Two items of note from Telnic, the Registry operator for the .TEL domain extension:

MX Records for .TEL domains

First up, Telnic has let us know that they will be updating the TelHosting platform on Thursday June 4th, 2009. The big news in this release of the web-based application where you manage your .TEL domains is the addition of MX Record management. We’ve had a couple of requests to add the ability to add MX records to .TEL domains since the launch of .TEL a few months back.

With this new release, it will be easy to add MX Records and to offer .TEL domain owners the ability to use their .TEL domains as email addresses.

.TEL domain owners can log in to the TelHosting platform at http://telhosting.opensrs.com/. There won’t be any downtime associated with the upgrade to the TelHosting platform, although Telnic suggests that users logged in at the time of the upgrade might experience a loss of session, requiring a re-login.

We’ll follow up with a few screenshots showing how to manage MX Records on Thursday, once the new version is up and running.

Superbook iPhone App

Also of note is the release of a new .TEL app for the iPhone called Superbook. Users of Apple’s popular phone and mobile Internet device can grab the app for free from the iPhone App Store. There’s more information for developers at the Telnic developers website. Interestingly, .TEL releases all its apps as open source projects, so you could download the source and create your own customized version of the app if you were so inclined.

Superbook allows iPhone users to lookup .TEL domains, act on the information (including dialing the stored phone numbers). It also uses the location services built into the iPhone to find .TEL entries based on your current location and the location data stored in the .TEL domain.

This application opens up some interesting possibilities for .TEL domains, especially considering the location integration. Users could use the app to find companies or retailers that are nearby, or use the app to keep track of friends.

The app is free.