Archive for the ‘Events’ Category

Happy Birthday .tel!

Thursday, March 24th, 2011

Today we’re celebrating the 2nd anniversary of .tel opening for general registration! We’d like to thank all of our community members for their support and their active role in the .tel world via the forum, newsletter, I Love My Tel and various other projects worldwide.

In these two years, we’ve been places and done things – remember Laura and her treasure hunt? The .telebrities with their shiny new digital cameras? And more recently, the .tel design competition? Our .tel of the week is now over a hundred strong, and there have been dozens of .tel stories told by proud owners from all walks of life; from senior executives to bakers to sword swallowers!

To trace the .tel history and the development of its technology, ecosystem and community, take a look at our timeline of events, and see some statistics that we shared with you in the latest issue of our newsletter .tel by the numbers. Earlier this year, Telnic’s CEO Khashayar Mahdavi addressed the global .tel community to summarise the latest trends, achievements, and the goals ahead. We look forward to carrying out those goals throughout the year and hope to continue enjoy our community’s support and enthusiasm.

When .tel launched to the world on March 24th 2009 (after Sunrise and Landrush), we happily coincided with Ada Lovelace Day, sometimes portrayed as the World’s first computer programmer.  It was pure serendipity and not planned.  We hope however to continue in her footsteps in developing useful technology for the benefit of all.

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Android conquers at Mobile World Congress

Monday, February 21st, 2011

There’s no denying that this year’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona was dominated by Google’s Android.  There were hundreds of them all over the place!

Not to miss out on the fun, Telnic launched .tel Superbook for Android at the show. This new Android version now incorporates the .telpages search engine into the application, meaning that people can both search for and type in a specific .tel domain to look up.  Additionally, we refreshed the my.tel for Android and launched a new version of my.tel for the iPhone (remember them?!), all of which are in the relevant app stores and market places.

Stand 1D68 in Hall 1 was pretty much a hive of activity for most of the four days (even though the picture was taken in the calm before the storm!).  With 60,000 attendees, up 20% on last year’s numbers, it was an extremely busy show.  As part of the UK Trade & Investment community at the event, we managed to meet a whole host of companies from hardware manufacturers through to VoIP providers, distributors through to mobile payment providers, infrastructure companies through to developers, all of whom were intrigued by the use of the DNS as a publishing platform.  With some, immediate benefits were obvious and we’re looking forward to continuing those conversations and making some announcements later in the year as these come to fruition. With others we’re sure it will take a little more time as they begin to understand the opportunities and new services that they might provide their customers.

With significant changes in the mobile industry from big players getting together, the demise of Symbian, mass adoption of tablets and new operating systems emerging, discovery becomes an even bigger problem with more devices and more ways of communicating than ever before.  This year, many in the mobile telecommunications industry agreed that functionally, .tel is an ideal solution for this problem.

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Innovation and .tel in China

Friday, September 17th, 2010

It’s been a little quiet on this blog over the past few months as we work on a number of initiatives, but the fruits of that labour are now starting to come to fruition and, as promised, we’re now in a position to start talking about some of that work. 

Here at Telnic over the past few months we’ve been working hard helping our newest partner Tong Ji Ming Lian (Beijing) Technology Ltd (TJML) get ready to launch their .tel services in China.  China is a quietly innovative country, building on centuries of ground-breaking invention. Culturally, China is on a fast-track to being the largest economy in the world, and naturally, international organizations are becoming increasingly focused on working to develop in this market. 

It is often the case that localization, which is difficult for large or global companies coming in to China to achieve without the benefit of significant local understanding, is the main cause of a quick or inevitable exit.  This results in a vacuum in which local companies can take the learnings from the solution, learn from its success in other countries, and deliver something that gains popularity within China through use of micro-innovation.

 This is exactly what .tel-only partner TJML is doing with the .tel platform in China.  TJML have taken the platform and are offering .tel services and registrations in Chinese, including enabling verification of ownership services and adding additional elements that will enable them to promote .tel widely.  They’ve already forged partnerships with media and telecommunications companies which, as far as we understand, will enable people to utilize their .tel domains as OpenID’s and log in to some of the more popular online services.

