Today we’ve launched two new sites, both focussed on .tel domain technology.

miggletelDirectoryBuilder

The first is the miggletelDirectoryBuilder. This enables .tel owners to collect directory submissions from free and paying customers.

Directory subscribers can not only submit listings to a .tel directory, but they can amend them as well. Directory owners have the ability to review all listings before pushing them live.

Premium listings are paid via PayPal, debit or credit card.

The current directory using miggletelDirectoryBuilder is brighton.tel, You can see this in action here.

If you’ve brought a .tel domain name with a view to building a directory then this could be the perfect product for you.

Full product details can be found here (PDF).

miggletel.com – Miggle Ltd’s commentary and analysis on the latest in the .tel space

miggletel.com is a site which showcases the latest .tel products and services from miggletel, as well as the best of what we’ve seen from the wider .tel development community.

It includes articles on our own insights into .tel directory, as well as a summary of the most interesting blog posts and tweets we’ve seen each day.

We know there are already plenty of other similar great sites which are talking about .tel and we’d be keen to flag these up to our users from miggletel.com in exchange for similar links from your site, so if you’re running something similar, please get in touch.

Based in Brighton and Hove, East Sussex, contact miggle.co.uk for website development, content management and online media services in the UK and worldwide.

We’ve spent a bit more time today on one of our .tel domains, brighton.tel.

One thing that I wanted to find out since we last looked at these was how are the sites doing stats wise. To explore this, we’ve been downloading our log files and looking at these in telSAP, which was the best of a few of the stats solutions we looked at today. This is an obvious, but pretty key step required to measure how effective the sites turn out to be.

Another thing I’ve read a lot about is how well these domain names get (or don’t get) indexed by Google. brighton.tel is currently not in the top 100 search results for the search term brighton on Google, Bing or Yahoo! Nor, at present, should it be, considering how much work has been done on it. However, we are finding that there are some searches on which brighton.tel gets first page Google ranking on keywords that are part of the subfolders on the domain. This is really encouraging.

Finally, we’ve made use of the back-up feature that telnic have recently launched. We used this to download one set of data from one of our .tels and upload it to another. Basically, that XML DTD acts as a template we can now use to manage bulk uploads to .tels, which is handy.

Based in Brighton and Hove, East Sussex, contact miggle.co.uk for website development, content management and online media services in the UK and worldwide.

Over the last 8 months quite a few people would have bought .tel domains and many are probably wondering if they made a wise investment or not. I’ve read a lot of coverage in the last few days that might suggest buying these domain names was not a good move – and my anecdotal observations are that I tend to see more bad coverage than good. So, what’s the deal?

Let’s assume first that .tel domains are like equities. And, so, if this were a financial advice post, it’d only be right that I declare my interest, which is that I have a varied portfolio of .tel domain names on which I spent about £3,500. When I brought my domain names I saw it very much as like buying stock. I diversified the sectors under which I brought names, both in terms of the business areas they relate to and the way in which I might monetise them. I also realised it was a punt, and that the value I might get back on these in the future would depend on the potential the investing community saw in it. Like stocks, some domain names are better than others, but I was interested to see last week that marketing.tel sold for €850, which would have been double its original purchase value. So, for the original owner, that worked.

Of the bad coverage I’ve seen, and, based on some of the feedback I’ve elicited myself, an observation again is that those who are slating the domain are also missing the point about what it is that makes .tels different. If the negative article you read mentions .mobi and .tel and waste of money in the same paragraph, then you need read no further. The two are not the same thing.

I think telnic could have done a few things better with the roll out of this technology, but I’m not going to list those here, or even berate them for it. At the end of the day, I didn’t effectively invest into telnic because of its ability to market itself, I did so because of the strength of, and the differentiating factor of, its technology. A few days ago, telnic won an award, but it’s not mentioned the fact on its website. But then I didn’t hire them to be my PR agency!

