.TEL is Live!

General availability of .TEL domains went live yesterday and response so far has been overwhelming! The registry has done a great job promoting .TEL and has created this very entertaining video aimed at consumers. It illustrates just one way in which a .TEL domain might be useful for an individual. In a further savvy move by the registry, they are developing an iPhone application that will allow a user to access .TEL domains and edit information directly from an iPhone.

If, as a Reseller, you’re still a little unclear about the opportunities .TEL offers, have a look at Telnic’s page with videos of several media appearances, including CNN, Bloomberg Business News, CNBC and the BBC.

These are early days, and as with all new TLDs, there is no time like the present to encourage customers to obtain their desired domain name.

P.S. Here’s a link to the unbranded video if you’d like to use it on your own site.

http://www.gembiz.co.uk Brian Portlock

We have sold some of the .tel domains and we are getting feedback. Mostly, the customers can see the point of .tel and understand that it will become either a roaring success or a total flop, but the investment is small so they buy into it.

They do not like the maintenance panel.

Whatever possessed the designers to write it in javascript? It runs slow on FF3 and I dread to think what it must be like in Internet Explorer whose javascript engine is woefully slow. I am also not convinced that it underwent significant usability testing as it often fails to update values and sometimes people have had to enter information three or four times before it “sticks”. It could have been done in ASP or PHP and it would have been a lot “snappier”.

Finally, the presentation of information on the .tel page could be better. Some comments I have received are:

1. Have the company name properly spelt and at the top of the page.
2. The the phone in both international format and a formatted national format.
3. Have the Google map link on text rather than latitude and longitude.

I hope you can pass these comments on to someone who needs feedback
http://www.stopwatchweb.net Mike Goodman

I agree with all of Brian’s points. I just tried to decypher the telephone number one of our customers added to his .tel. I got it wrong. Human readable format as a separate filed, please.

Adding to Brian’s points:

The text at the top looks like a name heading. it is too far disjointed from the telnic logo to be part of the domain name. It SHOULD be the company or owner’s name with capital letters and spaces in the correct places. The “heading text” field is nothing of the sort. It is a free text field, the best use for which is as a description and it should be labeled as such. At least for businesses.

Brian is quite right also on what is labeled as the keywords field. Formatting for headings, at least bold letters, should be catered for and it does not go in first time of trying. Not only that but it appears in a different order each time.

What is the point of OSing javascript? What baloney. Ask them to code it properly so that it works as the customer intends rather than as their designers think – wrongly – looks pretty. No, tell them.

Overall, unimpressed. This has the potential to replace the plethora of useless directories around the web with telesales teams constantly pestering small businesses in the UK and probably elsewhere. It should also be an ideal opportunity for OpenSRS to get into the door of many new customers.

Instead it will be rapidly abandoned as word gets around about how awful it is unless Telnic’s senior management get onto the case quickly and get it sorted out.
http://opensrs.com James McNally

Thanks, Brian, for your comment and your support of .TEL. All good points. I’ve been informed that the code is actually open source although it hasn’t been released yet. The good news is that I’m sure someone will quickly make improvements to the interface.

.TEL is Live!

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