Welcome to .telegraph, the monthly .tel community newsletter covering the latest news on .tel features, software and services, as well as useful tips and advice from .tel owners. Why not share this with someone you think may also be interested? More resources are at http://telnic.org/community-landing.html.

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In this issue:

“I find .tel very easy to use, very accessible, so much so that even my Mother has been able to update her own information on the .tel that she has purchased” Nathaly Vermette, Intellectual Property Lawyer

Industry News: eNom offers .tel domains

2009: The Birth of a New Platform

Looking back at 2009, a seismic shift has occurred in internet usage, both for businesses and individuals, one that it is very hard to imagine will be reversed. With more smart phones, mobile applications and services establishing themselves as the points of access and services of choice for those wishing to communicate or interact with each other, the line between traditional web services and mobile-based widgets is blurring.

The pace of change and development is often unnerving as the media hype up the ‘next big thing’ in technology. Yet the speed of adoption also seems to be accelerating, with the older generation and those on Main Street, traditionally more conservative in their adoption of technology, embracing new services more rapidly, leading to the conclusion that technology, finally, is becoming mainstream and more accessible.

It’s hard to remember however that all of this has been developed over a long period of time. 2009 saw the 40th anniversary of the development of the internet, as well as the 20th anniversary of the development of the World Wide Web. The first generation mobile telephone from Motorola was demonstrated in 1973. And the first domain name was sold commercially in 1985.

Everything today has been made possible by the long-term development in infrastructure and devices that have taken decades to refine, re-engineer and be made robust. The products, services and applications that sit on top have been brought to market through a process of incremental innovation, using development tools and languages that are bringing standardization, essential for different services to talk to each other better, to enable a more consistent experience.

And yet, there is still a huge amount to be achieved, as meaningful services that contextualize and understand people’s business and social life begin to emerge. Location-based services, that are aware where you are and where your friends or potential destinations may be; augmented reality applications that provide further, layered information over real-time visual data, helping you get to where you want to be or provide a new and fresh learning experience; and new, low-cost and more user-friendly communications solutions that enable you to communicate with people how they and you want to communicate.

It is within this context that .tel was born. Until 2009, .tel was very much a theoretical ‘what if?’. What if people could use names instead of numbers to connect with others? What if people could simply and securely publish all of the ways that others could reach them under one universal point of contact? What if you didn’t need to learn how to build a website simply in order to be found online? What if you could access this point of contact from any device – PC or smartphone – with a browser and automatically see it in the right format? And what if all of this could be done using the system behind the web, storing the information as data, so that it was cheap to access, quick to download and simple to update?

2009 realized Telnic’s vision in bringing this incremental innovation, built on standards and using proven technology, to anyone who wished to be found, no matter where they were and what services others were using. Internally we refer to .tel as ‘Web 0.0’ as it uses the system behind the web – the DNS – to provide a personal, fully-owned platform from which an individual can share all of their traditional and Web 2.0 communications methods. But at the same time, we have stripped away and simplified the ability for people to have a place online from which not only can they be discovered but also, as more developers see the power of one single place under a users own control, a place where in the future individuals can better manage their own personal web experience.

.tel has been alive for nine months and we’re proud to have an extended family that spans the globe. Individuals and small businesses from all walks of life and professions are telling us their stories of how they use and benefit from .tel, simply either as a point of contact or in a more complex manner. Some of these uses are already saving lives, such as clamptime.tel, which provides medical professionals with essential information regarding organ donation.

.tel is still very young but Telnic is committed to helping it develop and grow into a strong, vibrant and helpful service. As the proud parent, we are not too internally focused to know that we have all of the understanding required to bring a socially-aware new entrant to an ever-changing community. We have been listening over the past nine months to opinions, advice and concerns from you, and we continue to be grateful for this, as we help .tel develop. In the next few issues of .telegraph, we’ll be talking further about how .tel will change in its looks, become friendlier and begin playing well with others.

We’ve learnt that it’s important to make sure that .tel can walk before it can run. However, we’re confident that it is learning quickly and its speed of development will accelerate. We’re looking forward to 2010 and the challenges and opportunities that it will bring, and we hope that you are too. Once again, thank you for your support and we hope that you will be proud of the development you see next year.

Justin Hayward,
Communications Director
Telnic

New Year—New Look

In January, we will be re-launching our website, www.telnic.org, with a fresh design, intuitive navigation and more useful and fun stuff for you to read: educational materials, templates tailoring .tel to your needs, and a wide range of tools and services for you to choose from. We hope that every .tel owner will find something useful on the new site.
Here’s a sneak-peek preview of some of the new website areas:

Get the most of .tel with .tel Tour Browse the .tel tour to learn about its key features and advantages of .tel domains. In this section, you can get useful advice on how to improve your search engine rankings, save money and make a profit with your .tel domain. We feature real-life examples of successful .tel projects to help you make the most of your own .tel page. If you’d like to share your ideas about .tel benefits, please write to us at community@telnic.org.

