Is It Time For .tel? 292
Vitaly Friedman writes "ICANN, the body responsible for creating top-level domains, is considering a new one. Conceived as a way to easily manage contact information in an age where many people have numerous contact numbers, the proposed .tel TLD would allow individuals and companies to keep all of their contact information in an easily accessible location. Companies would get companyname.tel while individuals would be able to register firstnamelastname.tel." This idea has been kicked around for quite a while; one of the question is the whole name-space collision issue. For instance, there's me and then there's other me. Lemme tell how strange it is getting fan mail for country music stars.
Unforseen problems (Score:5, Funny)
This may pose a problem with the 526,000+ people sharing the name Michael Smith.
Re:Unforseen problems (Score:5, Insightful)
This may pose a problem with the 526,000+ people sharing the name Michael Smith.
Or the people who share names with companies [ncchelp.org]. Or the people who share names with each other. There will be collisions. This plan will not work for its stated purpose. However, its stated purpose and its real purpose most likely are not the same. Odds are, this is just another plan to make more money for the registrars by opening up a new land rush of domain name registrations.
Re:Unforseen problems (Score:2, Insightful)
I could see a way this would work. Whenever you ask for your namelastname.tel or mycompanyname.tel you won't get that domain for you, instead you would have to fill in a form in which you write a brief description of who you or your company are and write down your contact information, including your real website.
This way, if I need to contact with some person or company, I'll type itsn
Cynical churning of market (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't see how it could be otherwise.
First, the phone company already knows that the best way to index phone number is by soundex, to avoid massive problems caused by the fact that many people don't know the correct spellings of their friends' and associates' names. And they certainly aren't sounding like this will be the first domain indexed by soundex.
Second, it's unlikely that domain ownership will be a prerequisite to having a phone number. I don't think they could sell that. (In fact, they might realistically make more by saying they were going to give away the domain with your name and invent a service called ... hmmm, let's see... how about the "unlisted domain" where the customer pays money to keep from being locatable.)
Third, phone numbers have the virtue of being uncorrelated with a name. That's what makes them resolvable in ambiguity--they act as a cross-check to make sure you got it right. When you can't quite remember a number and think it's either 555-1234 or 555-1235 and then check information to find the first is for "Sam Smith" and the second for "Alex Jones", there's little doubt how to resolve things. But if you thought the number was 1387.Sam.Smith.com or 1386.Sam.Smith.com or maybe 1387.Samuel.Smith.com or maybe 1386.Samuel.Smith or 1387.Sam.Smythe.com or... Obviously finding out that the mis-remembered number matches a lot of same-named people won't help at all. (If you believe in correlating names with telephones this way, it's a short conceptual hop to believing that a .pw domain would help you remember your password.)
If you can't autogenerate good phone numbers (i.e., tell people what name they're supposed to use), as I and many others here have argued you can't, what's the alternative? Allow people to choose? Gads, with all the domain squatting it's clear that this would allow much choice to a rich few and little choice to most people. And so it would not be fair at all. The fairest thing I can imagine is to not involve ICANN at all.
And besides, back to the original point about this being a ploy to sell domain registries, if I wanted to have the domain system already remember my phone number, why wouldn't I just have people do nslookup on the names I already own? They already require domain owners to list their phone numbers.
Re:Unforseen problems (Score:5, Funny)
2001:0db8:85a3:08d3:1319:8a2e:0370:7334
Or 8 groups of 4 hexadecimal digits.
[/sarcasm]
Re:Unforseen problems (Score:2)
Re:Unforseen problems (Score:2)
Re:Unforseen problems (Score:3, Informative)
Being British, I dont have a "social security number" you small minded wanker
Re:Unforseen problems (Score:3, Insightful)
Isn't this what
Re:Unforseen problems (Score:2, Insightful)
Smith is the most common last name.
I don't see anything that guarantees they're the most common combination.
Re:Unforseen problems (Score:2)
The most common male first name worldwide is Mohammed. The most common last name is Chang.
Mind you, I don't see much opportunity for overlap, there, either!
Re:Unforseen problems (Score:2)
Re:Surname is Last Name, not Family Name (Score:3, Informative)
Used a dictionary much?
From www.m-w.com: "the name borne in common by members of a family". That sure seems to indicate that a "surname" is a "family name."
From dictionary.cambridge.org: "the name that you share with other members of your family."
According to www.etymonline.com: "Meaning 'family name' is first found 1375."
