The .TEL domain extension is almost a year old and that means it’s time to think about renewals.

It was on March 24th, 2009, that the .TEL Generic Top-Level Domain (gTLD) launched into General Availability. That was the day that anyone could register their .TEL at the regular cost in a free-for-all landrush for available domains.

Now, as we are quickly approaching the first birthday of .TEL, it’s important that you remind those who bought a .TEL domain in those early days that it’s time to renew.

Telhosting Update Coming in March

To help you convince .TEL owners to hold on to those domains heading into year two, .TEL is rolling out an upgrade to the TelHosting platform. That’s the system that allows .TEL domain owners to edit their contact information, and it’s also responsible for the serving up of the actual .TEL webpage that each user gets with their .TEL domain name.

Telnic says that the new look was created based on feedback from the .TEL Community and features new templates, colours, social media integration and an embedded search:

“With the new design, you will be able to customize your .tel by choosing a colour scheme from a selection of templates and adding a link to your photo or logo. You can have a different graphic in every folder. For large .tel resources, the search function will also be useful, and you’ll be able to hide the “All .tels” search mode so that visitors won’t be allowed to go to other .tel resources from your page. Finally, the custom icons for popular online services will be added automatically when your .tel page is loaded.”

Selling .TEL

.TEL is different from regular domain names because it doesn’t require separate hosting, nor does the domain owner need to know how to create and manage a website to use it.

It’s a great solution for small businesses looking to take a first step in getting online, but it’s also a super way for companies and individuals that are already online to beef up their online presence and make it easier for customers to find them.

When you market .TEL, be sure to reach out to new customers, but don’t forget about your existing users who may already have a domain name–offer them a .TEL as an inexpensive complementary web service that will help them get found online and drive traffic to their regular website.

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.