GOOG-411

Posted on May 7, 2009

GOOG-411 (or Google Voice Local Search) is a telephone service from Google that allows users to search for a business in any U.S. or Canadian city by calling a toll-free telephone number.

The service uses speech recognition technology to connect users to their desired business.

Users that call 1-800-466-4411 are told that the call is being recorded to improve results, and then asked to say the city and state of the sought business. Users may then search for the business by name or by category, which generates a list of businesses matching the search.

They may then select a business on the list by saying “number”, or press the desired number on their phone. Once a business is selected, Google automatically connects the user to the business or sends an SMS with the phone number.

It’s pretty cool.

By saying “details” the user can also listen to the address etc.

Users can also narrow search results by zip code or street intersection.

GOOG-411 is offered to the public free of charge and does not contain advertising.

It’s actually been around a while and I’m not sure how well it has caught on. I found it useful but I’m not sold.

Now with some of the new developemnts of .tel (dottel) I am wondering if GOOG-411 usage will grow or stagnate.

Start your Engines!

Posted on March 24, 2009

Well today was the day!

.com, .net, .mobi, .org, .net, .info, .biz, .uk, .de, bz, pro… the list goes on and they all serve a purpose in the “right” environment, but… .tel (yes I like this concept) is different at its core and today became available to the general public at generally acceptable price levels.

I have been following these for a while and aside from the bunch we registered in the Sunrise and Landrush periods, today the floodgates opened and I don’t see them closing anytime soon.

In fact, they shouldn’t!

Now I have heard many thoughts as to why .tel may not “take off” (in the long run) and the truth is there are factors that may hinder its potential, but personally I see great value in this marketing tool.

Leveraged properly, and aside form the “living” business card it can become, the prospect of using it as a hub for landing pages and e-commerce is incredible.

Even if humans take a while to come around, spiders and robots can have a field day!

I have made several posts RE .tel and I will probably be focusing less on them now, but I recommend you consider their power and I welcome your thoughts / comments.

Hey, if anything you can call and ask me directly at demicco.tel (coming soon ;:)

Don’t wait too long to protect your .tel domain

Posted on March 19, 2009

Don't find yourself missing a valuable piece of your brand identity

We’re well past the Sunrise period imposed by Telnic to allow Trademark owners exclusive rights to protect their .tel extensions and there are only a few days left to the Landrush period.

The premium fees associated with the registration of .tel domains during the Landrush period was set to discourage domain squatters from snapping up mass numbers of .tel domain names for resale purposes are set to be removed next Tuesday March 24th, 2009.

Businesses may want to act now and ensure they gain control of the .tel names related to their company as soon as possible.

The 2008 ‘Brandjacking Index’ offered by MarkMonitor recently published an 18% increase of cyber-squatting during 2008, taking the number of reported instances of cyber-squatting identified in the 4th quarter of 2008 to a staggering a total of 440,584.

In addition to protecting your brand through the early registration of your .tel domain, you are also securing an innovative domain extension that serves as a fast and easy to access contact page optimally targeted for the rapidly growing mobile market.

If smartphones are the fastest growing devices on the planet, shouldn’t you consider it part of your marketing strategy?

Posted on March 16, 2009

The continuing rise of the smartphone — The continuing rise of the smart-phone

According to Gartner Research, cell phones utilizing the Mac OS had growth of over 245.7% in 2008. The BlackBerry platform had the second best growth at 96.7%. This is pretty powerful, as more and more efforts will go toward continuing the growth of these numbers and the greater their success, the greater the opportunity for businesses to have their information, products and services at the users (buyers) fingertips.

Today, more than 25% of all cell phone traffic in the world is via smart-phones and in 2008 over 139 million smart-phones were sold.

Anyone think this number is going to decrease?

[…]Read More

Is .tel the new seamless contact venue it appears to be?

Posted on February 17, 2009

We may be in the middle of a recession (I refuse to use the “D” word), but we are also in the middle of an exciting “land rush” for a new, and unique, domain extension.

.tel provides a new internet standard for users to control contact information “on-the-fly” directly at the DNS (Domain Name System) level regardless of them having a website.

The interesting twist here is in the way .tel is approaching the market as a TLD (Top Level Domain like .com, .info, .org, etc.) that uses the DNS to actually host and display the contact information of a company or individual rather than the traditional usage of DNS to direct users to a website IP address.

[…]Read More