Re:Unforseen problems (Score:2, Insightful)
Excuse me? I can't believe what I just read... what exactly are you doing? Sounds like you're doing just that, to me...
You see, actually, it's a public forum, and people will use it for whatever the fuck they please. Get it? That is, I (not the original poster) will use "actually" wherever I see it fit; and there's nothing to stop me, just like there's nothing stopping you from being an incessant asswipe and posting hypocritical bullsh
Re:Unforseen problems (Score:2, Funny)
.tel is ok (Score:4, Insightful)
This is way better than .biz, which I can only guess that they just banged out without thinking twice about.
Re:.tel is ok (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:.tel is ok (Score:2)
Re:.tel is ok (Score:2)
Having said that, I don't see the necessity for any new TLDs.
Re:.tel is ok (Score:5, Funny)
Re:.tel is ok (Score:3, Funny)
Re:.tel is ok (Score:2)
Re:.tel is ok (Score:3, Funny)
That sly bunch, so they did find a way for a
Re:.tel is ok (Score:2)
In the Us, we find it hilarious, because
Instead of using
Re:.tel is ok (Score:2)
I wonder when we will get
eliminate top-level domains ? (Score:2, Interesting)
If I want a web site, why can't it be www.boxlight -- or www.boxlight.this.is.cool -- why does it have to end in
boxlight
Re:eliminate top-level domains ? (Score:2)
Re:eliminate top-level domains ? (Score:2)
As for .com, .net and .org, they're the legacy of what people thought the rest of the internet would be. It's too late to start enforcing the differences now though. To
Re:eliminate top-level domains ? (Score:2)
You have to be right in the first place before you can use sarcasm to reinforce your point.
Re:eliminate top-level domains ? (Score:2)
That isn't abuse of the system, really. I cannot go and register a .cx, .tv, or .to domain on a whim. It has to be done through whatever organization that country set up to do it. If they want to restrict it to organizations and people that reside in that country, they are free to do so. If they want to whore themselves out and make tons of money by selling domain names to other people, they are free to do so. Two good examples of this are .to and .tv. The system isn't being abused, because those countries
Re:eliminate top-level domains ? (Score:5, Funny)
But imagine if the internet was just a vast wasteland of porn and spammers.
That doesn't require any imagination.
Re:eliminate top-level domains ? (Score:2, Funny)
It's Dutch for "now". It's Swedish for "naked".
Re:eliminate top-level domains ? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:eliminate top-level domains ? (Score:2)
Re:eliminate top-level domains ? (Score:2)
If I want a web site, why can't it be www.boxlight -- or www.boxlight.this.is.cool -- why does it have to end in
I've been saying this for years. Part of the reason is not rocking the boat. The current system works well enough. But I think there's fears of unleashing a tidal wave of trademark lawsuits, since TLDs, as it currently stands, can't be owned.
Personally, I think there is no fundamental reason why one should not be able to register,"HATE.MICROSOFT" so you could hav
Re:eliminate top-level domains ? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:eliminate top-level domains ? (Score:2, Interesting)
Well... really what would have to change is (non-recursive-querying) resolver code, and since that is distributed to practically every Internet host, that likely would take time.
However, the server-side and administrative-side changes would stay largely the same, and there is no need to abandon hierarchical delegation of parts of the global distributed dabase.
There are two obvious approaches.
The first possible approach
Re:eliminate top-level domains ? (Score:2)
Yeah, try http://slashdot.com/ [slashdot.com] , http://slashdot.org/ [slashdot.org] , http://slashdot.net/ [slashdot.net] , http://slashdot.info/ [slashdot.info] , http://slashdot.tv/ [slashdot.tv] and see what the results are.
Everything that is not slashdot.org is a wannabe, and e
This is a really good idea (Score:4, Funny)
God knows it's time for
Bad analogy, BadAnalogyGuy (Score:5, Informative)
Excuse me, but while I agree with 92% of your examples,
Phone sex (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Phone sex (Score:5, Funny)
Since I'm a pimp (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Since I'm a pimp (Score:2)
I've already pointed out why this won't work (Score:2)
In the discussion on the proposed .mail TLD [slashdot.org] I already pointed out why this won't work [slashdot.org].
