Business 'cards' secure on Internet

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By Elizabeth Hillgrove

Instead of unwrapping a new box of business cards for every contact change, professionals with a $10 Telnic Limited ".tel domain" can update and protect their information with a click.

Khashayar Mahdavi created Telnic Ltd., a United Kingdom-based Registry Operator and Sponsoring Organization for the new .tel sponsored top-level domain, in 2000, aiming to revolutionalize a connection between telecommunications and the Internet. He can be found at Khash.tel.

"People tend to forget that those social-networking sites own your data," said Mr. Mahdavi, the CEO of Telnic. "This one is yours, you own your data."

Any Web-connected device can easily and rapidly access the raw text, instantly recognizing the data so it may use it immediately.

Rather than using a Web site, users and trademark owners such as Apple and Hasbro input desired information like phone numbers, URLs, e-mail addresses, GPS locations and mailing addresses. This information is directly linked to the Domain Name System instead of connecting through an IP address, putting it in the "DNA of the Internet," as spokesman Matt Warder told The Washington Times.

This direct information "game changer" can be encrypted to make chosen information public and other information private. The owner controls this as well as who they wish to see which information directly, in real time, from anywhere.

"Because it isn't a Web site and you're editing info straight into the Internet or domain system, the domain name is as secure as the Internet itself," Mr. Warder said.

Mobile numbers, e-mail addresses, blog URLs, social-networking sites and many other facets of today's communications are easily entered into field boxes and changed just as quickly by the user. There is no site to hack, the encryption is tightly controlled and others are not able to "cybersquat" on Telnic customers' space, he said.

Mr. Mahdavi calls it "the most beautiful database in the world" because his customers can do away with constantly updating business cards and with waiting for information to load on mobile phones, because the easily changed and rapid process of the "very, very fast and very, very cheap" tool makes networking cleaner and simpler for users.

"It's one of those things that comes to life when you play with it," Mr. Warder said.

Telnic just celebrated its 100,000th domain space sold and plans to launch applications for devices like the iPhone in upcoming weeks. Customers from around the world can buy space through ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers.