[maemo-users] FYI - dot tel domain = contact info in DNS

[From: Andrew Daviel]

I spent the departmental doughnut budget on a .tel domain, thinking it 
would be a good idea. Maybe it will. I guess it depends how many people 
get on board, as usual.


The .tel root servers are visible, and one can query them, but the 
delegation is missing. Unless I misunderstood and that's deliberate

$ host -a yahoo.tel a0.cth.dns.nic.tel.
yahoo.tel.              60      IN      TXT     ".tsm" "1" "pddx" "1"
yahoo.tel.              60      IN      NAPTR   1 1 "u" "E2U+web:http" "!^.*$!http://www.yahoo.tel!" .

I feel I was somewhat misled by Network Solutions. I thought it was going 
to be another TLD like .org, .info etc. with a normal Web page.
But no - it's a way of putting contact information into the DNS so it can be 
easily parsed by lightweight clients in cellphones etc. It seems to be 
aimed at the mobile generation for personal use (central repo for 
AIM/jabber/cell/email etc.), but also for businesses.


https://telhosting.networksolutions.com/vfs/pdf/telguide.pdf
http://dev.telnic.org

I've managed to enter a few basic things in triumf.tel

As to what this has to do with Maemo, one of the contact fields is a 
GPS* location

Also there is an API and development community. So far, tools for iPhone, 
Outlook. I only looked briefly but I think the intent is that you can 
update information dynamically using the API. Otherwise there is a wizard 
at telnic.org that updates the DNS in what seems like real time.
TTL is set to 1 hour, negative caching to 10 minutes.


(* using "GPS" as my cellular carrier seems to now, as a 
shorthand for "geographic location in WGS84 coordinates" rather than 
"Global Positioning System").

-- 
Andrew Daviel, TRIUMF, Canada
Tel. +1 (604) 222-7376  (Pacific Time)
Network Security Manager