Welcome to .telegraph, the monthly .tel community newsletter covering the latest news on .tel features, software and services, as well as useful tips and advice from .tel owners. Why not share this with someone you think may also be interested? More resources are at http://telnic.org/community-landing.html.

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Hot News: we are 250,000 strong!

Telnic has recently passed a quarter of a million registrations, and the momentum continues! We would like to thank both our registrars and our community for their ongoing support. As our marketing and development efforts continue, many new players will be coming on board soon. To be announced shortly…

Telnic wins UK IT Awards!

" The biggest innovation to come out of the UK since the worldwide web from Sir Tim Berners-Lee." The Judges, The UK IT Industry Awards 2009 Telnic has been awarded an inaugural UK IT Industry Award and joined other award winners honoured by the BCS, the Chartered Institute for IT, and industry publication Computing, including Sir Tim Berners‐Lee, who received the outstanding contribution to UK IT Award.

We are delighted to have gained recognition from our industry peers who have recognised our achievements. To be grouped with other British pioneers who have done so much to simplify complex technology for the benefit of the global community is both humbling and gratifying. We thank both the BCS and Computing for this honour.

mayo.tel


Inside-shops.tel
DubaiMetro.tel
DanMeyer.tel
Clapperton.tel

Scope your project

Will you focus on one product or the whole industry?
What geographic area will the directory cover?
Who is the user of this directory?

Describe your visitor’s experience

What info do visitors need/expect?
How do you structure your directory?
What contact items do you show in each listing?

Define your publisher’s needs

Who is your publisher?
Are you building an opt-in commercial directory, or a free reference resource?
Will you offer basic and premium listings, advertising space, independent domains?

Find your population method

Will you manage data manually or automatically?
For automatic updates, will you use a 3rd party service or build your own solution?
What listings will you use as samples?

Define your promotion strategy

Will you setup a website?
What social media will be most effective?
How will publishers and visitors know about your project?

My name is Steven Riley and I'm the owner of a company called Cake in a Box. We're based in Glasgow in Scotland and we specialize in wedding cakes, birthday cakes and all types of celebration cakes. Our company has been running since February 2009. We moved here from a previous, smaller bakery. This is a family business and we have four professional staff consisting of myself, my sister, and my father and mother.
Being discoverable on the internet is very important to us. We've invested quite a lot in our online store, where customers from all over the country can click on to the website, order and then they don't have to come and visit. They can just order online, the order's placed and then they can come and collect their cake.

I first heard about .tel browsing the internet by chance. Having spoken to one of my colleagues, I ran the idea of purchasing perhaps one or two of the .tel domains that would be beneficial to our business, and the feedback that I got from the IT person was quite good. So we decided to purchase after the general release of the .tel name.

The way in which I would describe .tel is that it's an online communications portal where you can instantly use keywords – specifically for products – that you can then click into the search engine and then, either regionally or locally, be able to find the products that they're looking for. That's actually quite beneficial for us as a business because there are numerous cakemakers out there. From a business perspective, I'm hoping that .tel will help me increase sales but also decrease the cost of marketing my company.

Currently we do advertise with Yellow Pages and their online portal, Yell.com. We only have a local listing and it is quite expensive – I think it's just over £300 just for the postcode region. If we were looking for a citywide listing it would probably be around about £1000 and if we were looking for Scotland as a whole it would be very expensive. So I see .tel as a cost-efficient way of promoting your company.

Watch video interview

.tel is Green

Using .tel names as business cards, mobile websites and, generally, as online presence, helps save the environment on many levels.

Save the trees

When you print business cards and other stationery with only your name and .tel address, they never go out of date, so you’ll need much less. Even if you move, change jobs or email addresses, your .tel will help you stay in touch—with no environmental impact.

Reduce carbon footprint

Creating and maintaining a .tel has a much smaller carbon footprint than any other domain name because of minimal hosting space and fewer computers involved. Many “green” and eco-friendly businesses are already using .tel technology to promote their services, and some of them don’t even have a “traditional” website: greengold.tel, ecofriendly.tel, arcmate.tel, greenheatteam.tel, supernaturalfoods.tel, asobi.tel, environmentalsustainability.tel.
You can also consult ecology-related directories, such as energysources.tel, and help save the environment by engaging with NGOs like zrodla.tel, natural-world.tel.