Intended purposes (Score:5, Insightful)
Who still remembers when a
Re:Intended purposes (Score:2)
The problem, as far as I can tell, is that nobody foresaw demand for personal websites, so no personal website TLD was created. The result of this is that the mental barriers between the TLDs have been broken down. It's just the sort of thing language does when an important, popular
Re:Intended purposes (Score:2)
Re:Intended purposes (Score:2)
Re:Intended purposes (Score:2)
Re:Intended purposes (Score:2)
Re:Intended purposes (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, but that doesn't stop plenty of people in the UK, like me, (ab)using the global
And why not? I'm no more a "com"pany or an "org"anisation than I am a "net"work provider. I'm not a "biz"ness, and I'm not dedicated to providing "info"rmation, and the domain is not my real "name". But nor do I want a country-specific domain -- my site is of very limited interest to the vast majority of people, but the tiny community it interests is spread right across the globe. My site isn't aimed particularly at people in the UK, so why should it have a misleading
What it comes down to is, there is no point whatsoever in trying to force an artificial hierarchy onto something like the internet, which is an interconnected network, not a neat and nicely categorised tree. It doesn't work. It's pointless and confusing. Let's just give it up already, okay?
Re:Intended purposes (Score:2)
Well said. There seems little point in TLDs these days other than to cause trademark fights. Why not take a page from heirarchy free websites and, if we must keep some ghost of TLDs, implement a DNS tagging system. A domain could be tagged with "com" or "org" or "whatever". Search engines and browsers would be aware of this, if anyone cared. This could be run by the same folks who do things now and be enforced so only educational institutions could be tagged "edu" for example.
Re:Intended purposes (Score:3, Interesting)
Now that I think about it, the divisions into "com", "net", "org" help avoid collisions, but do so in a most useless manner. Say for example, that McDonalds is a purveyor of fine foods, and registers mcdonalds.com. Now, Old McDonald had a farm but now sells farm equipment and would like to register mcdonalds.com. Trademark law allows McDonald's Fast Food and McDonald's Farm Equipment to coexist, but it is unfair to allow one to register the domain but not the other. One soultion would be to deny mcdonalds.
Pretty pointless imo... (Score:3, Insightful)
The problem with all these newly introduced TLDs is that they don't ring a bell for the average joe on teh intarweb, since most casual users are familiar with
Re:Pretty pointless imo... (Score:2)
Does it really matter for most individuals that their website is not too memorable? That's what your bookmarks files (or favorites) are for.
You just send a link to anyone interested and put one in your email .sig. I remember about 3 phone numbers. The rest are in my phone. It seems the same to me...
MichaelBolton.Tel (Score:5, Funny)
Another dumb idea (Score:5, Insightful)
When is everyone going to stop assuming that issuing new TLDs is going to solve all their problems? What, is it impossible for people to update the contact information on their personal web sites now, or has their been some fundamental change to HTML/XML of which I am unaware?
This is a dumb idea. I won't even touch the personal namespace problem, which should be evident to anyone with a brain. The only way that would work is if everyone had five names. You know there are going to be squabbles over company names, as old and new companies jockey for the .tel names that offer them the best marketing bang for the buck.
Need a place to put your contact information? Try www.contact.your-web-site-name-here.whatever. ICANN needs to stop polluting the TLD pool.
Re:Another dumb idea (Score:2)
All new TLDs do is make it so companies have to spend another $15/year to protect their trademarks. How often do you see two domain names with the same name but different TLDs and they are truly different sites? Yes, there are some good examples (whitehouse.gov/com), but for the most part, the "other" sites redirect to the main site or are parked by domain squatters.
Re:Another dumb idea (Score:3, Insightful)
If everyone adopted the format: tel.{company}.{tld} for their contact page, rather than bitching about new TLDs, then the number of collisions will be fewer (like foo.com, foo.net) and the world would be just as happy.
Disclaimer: I haven't read (nor will I read) TFA.
Re:Another dumb idea (Score:2)
"When I issued the first few TLDs, things were good...then I issued a couple more...but now I'm just issuing more TLDs to take my problems away.
"Hi, my name is ICANN, and I'm a TLDaholic."
Those who do not understand 'finger' (Score:5, Insightful)
So lets see, we create a whole separate _TLD_ that people/companies must register, just so people can have www.foo.tel, which is essentially a directory of who's who at www.foo.com?
This is completely idiotic. How about "finger @foo.com | grep -i 'your name'" Obviously wrap it into some kind of GUI, or do something as simple as a web front end to an existing in-house address book?
Geesh. Next someone will invent the ".mail" TLD, which is the address for foo.com, that you use to send email to. what about ".web" ?
