Semantic Email Addressing

Michael KassoffCharles PetrieLee-Ming ZenMichael Genesereth

October 14, 2006

Stanford Logic Group Everyday’06

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Sending Email Today

mkassoff@stanford.edu

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Life Is Change

Changing Email Addresses

[somethingclever]@aol.commkassoff@princeton.edumak25@cornell.edumichael.kassoff@govworks.commichael.kassoff@govone.commkassoff@stanford.edumkassoff@stanfordalumni.eduAnd so on…

Changing Roles

“Send to the webmaster of theStanford Logic Group”

Winton DaviesRada Chirkova

Nat LoveMichael Kassoff

…

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Sending to Groups of People

Send to all PhD students inthe Stanford CS Department

Send to all female customersin Detroit

Send to all people in our organizationwho speak English and French

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Sending to People, Not Strings

mkassoff@stanford.edu

Send to Michael Kassoff

Send to the webmasterof the Stanford Logic Group

Send to all PhD students inthe Stanford CS Department

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Predefined Groups Don’t Cut It

Send to all employees who were hired between January 1 - 15 of this year

Send to all heads of departments which were over budget last year

Send to all people in the marketing department whosename starts with the letter ‘M’

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Solution: Semantic Email Addressing

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Replying with SEA

Just like sending.

Reply to all

Reply to some

Forward to any

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Benefits of SEA

+ No Discovery Required.

+ Maintenance is Automatic.

+ Allows Anonymous Recipients.

+ Is Usable by Computers.

Applications of SEA

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Corporate Applications

Send to all developers for current projects in the database group

Send to the project manager for Yahoo! Finance

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Semantic Web Applications

<foaf:name>Charles Petrie</foaf:name><foaf:workplaceHomepage rdf:resource="http://www.stanford.edu/"/><foaf:interest rdf:resource="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BMW_motorcycles#R_series"/><foaf:interest rdf:resource="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_language"/><foaf:interest rdf:resource="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_Research"/><foaf:mbox rdf:resource="mailto:petrie@stanford.edu"/><foaf:knows> <foaf:Person> <foaf:name>Axel Polleres</foaf:name> <rdfs:seeAlso rdf:resource="http://www.polleres.net/foaf.rdf"/> </foaf:Person></foaf:knows>

Making SEA a Reality

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SEA Architecture

Database

SEAQueryInterface

SEAEmailSender

EmailClient

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Alternate SEA Architecture

Integrated Database

SourceSourceSource

SEAQueryInterface

SEAEmailSender

EmailClient

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Infomaster Semantic Email Addresser

Infomaster

SourceSourceSource

ISEAQueryInterface

ISEAEmailSender

EmailClient

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ISEA Deployment

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Semantic Email Addressing

ISEAEmailSender

EmailClient

One solution: use a semantic email address

“all members of the group lead byMichael Genesereth who are interestedin logical spreadsheets”@logic.stanford.edu

?

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Some ProblemsUgly and semi-interpretable.

sea+.28.3F5.20AND.20.28PERSON.2EGROUP.20.3F5.20.3F6.29.20.28GROUP.2ELEADER.20.3F6.20MICHAEL.2EGENESERETH.29.20.28GROUP.2EINSTANCE.20.3F6.29.20.28PERSON.2EINTEREST.20.3F5.20PERSONALINTEREST.2E3364062876.29.20.28PERSON.2EINSTANCE.20.3F5.29.29@logic.stanford.edu

Too long.

Email clients not required to handle user names > 64 characters

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A Better SolutionMap long names to short ones

+ : Short, uninterpretable– : Requires reverse mappings to be stored

Depending on application, compression may be sufficient

User-generated names work as well

sea+.28.3F5.20AND.20.28PERSON.2EGROUP.20.3F5.20.3F6.29.20.28GROUP.2ELEADER.20.3F6.20MICHAEL.2EGENESERETH.29.20.28GROUP.2EINSTANCE.20.3F6.29.20.28PERSON.2EINTEREST.20.3F5.20PERSONALINTEREST.2E3364062876.29.20.28PERSON.2EINSTANCE.20.3F5.29.29@logic.stanford.edu

ev23h@logic.stanford.edu

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Yet Another SolutionPlace query information in email headers.

SEA: “PERSON.GROUP(?X ?Y) & GROUP. LEADER(?Y MICHAEL.GENESERETH) & GROUP.INSTANCE(?Y) PERSON.INTEREST(?X PERSONALINTEREST. 3364062876) & PERSON. INSTANCE(?X)”; logic.stanford.edu; “Predicalc Team”

+ : Ugliness hidden from users– : Requires SEA-enabled email client to reply

Open Issues

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Data Maintenance

Organizations : Many people responsible for data maintenance

The Internet :A mix of up to date, stale, and incorrect data

Needs a “Semantic Wikipedia/Google” tosort out the mess

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Time Dependence

“Send to all logic group members”

Mike K.Mike G.CharlesTimNatLee

Mike K.Mike G.CharlesTimNatLeeAlyssa

Mike K.Mike G.CharlesTimNatAlyssa

+ Alyssa – Lee

SEA and Spam

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The Role of the Community

Small to medium-sized communities tend to be self-regulating with respect to spam due to social pressures

Large communities (e.g. the Internet) are difficult to regulate

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Dealing with Spam

If the community is closed, this cuts off outside abuse

- Organizational email systems- SEA within a closed mailing

list

A moderated system works too

Semantic email filtering and filing is an open area of research

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Related Work

Microsoft Exchange 2003- Query Based Distribution Groups- Must be created by an

administrator

Information Lens (Malone et al. 1987)- Allows email filtering based on

production rules- Special “Anyone” mailbox that

requires pull

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More Related Work

MailSMORE (Kalyanpur et al. 200?)- Annotates emails with RDF tuples- To, From, Subject and Body fields are

automatically converted- Used in combination with semantic

filtering and filing

MANGROVE (McDowell et al. 2004)- Allows semantic email processes to be

created which allow email clients to be controlled by a workflow

- Using semantic email content, can aggregate the replies

(and lack thereof) to an email and respond accordingly

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The Bottom Line

Semantic Email Addressing is a simple idea

Is already in use in a multinational organization

Particularly useful in organizational/corporate settings

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Thanks!