Hornet for Blackberry, real-time address book (Will .tel kill the phone number?) | Hacker News Reader

Hornet for Blackberry, real-time address book (Will .tel kill the phone number?)

hornethub.com

3 pointsplaggypig9 comments

.tel is about using existing infrastructure (the DNS) to resolve contact information. Will it make phone numbers as inconsequential to the experience of communication as IP address are to browsing the web? Discuss.

It sounds like it's just someone trying to make money off a domain they're stuck with. Why can't I use my regular domain name to store my contact information? (And why would I want anyone that knows my domain name to be able to call me? I treat phone numbers like passwords. If you don't know the password, you can't call me. This system treats them like usernames. Not the same.)

I guess you could use something like Google Voice to blacklist (or whitelist) phone numbers.

I do, but blacklisting is annoying (requires effort), and whitelisting can easily cause me to miss important calls. The current system works pretty well.

Why are you so disparaging about a company that's trying to innovate and make money?

You can use NAPTR/LOC/TXT records for any domain name you like, providing you have sufficient control over your DNS zone.

However, many domain owners either don't have this ability, or lack sufficient knowledge to manage them. Many people, even businesses, don't even own domain names. .tel comes with tools and services that make it simple.

In terms of privacy, you can encrypt specific records that only certain friends/groups can decrypt and read, so you can absolutely keep your phone number private. As a bonus, you could become liberated from it and can change it seamlessly, without having to tell any of your friends.

I believe I heard that Michael Jackson used to change his number on a weekly basis - obviously an extreme case, but you get my drift.

I don't see why this needs to be a .tel specific technology.

You're right, it doesn't, but see my other comment.

No. Phone numbers are unique. Names are decidedly not unique. Every look in a phone book for John Smith?

A .tel domain may be great for the first person to get a popular .tel name, but it sucks for everyone else. And for that reason alone, it has no chance of replacing a telephone book.

Also, it is an expensive, proprietary, unscalable solution to a problem that doesn't exist.

With a little bit of creativity you can do a lot with language, e.g. there are hundreds of millions of names in each of the biggest namespaces (AOL/Gmail/Skype/etc).

One shouldn't assume that the John Smith you know has JohnSmith.tel, but to use a specialised search engine to find the correct one. You may already know one piece of his contact information, his location, or some keywords that might define him.

It's hardly expensive ($10 /year). Everything is open source and compliant with preexisting standards. You can run your own TelHosting provider if you want to. It's decentralised (obviously). Why would you say it's not scalable? DNS is the most distributed and well balanced network that we have.

Finally, you OWN your data. There is no malevolent third party.

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