Mail Without Addresses: Making Directories work for Mail

1
Mail Without AddressesMaking Directories work
for Mail

• Whats an Address, anyway?
• Are we ever going to do away with addresses?
• What if we just use peoples Names to communicate
  with them?

2
Uniqueness vs. Complexity

• Just send it to Jeff Hodges
• But that names not unique
• One popular search engine alone -169 hits
• Do you really want to contact them all?
• Is the individual you want even in the list? How
  do you know?
• Adding qualifying information to a name adds
  complexity.

3
Complexity comes in N flavors

• ..for some varying N
• Various existing schemes
• SMTP aka Internet aka RFC 822
• X.400
• many proprietary schemes
• ccMail
• Notes
• etc

4
Hiding Complexity

• Complexity is the bane of ease of use.
• What ancient technique is commonly used to
  remember addresses?
• Write them down in some known order.
• Directories can act as personal and/or shared
  Address Books.

5
The Panels Talks...

• Bob Anderson, Rialto
• Riding the waves of messaging addressing
• Sheri Determan, ISOCOR
• Simplifying addressing via directories

6
Panels talks, contd

• Tom Oliver, Computer Sciences Corp.
• Designing a directory
• JF Sullivan, Netscape
• Overview of how directories are used in messaging
  contexts

7
References

• These talks can be found at
• http//www.stanford.edu/hodges/talks/
• You can find more info about using Directories
  for routing email at these places
• Applicable IETF Internet-Drafts...http//www.imc.
  org/ids.htmldirectories
• If you know of other good sites, please let me
  know
• Jeff.Hodges_at_Stanford.edu, 650-723-2452