.tel Story of Project Forty Two

We’re Chris and Martine Middleton, based in Nottingham. In late 2008 we set our sights on a new challenge, quit our permanent jobs, and set up Project Forty Two to enable us to do freelance contract and consultancy work. I’m an IT specialist and Martine is a project manager, so we can accept short or longer term contracts which may take us anywhere in the country or further afield.
Being discoverable on the internet and contactable is absolutely vital for us. We’re self-employed moving between contract and consultancy roles, and can be anywhere at any time. projectfortytwo.tel and projectfortytwo.com are the shop windows for what we do – they let people know what we offer and provide a choice of ways to contact us wherever we are. If someone wants you to do some work for them and you can’t be contacted quickly, they’ll go elsewhere, they don’t want to play email or voicemail ping-pong. The .tel site allows us to easily separate and showcase our offerings – my wife has a page for her project management work, and I have three subsections for different areas of IT expertise. One of these, a specialization in payment processing systems, is a bit of a niche offering so it’s great to be able to highlight that. Each section on projectfortytwo.tel has a link straight to the relevant page on the company website too.

To stay in touch with clients, we have email contact forms on the website, and email links on projectfortytwo.tel. We have mobile email so can pick emails up anywhere at any time, and can reply directly from our mobile phones. We have a memorable “03” number which is instantly diverted to wherever we are, a memorable “03” fax number which converts incoming faxes to an email attachment, and we publish mobile numbers for voice and SMS.

The .tel site enables us to quickly switch to a “holiday” profile which hides the mobile numbers if we prefer to be undisturbed but we can still keep an eye on email contacts via mobile email.

I first saw an article about .tel domains on my hosting provider’s website, which linked to the Telnic site and also showed the demo videos. I immediately saw the potential of a single point of contact, accessible on any internet-connected device from a basic mobile handset to a full internet browser on a PC. All our contact details at anyone’s fingertips and the ability to, for example, dial a phone number by just selecting it and pressing a single button. There was also the ease of use issue in that there was no need to build a website, no coding, no HTML, no publishing by FTP, just a simple browser-based control panel to update the data almost instantly. I was hugely impressed by the idea and by the implementation.

I bought projectfortytwo.tel on the first day of general availability, and was immediately impressed with the ease of use when I came to set it up. Changes propagated almost instantly, and it was easy to set up not only all my contact details, but also to add descriptive paragraphs and keywords to tell people who we are and what we do. As the months have passed I keep finding new features available which just add to the richness of the whole .tel experience. The ability to add descriptive text to subfolder links and to edit the page headers enables not just a more professional look and feel, but helps people see exactly what you are and find their way to exactly the section of the domain they need to look at. The problem with some products is that extra functionality adds complexity and detracts from ease of use. By contrast, the enhancements to the .tel functionality so far have only made it easier to use the control panel and enhanced ease of use for visitors.

Our .tel appears ahead of our .com domain name on business cards. It puts all our contact information in one place and we can tailor what appears by simply changing the profile setting.

For a business consisting of only two people it’s important to strike a balance between being easily contactable and never being off duty – quality of life was one of the reasons for deciding to set up the business. We can choose between being instantly available on the end of a phone or only contactable by email, where we can choose to respond immediately or later, depending on the nature of the request.

I think absolutely anyone can benefit from a .tel. For businesses they allow a concise summary of what you offer, with numerous options for providing tailored communications options which (unlike setting up a website) can be changed almost instantly by anyone who can drive a keyboard and mouse, with no specialist knowledge required. It’s a piece of cake to set up subsections for different departments or locations; the possibilities are almost endless.

For individuals, it’s also a boon. Time was we had an address and maybe a phone number. Now, we have multiple phone numbers, email addresses, websites, social networking pages, Skype, SIP and H.323 addresses… it’s a nightmare remembering them all or deciding which one someone’s likely to remember. I have a personal .tel as well as projectfortytwo.tel – all I have to tell people is one simple name and they can access everything else. I can also make certain details accessible generally and others only to trusted friends. Details can be downloaded as a vCard at a single click. And unlike a printed business card (which I also have, with our .tel on it) you don’t have to reprint it if you change one detail.

A .tel is like an electronic pinboard or card file. You can add as many cards as they like, at any time, organized however you like, and anyone can view it at the click of a mouse or button. Better still, people only have to remember a single name to access it.

It doesn’t matter whether you’re an individual or a multinational business – all your contact details are together in one place for ever, however often they change. And unlike many new ideas, it’s simple to use, cheap to buy, and accessible anywhere from almost any device. And no, I’m not on commission for this – I genuinely believe this to be a great offering. There aren’t many things I recommend to all my contacts but .tel is one of them.