On Wed, Jun 24, 1998 at 10:10:37AM +1000, Paul Brooks wrote:
> *dream on*
> 
> future 'browers' will have an extended URL box which allows a person to 
> type in a generic name (say 'Global One' for example) and a drop-down menu 
> to select amongst services ('web server', 'ftp server', 'commerce server', 
> etc). The software in the background first uses the directory 
> protocol to find the DNS name of 'Global One's' (x) service (which could 
> be non-obvious, like 'web13.go.net.net.net' - it doesn't matter, the 
> public never see it) and then uses DNS to resolve the name to an IP 
> address, and connects to that IP address.
> 
No need to dream, current browsers already have LDAP directory searching
ability built in. Although the LDAP technology seems to be in somewhat
of a disarray (v2 vs v3, SSL vs non-SSL...) it's being driven hard by
Netscape and also by Microsoft with NT5 (and SiteServer). x.500/LDAP seems 
to be a more appropriate place to house information for user searching and 
'guessing' (eg "hmm. Paul Brooks, in Australia, at Global One" -> your 
email address, homepage, phone/fax nubmers etc).

(hopefully that wasn't offensively off-topic).

tom§interact.net.au