AN FRANCISCO (AFP) - - Stanford University scientists are perfecting an email system that figures out who messages are intended for and finds them whether or not senders know the addresses.
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Semantic technology that understands phrases and relationships between words instead of simply recognizing typed characters can scour data bases and the Internet to track down intended email recipients.
Stanford computer science associate professor Michael Genesereth and fellow researchers in Ireland, Austria and at the university began testing a semantic email addressing system several years ago.
It worked so well that the experiment will be expanded to the approximately 6,000 people in the Stanford Computer Science Department this year.
If that succeeds, as Genesereth is confident it will, the semantic email technology will be put to use throughout the acclaimed Silicon Valley university's campus and then "who knows."
Several big corporations have reportedly already expressed interest in the system.
"The idea is to change the way we address email," Genesereth said.
"You really want to send messages to people, not a string of characters. This way, you describe the person you want to receive the email instead of characters."
For example, if someone wants to send a message to the head of a department or peers in a work group they enter that into their email system, which then figures out where to send messages.
"In a sense, your address book does become obsolete," Genesereth said.
"There is a lot of data about people and organizations. It is semantic data available on the Web and our email programs should be able to use that for smart addresses for our messages."
Semantic email is expected to first take root in companies and other organizations interested in letting workers more efficiently mine internal personnel data bases.
As companies share data with partners and information on the Internet grows more reliable, semantic email addressing should "grow virally," according to Genesereth.
Researchers downplay concerns that junk email senders will seize upon the technology to deluge people with "semantic spam."
"It is funny but true, you could target specifically the people you want to reach," Genesereth said.
"There would be less need for spam blasts in a world of semantic email. Instead of sending email to everyone you send it to people who actually might be interested in what you are talking about."
Semantic email technology could be turned against spammers by filtering out messages based on who is sending them.
Email systems commonly filter potentially unwanted messages based on perpetually updated lists of sender addresses considered spam sources. Spammers dodge such filters by routinely changing sending addresses.
"Issues that exist with semantic email are no different than exist with current email," Genesereth said. "If my email knows who is sending the message, I could use a smart spam filter."
Source:
Smart email figures out who should get messages - Yahoo! Philippines News
Smart email figures out who should get messages
Originally Posted by r0mm3L
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