How odd (Score:2, Funny)
Really? Your parents are called Mr and Mrs 945 Chestnut Street? How odd.
-Grey [wellingtongrey.net]
Re:How odd (Score:2)
"They haven't signed up for our 'service', but they COULD, or they have a cousin who is registered, so we feel justified in counting them!"
-1 Redundant (Score:2)
Ugh?
Can you get any more pointless than this? If you have a
Name-space issue solution (Score:2)
Problem solved
Boy does this sound dumb (Score:3, Insightful)
I see this as another $35 per year revenue for the domain registers.
Re:Boy does this sound dumb (Score:2)
Ah yes, but you forget that URI's are for more than just webpages. Instead of a web page think that you could just have mobile.bigpat.tel in your phone's address book and you would never have to update it. Or home.bigpat.tel.
Carefully Thoughtout? (Score:2)
Just what do they plan to do about the 1.1 million "John Smith"s that live in the use (not to mention any other countries? Append a number? Gee that sound familiar.
I can see some excelent uses of the
Re:Carefully Thoughtout? (Score:3, Insightful)
How can you say that a
I have always believed it be a law that there be a new "META" tag in HTML. Something of the sorts
I've got a better idea (Score:2)
In an age of too much communication how about a top level domain called .dnc (do not call) that has all of my contact information. Oh wait, why don't I just not make it available to everyone in the first place. Today with the "Do not call list" being so popular and being able to keep your contact information private when registering a new domain this new .tel tld seem
Hey! My Contact Info's Online (Score:2, Insightful)
Too little too late (Score:3, Interesting)
It's because they were so late to introduce a large variety that ".com" become synonymous with "web" and everybody wanted his site to be a ".com"
Should've they introduced domains like
This is a wonderful idea! (Score:5, Insightful)
Man, I'm in the wrong business; if only I could get paid for coming up with ideas like this...
Re:This is a wonderful idea! (Score:2)
But less intuitive and less economical than contact.companyname.com or telephone.companyname.com. Why should companies have to fork out even more money for more domains?
I know the domain name I want! (Score:2)
Now I just need to find a way to get an alarm system hooked up to it.
An idiotic idea that shows domain names are broken (Score:3, Interesting)
Think about it. Do we still need domain names? People made up the "I'm feeling lucky" ifl: protocol as a joke, but isn't it true? Can't we find anything with Google anyway? Why should we have to remember a particular address with a complicated system of slashes and characters to get to a particular page? Right now, my URL is http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=183301&thresh
Here's what I'm proposing:
Let's extend ifl: or something like into a real protocol. A trusted source, or better a network of user selectable sources, assigns keywords to URLs based on tagging by users via hyperlinks to the source and delicious-like tags. Normally, the URL bar shows nothing but the title the site has given itself (in our case, "Slashdot") and the particular page being viewed ("Reply to thread"), but on request, the URL bar can generate a user shareable set of keyword tags for the site with hash codes for pages to prevent collision (think about the addresses generated snipurl and the like; "ifl:Slashdot/4bacc23"). For the purposes of bookmarks, traditional URLs can be stored, but since these URLs won't be exposed to users, Ford Motor company can use a23rf2.ifl and Ford Modeling Agency can use j737bdh.ifl, and no one will care, since it won't be possible to hijack a keyword without the agreement of the majority of users. (No more Whitehouse.coms!) Domain names can stick around, so that people are free to assign multiple IPs to the same site, but the concept will become a background detail that users need to know nothing about. Until the technology is built into all browsers, URL-to-ifl translator sites can fill in the gap: "go to http://ifl.com/Slashdot/4bacc23 [ifl.com] or just ifl:Slashdot/4bacc23..." but since this won't be hard to integrate into browsers as a plug-in, I imagine it can be implemented quickly.
So, what do you guys think? Am I being naive about the possibility of the keyword space being kept pure without a registrar? Need I point out that the keyword space is *already* polluted, inspite of that barrier?
Back to the future (Score:4, Informative)
Unfortunately, URLs and DNS hacks turned out to be "good enough", nobody saw the need for a global location-independent naming system for web pages, and we ended up with today's system.
All contact info in one place - FOR TELEMARKETERS (Score:4, Interesting)
Yes, that sounds like a GREAT idea - I think I'll also put my social security number, my alarm codes, a Google maps link to my house, a picture of my house key, and my bank account numbers up there as well.
