Cross posted to Rik's blog
As you were kind enough to comment on my blog, I'll return the courtesy 🙂
I'll tackle your very well reasoned points in order.
I love that play on profitable/popular, especially since .tel was designed so that it would be totally different from any other TLD: no websites, and therefore no parking pages, no ads
Take a look at http://mobile.tel/ - looks like a parking page with an advert to me. True, no banner adverts or malware on there. But hackers are inventive - DNS ones especially so - I'm not convinced that the security will hold up for ever; it never does.
In your opinion it's dull. I guess that’s because you work for a mobile telecommunications company that wants people to spend lots of money downloading content over your mobile internet
Close. In reality, I'm speaking as a UE designer. I don't think the site is well organised, I don't think much UI or UE research has been done on it (and certainly very little has been done on the control panel). When I see someone else's site, I'm glad that it's uncluttered but it is fairly "bare bones" at the moment. I'm not proud to send the link to my colleagues - it doesn't have that level of attractiveness (which doesn't have to mean bloat).
As for wanting people to download more data - you bet I do. That's why I'm glad that .tel websites are full of code comments, extraneous whitespace and a bizarre plethora of
As a quick example, my .tel weighs in at around 9KB. With a bit of optimisation, that's down to ~4.5KB.
You serve the file http://d1.webproxy.nic.tel/default/desktop/images/icons2.gif even when not all the icons are needed. All the images on the site could be further optimised.
SyncML depends 100% on having supported phones.
And .tel relies on having .tel capable handsets and / or address books. How many of them are on the market compared to SyncML capable phones? It's the same problem everyone has - bootstrapping. It will be interesting to see which makes it in to the majority of handsets in the next few years - Vanilla VCARDs, .tel, SyncML or something else entirely.
is guaranteed to be yours even when Vodafone decides that ZYB should be discontinued for some reason.
And what happens if my registrar or TelNic inc goes bust? But, yes, I take your point - the cloud is too fragile to hold our data. Local backup for everything important is a must.
I know I'm coming off as a whiny spoilt brat who is having a tantrum over his free toy. The thing is, I quite like the idea of .tel - I'm just not convinced by it in its current form. I look forward to having my mind changed 🙂
The one thing that would convince me it was worthwhile? Give users a counter so they know how many times their .tel has been visited and how many people download their business card. That way - after a year, I can assess whether more people have seen it than have been given my physical card.
Good luck with everything - I look forward to seeing how it evolves.
As you were kind enough to comment on my blog, I'll return the courtesy 🙂
I'll tackle your very well reasoned points in order.
I love that play on profitable/popular, especially since .tel was designed so that it would be totally different from any other TLD: no websites, and therefore no parking pages, no ads
Take a look at http://mobile.tel/ - looks like a parking page with an advert to me. True, no banner adverts or malware on there. But hackers are inventive - DNS ones especially so - I'm not convinced that the security will hold up for ever; it never does.
In your opinion it's dull. I guess that’s because you work for a mobile telecommunications company that wants people to spend lots of money downloading content over your mobile internet
Close. In reality, I'm speaking as a UE designer. I don't think the site is well organised, I don't think much UI or UE research has been done on it (and certainly very little has been done on the control panel). When I see someone else's site, I'm glad that it's uncluttered but it is fairly "bare bones" at the moment. I'm not proud to send the link to my colleagues - it doesn't have that level of attractiveness (which doesn't have to mean bloat).
As for wanting people to download more data - you bet I do. That's why I'm glad that .tel websites are full of code comments, extraneous whitespace and a bizarre plethora of
As a quick example, my .tel weighs in at around 9KB. With a bit of optimisation, that's down to ~4.5KB.
You serve the file http://d1.webproxy.nic.tel/default/desktop/images/icons2.gif even when not all the icons are needed. All the images on the site could be further optimised.
SyncML depends 100% on having supported phones.
And .tel relies on having .tel capable handsets and / or address books. How many of them are on the market compared to SyncML capable phones? It's the same problem everyone has - bootstrapping. It will be interesting to see which makes it in to the majority of handsets in the next few years - Vanilla VCARDs, .tel, SyncML or something else entirely.
is guaranteed to be yours even when Vodafone decides that ZYB should be discontinued for some reason.
And what happens if my registrar or TelNic inc goes bust? But, yes, I take your point - the cloud is too fragile to hold our data. Local backup for everything important is a must.
I know I'm coming off as a whiny spoilt brat who is having a tantrum over his free toy. The thing is, I quite like the idea of .tel - I'm just not convinced by it in its current form. I look forward to having my mind changed 🙂
The one thing that would convince me it was worthwhile? Give users a counter so they know how many times their .tel has been visited and how many people download their business card. That way - after a year, I can assess whether more people have seen it than have been given my physical card.
Good luck with everything - I look forward to seeing how it evolves.