Semantic Email Addressing

1. Stanford Logic Group Everyday’06 Semantic Email Addressing Michael Kassoff Charles Petrie Lee-Ming Zen Michael Genesereth October 14, 2006

2. Sending Email Today mkassoff@stanford.edu

3. Life Is Change Changing Email Addresses [somethingclever]@aol.com mkassoff@princeton.edu mak25@cornell.edu michael.kassoff@govworks.com michael.kassoff@govone.com mkassoff@stanford.edu mkassoff@stanfordalumni.edu And so on… Changing Roles “Send to the webmaster of theStanford Logic Group” Winton Davies Rada Chirkova Nat Love Michael Kassoff …

4. 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

5. Send to Michael Kassoff Sending to People, Not Strings Send to all PhD students inthe Stanford CS Department Send to the webmasterof the Stanford Logic Group mkassoff@stanford.edu

6. 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’

7. Solution: Semantic Email Addressing

8. Replying with SEA Just like sending. Reply to all Reply to some Forward to any

9. Benefits of SEA + No Discovery Required. + Maintenance is Automatic. + Allows Anonymous Recipients. + Is Usable by Computers.

10. Applications of SEA

11. Corporate Applications Send to all developers for current projects in the database group Send to the project manager for Yahoo! Finance

12. 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>

13. Making SEA a Reality

14. SEA Architecture Email Client SEA Query Interface SEA Email Sender Database

15. Alternate SEA Architecture Email Client SEA Query Interface SEA Email Sender Integrated Database Source Source Source

16. Infomaster Semantic Email Addresser Email Client ISEA Query Interface ISEA Email Sender Infomaster Source Source Source

17. ISEA Deployment

18. Semantic Email Addressing One solution: use a semantic email address “all members of the group lead by Michael Genesereth who are interestedin logical spreadsheets”@logic.stanford.edu Email Client ? ISEA Email Sender

19. Some Problems Ugly 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

20. A Better Solution Map long names to short ones 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 + : Short, uninterpretable – : Requires reverse mappings to be stored Depending on application, compression may be sufficient User-generated names work as well

21. Yet Another Solution Place 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

22. Open Issues

23. 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

24. Time Dependence “Send to all logic group members” Mike K. Mike G. Charles Tim Nat Lee Alyssa Mike K. Mike G. Charles Tim Nat Alyssa Mike K. Mike G. Charles Tim Nat Lee + Alyssa – Lee

25. SEA and Spam

26. 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

27. 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

28. 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

29. 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

30. The Bottom Line Semantic Email Addressing is a simple idea Is already in use in a multinational organization Particularly useful in organizational/corporate settings

31. Thanks!