The encryption system garanties you a very secure way to store and share your contact information.
You manage every information as you want : you have a public profile and as many private profiles as you want, since you can personnalize information access for each contact.

I really think that .tel is the first legitimate solution to store your personnal information, that can be used as a business card, or as a login system that shares information you allow with every websites you decide.
And you right, it is not possible to store multimedia content in .tel. .tel is a structured page directly stored in the DNS which means that every software, terminal or service can use the information very easily.
Actually, .tel links an address to an identity, other extensions such as .com, .net, … links an address to a website.

I support .tel as I see it as a really new opportunity, both for me and my company.
It can be use as :
- a businesss card easy to remember and secured
- a public directory for compagnies, with limited information
- an internal directory secured and linked to the information system
- and, moreover, .tel is optimized for search engine, as Google shows .tel results in the first position

So please stop blaming this new extension !!! .tel is really not another one like .com, .name or .me. It’s something else…

(Or at least it will until they realize that’s not profitable, give up, and make it just another unrestricted domain. ICANN should be ashamed of itself for continually approving trick domains that nobody wants.)

or LinkedIn Group:
http://www.link...&gid=770077

Old Times…

http://news.cne..._3-6072888.html

So you should probably be safe from spam for a little while.

From that point on I want it to automatically update and synchronize on every address book I have including Outlook. And of course, when I reciprocally give out my name/handle/ID, I want to control exactly who sees what, with only a couple of seconds of management.

I don’t care what underlying technology does this as long as it’s reliable, safe and I have full control and ownership. If there really is something other than .TEL that offers this (free or not) please let me know.

How short-sighted do Techcrunch’ers want to be?

Yes, this is like dot.name and dot.me, except that it multi-platform.

Unlike Facebook Connect and it’s peers, it’s also not proprietary, in the way they’re a black-hole.

People seem to have made their judgments by looking at the profile page linked above, in a few seconds, but the point is, that in the future all our communications for everyone will be IP-based, and by giving out the dot.tel address people will be able to contact other people without recourse to specific platforms or service suppliers, much like a “follow-me” number or the less advanced Grand Central.

They’ll get connected whatever way they choose and is available.

Yours kindly,

Shakir Razak