Learn about .tel for you Are you an independent professional or a member of a not-for-profit organization? Do you work in a large company or teach at a University? Find useful tips and advice relevant to your profession and type of organization in “.tel for you”. Each feature offer real-life examples and a printer-friendly TelTemplate to inspire you through other people’s creative thinking and inventiveness. We’ll be adding more professions soon—tell us how you use your .tel, write to us at community@telnic.org.

.tel Meetup in Vancouver

Friday, December 11th marked the third meeting of the Vancouver dotTel Meetup Group. 22 people braved the threat of snow (unusual occurrence in Vancouver) to join us and meet Henri Asseily, Telnic CTO, live on camera via Skype from Beirut, Lebanon. Lisa Wills tells us about it:

“Now, to paint this picture for you, we hold our meetings in the Harrison Galleries, an art gallery housed in a wonderful heritage building with lots of great art adorning old brick walls under high ceilings. Henri via Skype camera onscreen in the heritage art gallery was somehow the perfect way to showcase our ability to connect with each other. Henri gave us his unique perspective - all the techies in the room were very happy - and he sparked a lot of avid conversation during our networking time at the end. It was nice to see people sharing ideas about how to monetize .tel. Henri talked about advertising in .tel and the .tel meetup crew had good ideas on smaller directories as a way to generate revenue.

I want to say also a big 'Thank you' to Matt Lane and Cybele Negris of Webnames, and Nadya and Justin and Kash at Telnic. It is wonderful to have so much knowledge, enthusiasm and support! We are looking forward to our next meetup on January 8th. We are hoping these monthly meetings continue to grow as we see Vancouver as somewhat of a pioneer for the growth of .tel and these meetings help spread the word and engage the community in a new technology.”

VermetteLaw.tel: Business benefits and practical uses

My name is Nathaly Vermette, I’m from Montreal in Canada, and I’m an attorney practicing in intellectual property law. Being discoverable on the internet, or contactable by my clients, is excessively important. Doing intellectual property technology-based work, clients usually prefer to use the web, to contact each other, and their help. Therefore for me it is essential that I be contactable. I enable my clients to reach me in a number of ways; obviously, the telephone, my website, Twitter, but now we have the .tel, which makes it easy to accumulate all of these sources in one place.

I heard about .tel domain names interestingly through one of my clients, who was a .tel developer for certain services, and I instantly saw the usefulness for my business and registered quite a few .tel domain names. I saw the instant usability of .tel because I could reach most of my clients in a quick and efficient way as well as I could gather all of the sources of communication in one spot. For example, I could put all of my telephone numbers, my fax numbers, my Twitter name, my web page, all in one place. And when I travel abroad I can update my contact details and people can reach me without difficulty.

I think that everybody can pretty much benefit from a .tel. You have your plumbers, who do not necessarily require a full-blown web page that would need to be reachable at any level. They can update their information very quickly. You have professionals like myself, that when they travel on business, can update their information and be reachable. Then you have the large corporations also that can have their branch information on also in one site and which can be updated for their employees within seconds and it’s not a whole production process to update. It can be personal also, where you have your family information only accessible to your family because you can limit also who sees what information which is another feature that is highly important in this day and age.

Profiles on Holiday

As we enter the holiday period, Profiles can be especially useful, allowing you to route customers and friends to the most appropriate contact information that’s relevant for where you are at any time. Setup a few different profiles for your personal and business .tel names, and switch between them as you go through your day:

• “Vacation” to show your “Out of Office” message and emergency contacts while you’re on holiday
• “Weekend” to hide phone numbers for when there’s no-one in the office to take the call
• “Travelling” to inform visitors about your travel plans, time zone and location changes

A profile is a combination of the page title, introduction text and contact information that you make available. You can create and manage profiles from the control panel or, even more usefully, switch between profiles while on the move from your mobile device with one of our free applications: My.tel for iPhone, Access .tel on BlackBerry, and .tel for Outlook.

Your control panel Dashboard greys out the contact items that are not in the profile you’re viewing. Only items in the currently active profile are published on your .tel page. To see where a contact item is used, click Edit and open Advanced settings. For more details, see page 10 of the Guide to .tel, http://telnic.org/downloads/telguide.pdf.

.telebrities Telnic congratulates this month's of Flip Ultra HD cameras. For a chance to win next month, submit your story: introduce yourself, your .tel, and tell us why you think you should win, http://telnic.org/community-telebrity.html.

Copyright © 2009, Telnic Ltd.