At the moment, I think its too early to say if the money I spent on .tel domains was a waste. In my opinion, what will make the difference is the level of take up in the developer community to launch applications which deliver on a need. Telnic’s launch of an API from the outset is key to this. VHS as a video format was not invented for Porn. But Porn made it win the battle against Beta. Likewise, where the community takes (or doesn’t take) .tel will define whether my money was wasted or not. Its not down to telnic, in my opinion, to build adoption. It’s down to developers to adopt.

Going back to the theme of investment, my initial financial outlay aside, we’ve not over the last 6 months given as much time over to .tels as I thought perhaps I might when I first brought my names. There’s just not been the buzz around it required to make it worthwhile. As a business, we focus where we see the most value, and if we get it wrong, we move on. For a while, this has just not been a prio. If buying a load of .tel domains was a mistake, it won’t be my last.

However, in the last few weeks we’ve had some downtime in which we’ve been able to dig a little into the API and we’ve come up with a way to automate the service we built at www.miggletel.co.uk. We’ve had some interest in this from various domain owners in the past – but it was the lack of an automated back-end which cooled the interest. In the coming weeks we’ll be blogging a bit more about our solution, learning more about .tels as we go, as well as talking a bit more about what we’re doing with the domain as a whole. Watch this space. And, in the meantime, if you want to tell us about good or bad .tel apps and coverage you’ve seen, or want to tell me about the best (or worst) return you’ve ever got out of a similar investment, do let us know!

Based in Brighton and Hove, East Sussex, contact miggle.co.uk for website development, content management and online media services in the UK and worldwide.

In the last week we’ve seen a real uplift in the amount of people talking about .tel directories – on which you can read some useful info on the telsters.com site here.

For .tel domain owners who are thinking about building out their own directories, you may be interested to know that we are now offering sites similar to miggletel.co.uk, the site we’re using to manage subscriptions to some of the .tel directory services we’ll soon start marketing.

If you’re interested in finding out more about this just get in touch. You can find some other great info on .tel’s here as well.

Based in the UK’s silicon city – Brighton and Hove, East Sussex, contact miggle.co.uk for website development, content management and online media services in the UK and worldwide.

My wife, Caroline, has spent a lot of this week up the allotment with the baby. Planting stuff. My interest in this venture will, shamefully, only start to kick in about six months time when she walks through the door with a trug of vegetables – hopefully with more parsnips this year than last!

We’ve been planting a few seeds at miggle this week as well – with the launch of our first .tel sites. We’re hoping they grow over the summer months in the same way as Caroline’s crop – but for now, do take a look at what we’ve done – even though they are just seedlings.

The most obvious one to check out is brighton.tel. We’ve listed a few of our favourite Brighton businesses on it – and we’ve also launched a new site – called miggletel.co.uk – from which Brighton businesses can sign up for a FREE or PREMIUM listing – or engage us to get their own .tel websites built. We’ve also added lettings.tel, motors.tel and jewellery.tel at the same time.

I’ve also published a few more as well – and what these show is how simply you can daisy chain .tel’s together. webdevelopment.tel links to miggle.tel links to alick.tel. Obviously, its just hyperlinking, its not rocket science – but it does mean, that providing I can keep on top of keeping alick.tel updated – then anyone who links to it will always have access to my latest info.

Based in the UK’s silicon city – Brighton and Hove, East Sussex, contact miggle.co.uk for website development, content management and online media services in the UK and worldwide.

Telnic.org, the registry operator for the new .tel top level domain, have singled out miggle’s newly created .tel website – brighton.tel – as an example of a .tel that is “helpful, well-populated” and offers “innovative ways to keep in touch”.

Check us out on their .tel of the week page.

Based in the UK’s silicon city – Brighton and Hove, East Sussex, contact miggle.co.uk for website development, content management and online media services in the UK and worldwide.

