Posts Tagged ‘iPhone’

Search and Social Sharing comes to .tel Superbook for iPhone

Friday, September 16th, 2011
We’re pleased to announce the latest version of .tel Superbook for iPhone, which can now be downloaded from the App Store. As well as a complete overhaul in terms of look and feel, some key elements have been added to make this app even more user friendly:

  • Telpages search: Now, you can search for .tel information from within the app, rather than having to type in a known .tel name. As well as delivering back search results, a confidence bar is provided highlighting the results that Telpages thinks are the best fit for your search
  • Recently Visited .tel Names: In order to save time, and in case you forgot to save previous searches, a cached version of recently visited .tel names is provided in a list.
  • Pull down to quick refresh: Whether recently visited or saved contacts, up-to-date information can quickly be accessed by a simple swipe down and re-saved with one click to your contacts
  • Share: As well as saving to your address book, you can also quickly share a discovered .tel name, a business recommendation or a new contact by email, twitter, facebook and other services (if you’re following @rikkles or @justinhayward on Twitter you may have seen us testing this). This is yet another great way of easily sharing .tel information with anyone you want
We hope you enjoy the new features on the .tel Superbook and please do leave a review on the App Store if you do use it. You can find it here or visit http://superbook.tel.
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Mobile in Local Search: YP app v Mobile Web, Google Mobilize, and where .tel fits in.

Thursday, June 30th, 2011

Yesterday, a senior exec. at my previous client when I was consulting, a major Yellow Pages (YP) publisher, called me for my thoughts on YP app v mobile web, what I thought of Google’s new SMB landing page, Google Mobilise, and where did .tel fit in.

They have a neat app, great, but mobile web is increasingly where the action is – users can be lazy – when they have an urgent need for local, they grab their smartphones and tap in what and where into their browser – who leaves their web browser to open up the YP app to find a taxi? Downloads are one thing, continuous front of mind usage frequency is quite another. Both bases need to be covered. The Google mobilize product, a basic landing page is free and is based on a sub domain:  https://sites.google.com/site/[your business name]. This is one approach for YP companies, either re-purposing their customer sites for mobile web, or even partnering with Google.

An interesting and simpler alternative would be to offer their customers YP branded .tels: yourbusiness.tel. These are very smart mobile landing pages based on award winning technology that utilizes the internet DNS in a clever way to store customer contact data and business profile information. The key benefits are cost and speed to market. With .tel there is no product development required and no operational costs e.g. design and hosting. This means that even if publishers include .tel packaged in their offering for free, they retain ownership of the customer and his unique top level domain with the YP companies look and feel and brand logo. This means users and advertisers recognise it as their value proposition, and at typically 1% ARPA, it’s an extremely low cost solution.

The battle for the mobile internet is really shaping up – it’s not about the app, it’s about being in lots of places at once, especially mobile web. Wherever users search for local information, publishers need their brands to be uppermost in their minds.  

At the end of the call she said to me “Thanks for confirming my thinking, what would it take to get all my print customers up live with a .tel so I can announce that we’ve led the entire customer base deeper into new media?” I replied, we as the global .tel registry are ready and willing  to support any partner wishing to move fast in that direction.  Our joint kick off operational planning meeting starts Monday and we expect to be registering names within a few weeks.

Ian Bowen-Morris, CMO, Telnic, the .tel registry.

Current .tel smartpage for a UK florist

Google Mobilize landing page

Example .tel branded for a Yellow Pages publisher

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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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