New .tel TLD Now In Use

rockwood reports that the .tel top level domain has been deployed, "in a first attempt at pushing the recently approved .tel... The top-level domain .tel was approved by ICANN as a sponsored TLD launching on Wednesday, December 3, 2008 to trademark owners of national effect and on February 3, 2009 to anyone who wishes to apply. Its main purpose is as a single management and publishing point for 'internet communication' services, providing a global contacts directory service by housing all types of contact information directly in the DNS."

Huh?

Is anybody else shrugging their shoulders and asking the same question of: What the hell is the point in wasting DNS space for such a half-assed crap idea?

Re:Huh?

Take a look at what's already out there [google.com]. Mostly over 500 Telnic employees grabbing henry.tel and david.tel. Yawn.

Its main purpose is as a single management and publishing point for 'internet communication' services ...

And right from the get-go it's main purpose is overshadowed by some every Telnic employee's desire to be THE Henry on the .tel TLD. That must be awfully helpful to us in our need for 'internet communication' services.

More garbage for the tubes, I guess.

What the hell is the point in wasting DNS space

Are we really concerned about "DNS space?" I guess I'm a bit of an idiot when it comes to why we need to be concerned about 'space' on DNS names ... perhaps you mean IP address space? And if so, people are basically flushing those down the toilet by giving every device one (including their toilet).

Re:Huh?

Perhaps by DNS space he means the fact that organizations who want to register their website under all the TLD's in order to protect their name will have yet another TLD. As the number of domains that point to the same IP address increases, so does the number of pointless DNS requests.

Re:

Take a look at what's already out there. Mostly over 500 Telnic employees grabbing henry.tel and david.tel. Yawn.

These all seem to follow a template. Obviously Telnic told all its people to create domains to help publicize the product. Teensy little mistake: the pages do nothing to obfuscate personal email addresses. Got spam?

Re:

MY toilet doesnt need an IP address. NAT is fine...

but it does twitter...

11:43 @lumpytoilet -- Dog drinks from bowl
12:14 @lumpytoilet -- seat put down
12:28 @lumpytoilet -- FLushed
12:29 @lumpytoilet -- FLushed
12:30 @lumpytoilet -- FLushed
12:31 @lumpytoilet -- FLushed
12:32 @lumpytoilet -- Plunger RFID detected
12:33 @lumpytoilet -- Water on floor detected

Half-assed indeed

I can understand something like the .XXX tld, for the purpose of openly idenfitying what a site is (and ease in blocking porn sites in school LAN's and such), but otherwise, creating this raft of tld's is a really silly idea. We've just now gotten to the point where most users don't think everything ends in "dot com". The proposed system of hyper-classification won't be a boon to anyone but domain squatters and con artists. And for the non-technical public, it'll be just plain confusing.

Even as quickly as i

.mobi?

sounds like .mobi. And probably as irrelevant.

Re:.mobi?

he got a whole TLD to himself? awesome...

Just in under the wire

Brilliantly "I CANN but I shouldn't" manages to win the dumbest, stupidest, most pointless idea of the whole sodding year.

I mean just having a "standard" of I don't know VCF and using MIMEtypes from a web page would give you the ability to do this sort of connectivity address book stuff within the existing infrastructure. Now the idea is that everyone should register an equivalent .tel (errrr how do they do that when there are different companies at the .com, .net, .org, .co.uk, .fr etc addresses).

Quite astonishingly badly stupid and I applaud their genius by making sure it will be in everyone's mind as the "worst idea of 2008" is compiled. The only person who might be happy about this is the 2000-2007 undisputed winning partnership of Bush/Cheney for their "Threatening China", "What Torture?" "What WMD?" "Mission Accomplished", "What problems in Iraq?" and many other household favourites.

As my mother said "Just because 'you can' doesn't mean 'you should'". I propose a name change to ICANN to "Please god no we can't be trusted with this responsibility"

wish i could tag

"dontaskdottel"

Uh, what?

