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.tel the world a little bit more about yourself

ok - so this is for those of you who just love having an online presence and don't mind being quite public about how people can contact you. In the next few months we are going to see the launch of a new Top Level Domain (TLD) called '.tel'. Unlike websites, this will be only be available to companies and individuals to store and manage all their contact information and search keywords. Think of it as a global contact directory. The types of information you may wish to store includes:

  • phone numbers
  • mobile numbers
  • IM details
  • content links (websites, blogs, social networks)
  • identities (games, social networks)
  • geolocations (maps for work, home, interests)
  • search text
That sounds like a whole lot of really useful information that could be used by others for good and bad so obviously there will be functionality available for you to decide which of this information you want to make public or private. Friends can ask to see information about you via 'friending' requests. To see your private data, they will also need to be logged in. You will also be able to control at a more granular level, which bits of your private data certain people can see. So now, with your .tel name, all you need to give anyone is your url (eg jerry.tel) and all that information is available from any Web browser. There will be a directory that others can search but you will also be discoverable through search engines. All this information and more is available on the telnic website. There is some great information for businesses as well as individuals in a number of short videos on the site. There will be a brief period available where entities with strong claims (like trademarks) can apply for .tel names and then it will be opened up to anyone. Could this be a useful service to incorporate into an e-Portfolio? For example, applying for jobs - it is common practice now for recruiters, potential employers etc to 'google' you to find out a bit more about you. Why not help them along by putting the online bits about yourself that you want them to see into your .tel profile. This may help some of the confusion over identity that I have commented on before and would be a bit similar to claimid. It will be interesting to see how successful this domain becomes (hopefully more successful than id.au). Cheers, Jerry.

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