Look, if my company wants to set up a contact page they can set up a web page under their already existing domain name. If I want a contact page, I can set it up under my already existing personal web space. What does a new TLD add to this?
Now, *IF* they were talking about a new transport class (like http:// and ftp://) for encapsulating telephone numbers, such that a link to tel://8675309 would get me Jenny on the line, that *might* be useful.
But hell - I haven't even signed up for MYCALL@arrl.net to avoid being spammed by any asshole who scrapes my callsign (and I already have this one jackass who has done exactly that - he scraped my callsign and now he keeps adding me to stupid services like plaxo and the like, even though I've told this tool quite sharply that I don't want him bothering me.)
tel: URLs (Score:2)
In fact, "tel:", "fax:", and "modem:" URL schemes were proposed six(!) years ago by a Nokia researcher (RFC 2806 [rfc-editor.org]), but no one seems to have paid them much mind.
Something similar is already avaliable in the UK (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Something similar is already avaliable in the U (Score:2)
Great for people with unusual names... (Score:2)
So if you have a name that others don't have then you'll be fine. Of course if you are in the vast majority of people who don't have a unique name then unless you are quick its not going to work for you.
Genius idea, formed on the fact that "John Smith" is of course unique. Hell there have been TWO US presidents in the last 20 years who would have to argue over who got the domain name. This is before we get to countries where its more common to be known as lastname.firstname rather than firstname.lastname
I know (Score:2, Insightful)
ur-domain.ur-tld/contact.ext !?!?!?!?!?
Whooooo the simplicity....
Whole top-level domains concept flawed (Score:2, Insightful)
In the minds of the vast majority of internet users, the extension is an afterthought at best. The company I work for is a
Real progress would be in moving to simplify things; less top level domains. How abo
As if domain names matter anymore (Score:2)
Or are you going to type google.com and search for $company?
Contact info in an easily accessible location? (Score:4, Funny)
Wow! [tldp.org] If [superpages.com] only [microsoft.com] someone [openldap.org] had [novell.com] thought [isode.com] of [netscape.com] that [rfc.net] before! [view500.com]
Just a way to make more money for registrars... (Score:2)
You think THAT's weird? (Score:2)
Try getting hit up for autographs after being MISTAKEN for a country music star in person! It happened to me...
Back in the old days I was in the broadcasting business, and stuck at a tiny country music station in the hills (complete with shag carpeting on the studio wall as sound deadening material) and was forced by my employer to attend a Tim McGraw/Faith Hill concert. (Forced: As in, "If you don't go to the show Saturday, don't com
Sounds awesome! (Score:2)
Brilliant (Score:2)
Drop TLD and go with new prefixes ;-p (Score:2)
This would at least allow for several orders of differentiation.... we do it with phone numbers.. ie: prefixes instead of suffixes
This way you could have multiple companies/individuals, etc. as
You could register: us.va.richmond.shoegallery.com for a website/address for a busin
Re:The future (Score:2)
You run a web server on your coffee maker?
Re:The future (Score:2)
you don't??
ok, i'm trying REALLY hard not to make any of the obvious Java jokes...
but seriously, it's not like this hasn't been kicked around a lot
in fact, back in college, in a network application development class, we had to write (in Java, no less [damn]) a number of tiny, appliance-specific http servers that could serve for an XML-based Internet kitchen, along with drivers and whatnot.
i believe we wrote for the fridge, oven, microwave, coffemaker, toaster ove
Re:lets get the it out of the way (Score:2)
dot TLD needed soon ... (Score:2)
... to keep track of the TLDs:
http://www.com.tld lists all .com domains ... et cetera
Re:How IANA should not fuck up .tel (Score:2)
How cool. I'm looking forward to the day when my cellphone is subject to DDoS by scriptkiddies.
Re:Huh? (Score:2)
Arthur C. Clark's idea (see 3001) was for everyone to have their name, date of birth, and a 5(?) digit unique ID concatenate and assigned at birth. This gave everyone a unique ID that was easy for them to remember (everyone can remember their name and DoB already, so rememb
Re:Getting Dumber by the Minute (Score:2)
2. Your 'by country' resolution of domains is unworkable - it is NOT possible for a DNS server to determine the physical location of a client making a lookup request. There are schemes to GUESS at it, but nothing remotely close to accurate.
Re:.tel Me Something I Don't Know (Score:2)
100% Redundant
Speaking of Redundant, TrollMods have found a new toy in their childish mod games, now that they're bored of Offtopic, Flamebait, Troll and Overrated.