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.tel Coming Soon

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the dot-dot-dot dept.

GeorgeK writes "ICANN hasn't posted it on their website yet, but according to one of their board members, the .tel top-level domain was approved." notellmo.tel is going to be one of the first domains sold.

7 of 201 comments (clear)

  1. what's wrong with tel:// by OsirisX11 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    How is this different or better?
    Why is the sponsor of .tel the one who gets to make all the rules for it?
    This seems highly undemocratic and arbitrarily in favor of a corporation.

    Bitches.

  2. .pad is what we need. by MikeFM · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I've been pushing for .pad as it could be for domains that are easy to type from a phone keypad. Thus it can use only letters available as the first press of a given key. A, D, G, J, M, P, T, and W. I wanted to make a non-profit called APT.PAD to sponsor the TLD. I imagine it being something like tinyurl for browsing from phones. Typing long or none-keypad friendly URLs is a pain on most phones.

    --
    At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
    1. Re:.pad is what we need. by RzUpAnmsCwrds · · Score: 2, Interesting

      "I imagine it being something like tinyurl for browsing from phones."

      It's already happening. I operate a TinyURL-equivilent-website, http://shortify.com/, and I just registered the numerical equivilent of that URL (http://74678439.com/). As soon as the DNS comes up, you'll be able to use the service from your web-enabled mobile phone. The website is basic HTML/CSS (no tables, no images), so it should have no problem rendering in most phone browsers.

      Note also that, unlike TinyURL, Shortify uses 100% numbers for shortened URLs, so they are more phone friendly. And the homepage is only 1583 bytes, almost 1/2 the size of Google (and about 8 times smaller if you include Google's logo).

      Give it a spin.

    2. Re:.pad is what we need. by RzUpAnmsCwrds · · Score: 2, Interesting

      "Also, you SHOULD NOT server XHTML-1.1 as text/html."

      Note that the W3 specifies "SHOULD NOT", with the exception of maintaining compaibility with existing user-agents. Indeed, this is exactly what Shortify does - if your user-agent specifies that it accepts application/xhtml+xml, Shortify will serve it. If not, Shortify serves text/html for compatibility purposes.

      Also note that I never claimed to have valid XHTML/CSS. Of course, the website *does* have valid XHTML (1.1, none the less), and now it *does* have valid CSS, and it is table free, so you don't have a lot of complaints.

      Hell, even the W3's homepage isn't XHTML 1.1.

  3. Re:Abolish TLDs by pe1chl · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I fully agree. Everyone should be able to register immediately at the top level. Why type "google.com" when "google" is sufficient?

    Hierarchical domain names were once invented to structure things, and to avoid name clashes by subdividing the namespace and allow the same name to be registered in different TLDs.
    But there has not been enough active management of the namespace in the early days (providing TLDs as required by increasing name registration demand), and also the market has shown that it does not understand the mechanism. Instead of registering under an appropriate TLD, it has become commonplace to register in as many places as possible.

    As the entire mechanism has already been defeated, why bother to make minor changes now it is much too late?

  4. Political statement in what it does NOT do by hta · · Score: 4, Interesting

    If ICANN has accepted this request, it is a very subtle political statement. Check out section 15.1.1 of the application - "Avoiding established addressing systems and regulations" - it promises NOT to try to put phone numbers in the .tel domain.
    Other .tel proposals have suggested exactly that, and this has had ITU in a tizzy.
    By registering this utterly useless .tel TLD, ICANN is making a statement that it will not create TLDs that say up front that they're out to upset the ITU national regulators' club and its telephone numbers fun-and-games.
    I'm neither surprised nor unhappy. .tel as described is utterly useless, but the other proposed usages of .tel had a potential to cause damage in addition to being useless.

  5. How to register? by ari_j · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I just want to know how to register a domain in all these new TLDs that come up. I don't want someone else to beat me to the punch on goatse.xxx, for instance. Can anyone help me out, here?