DanMeyer.tel—World-famous sword swallower

As a child, I always wanted to run away and join the circus as a lion tamer or acrobat. Growing up, I raised exotic animals like raccoons, skunks, and parrots, and would always try to put on shows for the neighbourhood kids.When I found out that magic was mostly tricks and deception, I was disappointed, but I still pursued my dream of being able to do REAL MAGIC that the other kids couldn’t do.

Flash forward twenty years to 1997. I had been fire-eating, juggling, and walking stilts for over 20 years, when I decided I needed to move up to the most difficult and dangerous of all circus sideshow arts: Sword Swallowing. After three years of research, study, and daily practice 10 to 12 times per day, I finally taught myself to swallow solid steel swords up to 30 inches long. This was about as close as I could get to performing REAL MAGIC!

Once you learn to swallow a sword, the actual act of creating an entertaining compelling act and ENTERTAINING people is even harder. Today people are so used to watching incredible explosions and car crashes on TV, movies, video games, and the Internet, that people are often desensitized to real physical feats of danger.

However, even in tough times, audiences want to be entertained to take their mind off their troubles, they love to be amazed and inspired to do the impossible in their lives, and once they realize that sword swallowing is real, they really seem to love it!

Being on several episodes of America’s Got Talent was a great experience, and got me quite a bit of exposure with some episodes being viewed by over 90 million viewers. Today I enjoy speaking at science and medical events discussing the Ig Nobel Awards and demonstrating the physiology of sword swallowing, and at family and youth events around the world where people recognize me from episodes of America’s Got Talent.

It is incredibly important to have a presence on the Internet – the Internet is like a large billboard that works for you 24 hours a day/7 days a week! If you have a presence on the Internet, people from around the world can find you at all hours of the day or night! The Internet is a great way for people to find me!

A fellow juggler told me about .tel, and told me to watch the video. When I watched the video, I realized how important it was to have a .tel address that works like a virtual business card to give people your contact information. I loved it and signed up for my own danmeyer.tel site immediately! My danmeyer.tel did not take long at all to populate, but it sure is a time-saver in passing on my contact information to others. If I had to write down all those URLs on the back of a card or napkin every time I wanted to give someone my contact info, it would take forever! Now I just say “danmeyer.tel” and most folks can bring it up immediately on their mobile phone!

My biggest tip is to network on ALL the social networking sites so folks can find you on any number of locations – this is like putting out lots of billboards all over the Internet. Then just populate your .tel site with all your contact information and links. This way people can network with you easily, no matter which sites they are on – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, MySpace, Linked In, AIM, etc.

I mostly use my danmeyer.tel page as a virtual business card. It is one way that I can easily TELL someone all of my contact information by just saying “Go to DanMeyer.tel” Most of my links in my .tel page don’t change very often but it is nice to know that I can update my information on my danmeyer.tel page on the Internet from anywhere in the world I might be!

.telebrities

Telnic congratulates this month's of Flip Ultra HD cameras. For a chance to win next month, submit your story: introduce yourself, your .tel, and tell us why you think you should win, http://telnic.org/community-telebrity.html.

Richard Desjardins aims to replace the paperback directories for Montreal suburbs with a collection of 31 online .tel-based directories under one roof: MaVille.tel.
"We have spent countless hours structuring the directory for rapid use and are starting to sign up re-max agents, therapists etc. We have sellers who are promoting maville.tel as the only quick reference directory. We have produced contracts, cards, .com website www.maville.com, and meet with local newspaper owners to promote with articles and planning some television interviews in the near future.”

• Useful service
• Standardized menu
• Active local promotion

Gennadiy Pavlenko, specialist in psychology from Russia, provides podcasts and online training courses on a variety of subjects. Having a developed online presence is essential for him, and a .tel is an important business card that works well on mobiles and computers wherever you are.
Gennadiy says, “I wanted to have something like this from the time I read a book about doing business on the internet 10 years ago. I have about 8000 people in my site gennadij.pavlenko.name, and “About me” link goes to pavlenko.tel. I also have my .tel in my email signature, my business card, in my Facebook account, and Posterous, and Flickr as well.”

• Personal brand
• Detailed descriptions for links

Christophe Keppens, web designer and IT professional from Belgium, has come up with an innovative use of .tel—to build his house!
“I chose this .tel domain to have all contact information of involved parties (us, contractors, etc.) in a single location accessible to all. A paper with phone numbers easily gets lost at a construction site, while everybody will take care of his mobile phone! Now I just need to give one URL to involved people and they can contact each other easily. As construction goes on, more info will be added to the page, such as planning, due dates.”

• Innovation
• One-stop-shop for all
• Current status of work