The team behind TJML are experts in the local market and we’re delighted that they’ve spent time really understanding the benefits of .tel and what’s required to make it a success in their local territory, from personalization aspects through to marketing and promotional activity and, importantly, those partnerships. 

The launch, in conjunction with TJML and the China TMT Business Association, is being held in Beijing on Monday 20th September will be attended by our CEO, Khashayar Mahdavi, who will provide a short speech of thanks to all involved as well as provide Telnic’s view of what benefits .tel can bring to China, its residents and its climate of micro-innovation.  We’re delighted to be bringing .tel to China and providing the platform for its curious and talented developers to create new value around for the benefit of the Chinese people.

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voipGATE show off new .tel-powered apps at UCExpo

Thursday, March 11th, 2010

Yesterday I managed to pop into the Unified Communications Expo to see one of our technology partners, voipGATE, who were exhibiting their soft and hard VoIP services.  I caught up with Jorge Marques, Chief Operations Officer, who showed me the latest versions (beta) of their softphone for Windows and now Mac, which integrate .tel into the core very nicely.  You can lookup, dial and manage .tel domains through these applications if you’ve bought them via voipGATE or EuroDNS (I’m sure they’ll be able to enable other customers using voipGATE to manage their own .tel domains through their integrated management console soon).

Additionally, they’ve got a great mobile app built at http://voipgate.mobi for smartphones and iPhones which provide low- and no-cost call back if you’ve got an account, again providing direct integration of .tel into the apps.

There’s more exciting work going on behind the scenes which I’m sure we’ll be blogging about in the near future.  Great work voipGATE!  The software can be downloaded here: http://voipgate.com/site/en/softphone/view-category.html

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Update from MacWorld 2010

Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010

Henri and I travelled to MacWorld to launch the new My.tel 2.0 app for the iPhone in February.  Whilst Apple as an entity wasn’t at the show, there were plenty of representatives walking around and seeing what was on offer.  We were in the Mobile Applications Showcase that was, for most of the show, buzzing with a good flow of people and we were joined at some points by representatives from Name.com as well as Hank Grebe from One San Francisco (who posted here), a new community for the region intending to replicate the success that One Vancouver has shown in Canada.  We wish Hank well and if you’re in the area, please do contact him at http://hankgrebe.tel to find out more.

The show itself was pretty busy and we met with a vast range of people, from journalists right through to school kids.  Interestingly, within the Mobile Applications Forum, there were very few companies showing tools and technologies for productivity, but those that were – including us – were given strong attention.  The iPhone is increasingly being considered a tool for work and My.tel 2.0 as well as Superbook was well received.

There’s still a barrier we’ve recognized when talking to many people regarding their expectations and hang ups of what a domain name is and what it does, but we’re starting to see people actually focusing on what .tel does differently.  Even technology media are starting to listen and take notice of the phrase ‘but it doesn’t host websites’!  It’s this crucial bit that journalists have been missing in their continued high-pressure environment.  Indeed, Jake Widman from ComputerWorld wrote a great piece after our meeting and we had a great discussion with him regarding how innovative yet ‘utility-like’ technologies are being missed in the echo-chamber of technology columns that seem to be filled with Google, Facebook and Twitter and the challenges and announcements they make on a daily basis.  At the same time, we’ve been working hard to make the look and feel and experience of .tel useful to the end user who is not technical, hiding the complexity through applications like My.tel, enabling them to get the power of having a domain name with all of the discoverability that this entails, but also minimizing the effort it takes to get something up and running quickly that can be easily managed in a way they feel comfortable with.

Where I could, I asked people to comment on video about their thoughts about .tel – and yes, there were people there including Will Snow who already use .tel (Will is at http://willsnow.tel), and it’s always great to catch up with members of our community who are getting real benefit from it.  Additionally, talking to people in their various careers – from architects through to those working for higher education institutions – and really seeing their eyes light up at the ease of use and functionality within a very low price is a great experience.  What struck both Henri and myself was that many people are now increasingly looking at their personal brands online, whether they’re in a job or seeking new opportunities.  People were walking away and coming back 30 minutes later with their .tel names purchased, set up and resolving with a real sense of excitement.  Take a look at the video below for some of the comments we managed to capture.


YouTube link to MacWorld 2010 Visitors Comments about .tel

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