Subject: Re: Sub-Names

From: Nicolas Popp <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 18 Jul 2000 14:23:44 -0700

>allowing something along the lines of sub-domains for common names would be
tremendously
>useful

Funny, we actually came up with the same conclusion a while ago and we
decided to introduce the notion of prefix. For instance, ebay.com owns the
prefix 'ebay'. If you type 'ebay pokemon' in IE5 our servers interpret it as
"search for 'pokemon' on ebay.com'.

Some other examples to play with are:

Nasdaq <code>, (Nasdaq AAPL)
MP3 <title or singer>
SEC <comapany name> (SEC Cisco)
etc...

I think of the prefix almost as a second level domain name.
The prefix helps us create hierarchy in the namespace and in the resolution
(ala DNS, we just pass the pokemon query to ebay and ebay decides what to do
with it). I really hope CNRP will help that kind of interface to take off...

ps: For the IETF crowd, I recently added the "RFC" prefix (e.g. RFC 1234")
but you had better know the RFC number since the fallback is pretty lousy:
404! )

-----Original Message-----
From: Adam Theo [mailto:[email-masked]]
Sent: Tuesday, July 18, 2000 12:19 PM
To: [email-masked]
Subject: Sub-Names

Hello, Adam Theo here

thank you, ms. daigle, for explaining the state/evolution of the cnrp.
my searching through the list archives didn't bring up anything relevant
to this that i could find, so i hope i'm not walking on used up ground
on this next one.

i've been thinking of this so called 'common name' technology for a few
months, without knowledge of this list, only knowing a little about AOL's,
Netscape's, and RealNames' keywords systems. but i came up with a few
ideas.

one of which was that domain names are allowed sub-domain names for
resources
that lie under the same domain, but are important enough to warrant a
certain amount of recognition. for example, 'search.portal.cxm',
'autobio.personal.cxm',
etc.

while common names are traditionally composed of single phrases that
direct the user to a single resource, allowing something along the lines
of sub-domains for common names would be tremendously useful if implimented
properly. an owner of a common name could enable users to go directly
to the search site of his website without having to buy a whole new common
name for the search site.

the most important function of this, however, could be with email addresses.
it would be wonderful to enable users to use the common name system to
send and recieve email. but allotting a whole common name to each email
address would quickly use up the namespace. allowing for sub-names would
make it work much like domain names do.

what would be done to create these sub-CNs would be to allow each service
the ability to impliment these sub-CNs. it doesn't have to if it doesn't
want to. next, it should then be allowed to decide upon a character or
set of characters that would be reserved only for the purpose of dividing
the main-CN from the sub-CN. with english-based services, the '@' sign
would do very well since it is not often used in common names, and is
already familiar to the general internet public.

such a sub-CN, using the examples from above, could look like this on
Yahoo!'s CN service:

'Search @ Portal', or 'Autobio @ Personal'.

on Lycos, it could be:

'Search >> Portal', or 'Autobio >> Personal'.

and AOL could decide it doesn't want to use sub-CNs, so it would just
have to be:

'Portal Search', or 'Personal Autobio' or something along those lines.

thoughts?

--
Adam Theo
[email-masked] - EMail
3617306 (Adam Theo) - ICQ
1 (404) 978 1263 x2974 - VoiceMail/Fax
Proudly Running Linux!

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---

From: "Marshall L. Moseley" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 18 Jul 2000 14:50:38 -0700

We do the same thing.  We have the eBay feature, of course, and we also have
things called branch networds, which function like sub-domain names.

define/<word> gives you the definition for any word.

quote/<ticker> gives you stock quotes.

Additionally, if you key your zip code into a Netword-enabled browser, you
receive information specific to your geographic area--restaraunt reviews,
movie times, breaking news, etc.

Etc.

--Marshall