Now the .tel domain names are on general sale, it’s a really good time to build your business set up with this new way to communicate via the world wide web…

Building a .tel is a quick, easy and effective way of communicating your contact details. Think of it as a your own directory listing which can list everything about your company. It’s great on mobile phones too. Due to it’s revolutionary use of the DNS, the pages load very fast and when you find the number you’re after, you simply click it in your browser and your mobile automatically dials! Couldn’t be easier or more convenient.

At miggle.co.uk we’ve already started building some .tel websites and have been very impressed with what we’ve seen of their functionality so far.

Here is the view of www.webdevelopment.tel as seen from a PC or laptop (mobile view is a simplifed version). When building a .tel you can list any kind of contact information:

• Voice Calls
• Mobile Calls
• Email
• voIP
• Fax
• Web links
• Google maps
• Keywords
• Postal address

Having a .tel built for your business is a great way to improve your online presence whether you already have a website or need to get an online presence quickly and cheaply.

Here at miggle.co.uk we are already experienced in building .tel websites so if your thinking of improving your companies online presence then check out our website.

Based in the UK’s silicon city – Brighton and Hove, East Sussex, contact miggle.co.uk for website development, content management and online media services in the UK and worldwide.

New things happen on the Internet all the time. It’s an evolving medium – that’s one of the best things about it. This latest development has really got us excited though: the launch of .tel domains.

What’s it all about?

.tel is a new top level domain (TLD) like a .com or a .co.uk, yet different in one key respect: the way it uses the Internet’s ‘phone book’, DNS (Domain Name System).

Up until now, everytime you access a website, the address you type in is translated, by DNS, into the set of numbers that the website lives under. Your computer (or mobile phone) then busies itself with retrieving the webpages. With .tels, it’s all completely different as all the information in a .tel is stored by the DNS. This means that the DNS doesn’t need to look anywhere else for the info, so it can deliver the information that lives under yourbusiness.tel super quickly.

A .tel domain can either complement your existing website or act as a stand-alone website if you don’t yet have one. All the information that lives at yourbusiness.tel is viewable in a web browser (e.g. Internet Explorer or FireFox) as a webpage.

Because of their speed, .tel domains have significant advantages for web-enabled mobile phones – many of which still download standard web pages quite slowly. Also, because you can publish pretty much any contact information on a .tel, customers are just one click from your website, your email or from making a call.

With a .tel domain you can:

Join a global online directory that provides you instant worldwide exposure…

Integrate all your means of communication in a single place under your control…

Update and manage your contact information and keywords in real time…

Increase your search engine visibility through descriptive keywords…

Provide a fast way for your customers to connect with you in a single click from any mobile device…

How are .tel domains different to .coms?

The makers of .tel reckon that .tel domains could be as big as .com. We’re not going to be as bullish as .tel’s inventors because the invention of .com was a once in a lifetime phenomenon. But .tel will be big and we think businesses should get on board – not just to have a cool domain name, because this is NOT what .tel is about – but to get to use part of the internet, DNS, the web’s engine room, that other domains can’t exploit.

Without getting too technical, .tel domains use of DNS allows them to deliver several advantages. The .tels work really quickly on mobile phones – putting users one click away from making calls, sending you a mail or browsing your website. And because changes you make to your .tel are instantaneous (or as near as), anyone or anything that references your .tel has access to the latest, most up-to-date info about your business.

Exciting new opportunities with .tel domains

There are a number of other exciting aspects to .tel domains – opportunities for social networking and location based services being amongst our most hotly anticipated. Also, .tel development will not stand still. Think of some of the first .com pages you ever looked at, back when your mobile phone was brick sized and no one had thought of putting a browser on it – how far they’ve come. .tel has also been developed with a view to evolve. Watch this space for more .tel news very soon.

At miggle, we’ll be building a few .tels of our own. We can build your .tel pages too. For more information on .tels, contact the miggleweb team.

Based in the UK’s silicon city – Brighton and Hove, East Sussex, contact miggle.co.uk for website development, content management and online media services in the UK and worldwide.