.tel or Dot Tel or Dot Anything

This is just so ridiculous, it defies the imagination.

ICANN, the body responsible for creating top-level domains, is reportedly 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.

Go to their company website and click "contact us". That might be a way to get the contact info you are looking for. If it's an individual, they may already have a dot name, another ICANN smokescreen invented to keep them from having to create real new commercially viable TLDs.

Those with .tel sites could then keep them updated with all their myriad contact information, including address, phone numbers (e.g., home, work, cellular, Skype), fax numbers, and instant messaging handles. Those who wish to remain anonymous could happily ignore the new TLD and continue to keep their contact info restricted to those they want to have it.

A whole TLD for people and companies to put their contact page from their existing website. Next ICANN will create dot about for the about us page.

ICANN has been on a new TLD streak lately. Most recently, ICANN opened up public registration for the European Union-specific .eu TLD, resulting in a rush to register domain names with the new suffix. Other TLDs approved since 2000 include .info, .biz, . jobs, .travel, and even .mobi for handheld devices. ICANN has also mulled over the creation of a .xxx TLD for adult sites, but that has yet to materialize due to concerns on the part of some countries which believe it would result in more pornography on the Internet. New child-centric legislation proposed last month in the US would call on ICANN to revive .xxx.

dot eu was viable as a ccTLD, nothing more. dot info was one of the only three sensible choices ICANN has ever made. dot biz was a poor excuse for a commercially viable TLD and it infringed on the rights of the dot biz that had already been created by someone else.



dot jobs is commercially viable and it is the second choice ICANN made in regards to TLDs that might make sense. dot travel is the third one. It represents an industry. We need more TLDs that reflect commercial categories.

dot mobi is just a joke. You can make any website available to mobile devices and they are building devices to handle viewing websites. The industry is handling that in a technical manner and are not going to restrict mobile devices to only be able to surf to dot mobi websites.

They didn't mention two of ICANN's proudest moments, the creation of dot aero and dot museum. Yeah, those are commercially viable and a real threat to dot com. We need TLDs created that can compete with dot com domains. ICANN is doing everything they can to keep from creating any TLD that can do that.

And dot xxx is the biggest joke of all. First of all, porn is legal. They currently have dot com, net, and even org websites. That industry has spent millions promoting those domain names. They are not going to abandon all of their link popularity and current traffic to move to a dot xxx domain name. They may buy some dot xxx names to compliment their current business, but they aren't going to just move because people say they should.



You cannot force them to move without offering them reimbursement for the business they will lose as a result. Who pays for that? ICANN? The US Government? What about all of the companies in porn that are not in the US? You can't just pass a US law and expect every country to abide by it. Ain't gonna happen.

source; arstechnica.com

by Chris McElroy AKA NameCritic
More things that just piss me off
Blogs.pn