How is that meant to work? I already use existing domain names for 'Internet communication' services, like email and IM. I can already use DNS to map telephone numbers to these with RFC 2916 or map arbitrary domains to them with RFC 2915. So, what exactly, is the point of .tel?

Re:

So, what exactly, is the point of .tel?

The point is to make money for the registrars, of course, since now every major web site will have to register foo.tel to go along with foo.com, foo.org, foo.biz, foo.info,......

Re:Uh, what?

Aren't we beyond the point of "must own every tld in existence" by now?

I lived through that in my old company. They literally wanted all TLDs, not only for the primary name but also for most spelling mistakes. And for country-specific spelling mistakes (french people might make different mistakes than english people).

Consequently they had 1-2 fulltime employees doing nothing but domain registration and babysitting. Yes, domains do need babysitting when you're literally owning thousands of them from all countries of the world. Ever deciphered a russian expiry notice? Or tried to establish an office in some arabic country only so that you are allowed to buy a domain from them?

Long story short: Most sane businesses should have realized by now that they really only need the standard set (.com/.net/.org), plus the country TLDs for the countries where they're actually doing business. Everything else is wasted money. If someone squats your name on some obscure foreign TLD then so what? Ignore them or sue them into oblivion (trademark!) if they try to pull off scams in your name.

Enum

Uh, didn't this used to be called Enum? (e164.arpa.)?

Re:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ENUM [wikipedia.org]

YAY! Just what we needed!

As if we don't have enough TLD's already...

I think the part that gets me the most angry is, have you ever tried to tell someone your email address over the phone when it doesn't end in com/org/edu? My company was apparently late to market with their webpage, so we have a 20 character dot com address and an incredibly short .biz address. I used to choose the .biz because I thought it would be simple for people to understand. I'm very careful to enunciate my letters, but these people are clueless. No matter how much I tell them B as in Bravo, I as in Indiana, Z as in Zebra, they end up with DIC...Seriously, if there even was a .dic TLD, would you want to be there???

Re:

As if we don't have enough TLD's already

Can you get your last name.com or .anything? I snagged mcgrew.info when .info frst came ou, but let it lapse. I doubt seriously I could get it back.

IMO we have no where near enough TLDs.

Re:

You misunderstand what I mean. If you have a TLD for .food and another tld for .aero, mcdonald.food could take you to McBurgers, while mcdonald.aero would take you to McDonald Aircraft.

mcgrew.nerd might take you to me, while mcgrew.funny would take you to the comedian with my name. I'm not suggesting that "mcgrew" be a TLD, just that there aren't enough TLDs to go around. I don't think five is a nearly big anough group.

Yet my lastname.com is not available

That's because the squatters took every goddamned nam

loldomains

ICANNhas.cheezburger?

.wtf tld lol

I think we should register the .WTF TLD and use it as a "parody TLD for anyone who wants to mock a trademark"

What a racket

1. Come up with new TLD
2. Watch corporations flock to register theirname.tel because they can't afford for squatters to get there first
3. ??
4. Profit!

Repeat every time you feel the need for a new revenue stream.

Nice work if you can get it.

How is this different from .name?

.name [wikipedia.org] has been active since 2001, for the very same purpose. It's not very popular.

Re:

Not many opportunities like that with this tld sadly, a quick search in a dictionary file only reveals a few words that end in tel.

Bartel/M

Bechtel/M

betel/MS

cartel/SM

chattel/MS

Christel/M

Chrystel/M

Estel/M

Gretel/M

hostel/SZGMRD

hotel/MS

Intel/M

Itel/M

Kristel/M

lintel/SM

mantel/SM

Martel/M

Mattel/M

motel/MS

muscatel/MS

pastel/MS

Patel/M

Re:I want royalties

It doesn't have to be a proper spelling. hoe.tel!

Re:I want royalties

hoe.tel!

AKA craigslist.org/services/erotic