The COVID Pandemic and the resultant “new normal” for most of us is a world where everything pretty much happens online. I have attended weddings and funeral services as well as the occasional dinner with family and friends via Zoom and Google Meet. Needless to say I definitely have daily meetings with co-workers and contractors on weekdays.
I don’t know about you but for me hearing machinery, dogs barking, kids playing, chickens clucking or hadidas calling in the background of video conferencing sessions is fairly standard. In fact a meeting would not be complete without some or other ‘intrusion’. This just goes to show how we have grown accustomed to this new normal.
Online meetings are a regular occurrence whereas little over a year ago they were not commonplace. Even for myself working in Tech!
So I have a Google Meet URL which is available for myself permanently, as long as it gets accessed at least once every 3 months. In Zoom under your profile there is a link with your Personal Meeting ID already setup for easy sharing. The problem for me is that should any of these links change because of Google or Zoom policies, or these services cease to exist, my meeting IDs become irrelevant. Should I decide to stop using both of these options and rather use Microsoft Teams, the change would be simple enough to make, and instant. Also, setting up a meeting ID every time you schedule a meeting is just a waste of time. It’s much easier for me to just say ‘find me online at www.kudu.africa for our next meeting on X day, at Y time’.
This was achieved using SPIN (URL forwarding) within TopDog App. All you need is a domain name and a personal meeting id to forward any requests to. The cheapest domain at the time for me was .africa at $5.49 for the registration. And I like Kudus (striped buck with warped horns found only in Africa), so this made perfect sense to me 😉
The benefits of this arrangement for me are twofold. For one, I can change the forwarding address at any time and the update will be available immediately. Secondly, I have a permanent meeting id which is www.kudu.africa, not some random number or character string generated by Zoom and Google Meet applications. My meeting id is unique and serves as a digital identifier for my personal video conferencing service for as long as I have the domain name, kudu.africa.
The SPIN feature on TopDog App also provides up to five email aliases which can be bundled with the domain spin setup. Each alias can be set up with a unique username @ kudu.africa which then forwards to any other mailbox.
SPIN is a really great feature and there are many possibilities to make effective and clever use of it. It’s time to claim your own digital identity on the web and it all starts with a domain name.
