Thursday, September 08, 2005

What happens when you change the naming convention for email addresses in an organization?

  • If your server / domain name is excessive -- e.g. . . . @postoffice_server.
    molehillcountyuniversityforfloralarrangementstudies.edu -- you are dooming many users, both inside and outside the organization, to an agonizing career of typing.
  • If your client name is excessive -- e.g. fullfirstname.fullmiddlename.fulllastname@ . . . -- you are dooming many users, both inside and outside the organization, to an agonizing career of typing.
  • Even if you are judiciously spare -- e.g. first.last@mocu.edu -- you are asking users and their correspondents to update all scattered references. In my case, all my course syllabi (online) had to be edited, my web page at the university had to be edited, and all printed references had to be hand annotated, and so forth . . .
  • Try to foresee future maintainance nightmares, such as using social security numbers, which will eventually be thrown out of your naming conventions for good reasons, like privacy concerns.

Saturday, July 27, 2002

As part of an independent study, I have prototyped an artifact called a "Linked, Annotated Bibliography." The polar area is Human Computer Interaction (HCI.) So far, the project is a need in search of an implementation. Check the early prototype at sweb.uky.edu/~jmcari2/biblio.htm.