7 ms·

My Addressbook? Keep it. Telephone numbers are a disgrace to our generation.

76 points by andreasklinger 15y ago

junto 15y ago
Let the username battle begin. callme://junto Dibs...
nextparadigms 15y ago
It's unnecessary to try to "reinvent" the phone address book now. VOIP and IM's are already doing that.
- thatjoshguy 15y ago
  See Facetime and iMessage. If Facetime worked for just voice calls, and over 3G, everything would be perfect.
  - andor 15y ago
    See Google Talk and Skype, both of which can do voice-only calls and video calls over 3G. It's not all perfect, though... The problem with Skype on a mobile is that keeping a connection to their P2P network requires much more power than the usual push notification channel does. It's more expensive computationally and traffic-wise. Google Talk, in comparison, needs less power, but the audio and video quality is just much worse (on my Nexus S with ICS). I also have fewer contacts in GTalk than in Skype. And for some reason, on many phones, there is no audio and video support at all.
- yabai 15y ago
  Agreed. Over half of my calling is via skype or other voip service. The evolution is happening...but a clear winner has yet to be identified. Perhaps there will never be a clear winner...
antihero 15y ago
This is called a phonebook, and people don't always want their numbers to be published in it. Also, how do we uniquely identify people? This post is so badly thought through.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
  - paganel 15y ago
    > "Yeah, my phone number is 81984324894" IMHO, I haven't heard anyone telling/writing down their actual phone number for quite a long time, what I see happening a lot it's stuff like "you want my phone number? sure, let me give you a short call so that you can save it in your's phone's address book" (with the option "you want my Vodafone or Orange number"? I haven't actually never seen anyone changing their SIM cards, people just prefer to own 2 or more phones if it best suits their needs. Phones are getting damn cheep, at least in Eastern Europe).
    - route66 15y ago
      The phone number exchange protocol you describe seems to demand that at least one of the persons is spelling out his/her phone number out loud ... What I would expect is a protocol where both just should be able to connect their phones on short distance (bluetooth, whatever) and acknowledge an "exchange phone number with <person>?" dialog ...
      - dopkew 15y ago
        Nokia phones have a method for such convenience. A contact stored in one phone can be sent to another phone as a special sms message called a 'Business Card'. When the other Nokia phone gets it, they can save the contact from the message view options. Of course, it's not free, or local (bluetooth).
        icebraining 15y ago
Sander_Marechal 15y ago
It's already a solved problem using using SIP. Some of my friends have SIP address. I can call them anywhere using the same address. Home phone, mobile, even using VoIP on a laptop.
- jackalope 15y ago
  Serious question: How easy is it for your friend to call you back immediately from the same device? An hour later from a different device? A week later from any device? If the convenience doesn't flow both ways, it's not a solved problem. [It might be, I really don't know.]
  - Sander_Marechal 15y ago
    The return path works just like normal. Just hit the dial-back button on your phone or VoIP software and the phone that I used to phone you will start ringing. It gets interesting when we both have SIP/ENUM. I could call you from my mobile when I am at home and, when you ring me back, my home phone could ring because my SIP preference says to use that first. The only tricky thing is your own SIP/ENUM preference. It needs to know where incoming calls need to go. But that can be automated (e.g. your phone sees your home wifi network and thus sets the preference to ring the home phone first). Other neat stuff is possible too. One of my coworkers has linked his home phone to his cellphone. When you call his home number, both his home phone and cell phone will ring, even when he is at work. Whichever device answers first gets the call.
jof 15y ago
This article raises a good point, and AFAIK there's noone doing something like this on a large commercial scale. There are systems for mapping telephone numbers into DNS, like ENUM (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ENUM http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ENUM), and e164.arpa. in DNS.
mike-cardwell 15y ago
"There are only two hard things in Computer Science: cache invalidation and naming things." -- Phil Karlton There is not an easy solution to the "problem" that this article describes. The current situation allows us to look up numbers without letting some central authority know what numbers we are looking up and without letting them have our address book. Any solution to this "problem" is likely to reduce everyone's privacy by getting rid of one of these features. EDIT: You can contact me using the same "username@domain" style address for email, XMPP and SIP. I guess that's something. People still need to store my "username@domain" address in an address book though.
- StavrosK 15y ago
  Why? You don't have to look the numbers up.
- jgw 15y ago
  "There are only two hard things in Computer Science: cache invalidation and naming things." -- Phil Karlton Out of curiosity, where does this come from? And why, having never read this quote before, have I seen it three times in as many days?
bwarp 15y ago
Horse shit. There is nothing wrong with telephone system or the numbering scheme or the fact that we use numbers. It's simple, doesn't require lots of technology (a analogue phone handset only has a few components in it) and it is ubiquitous across the entire globe. The moment you add a DNS-type layer or indirection to it, it becomes more complex. Handsets become more complex, the network becomes more complex, usability declines. The problems of remembering or writing down a name versus a number are far greater. This is typical technophiles ignoring the minimal needs of about 90% of the populous of this rock.
- icebraining 15y ago
  Adding a DNS systems doesn't remove the phone numbers, not any more than DNS prevents you from typing IP addresses. You could very well have it on smartphones and the likes without increasing complexity on either the actual phone network or the basic analog handsets. EDIT: Personally, I think what Google Voice does - giving you a single number per person instead of per device/SIM card - fixes the major problem(s) without breaking backward compatibility. The only problem is the lack of international support.
  - bwarp 15y ago
    That's a phone book! We've solved the problem already.
    - delinka 15y ago
      DNS is an automated phonebook, yes. I type a name, it figures out the number, 'dials' it for me, lets the network route my 'call' and poof I connect. It's all about the automation.
      - brk 15y ago
        Yes, but DNS also assumes there is exactly one match for a given text string. In RL, there are a lot of "John Smiths", and it would be non-trivial for a system to figure out which one you wanted to call without some serious hinting (like access to your Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, G+, etc. accounts), and it might even have to access a private list of names/numbers to figure out that you probably want the John Smith who works with Alice Bell (an entry in your phonebook)...
furyg3 15y ago
I've been using GV for a while now, which is certainly a next step in solving the problem (short of cell phone DNS). The problem is that I get the impression that GV has stalled. I still can't forward my GV number internationally, after years of this being one of their most-requested features. Google has GV in the US, and in NL, yet you can't forward between these countries or have a US & NL number associated with one GV account. It's a bit silly, as many other services offer this feature. It's also easy money for Google.
ragmondo 15y ago
Heh."The address book needs a DNS system" ... It was launched. It was called ".tel". It failed.
fenesiistvan 15y ago
The whole article is just an advertisement for vox.io
saghul 15y ago
I'm happy to see someone ranting about this, I couldn't agree more. This was solved years ago in the VoIP world by ENUM, but it didn't get enough traction because nobody can earn any money with it. Here is how it works: your phone "number" would be sip:saghul@domain.tld and you'd have a legacy alias which is a regular phone number, for example: +40317105163. Then someone which knows my legacy number may use DNS to get my SIP URI and call me for free: dig NAPTR 3.6.1.5.0.1.7.1.3.0.4.e164.arpa ; ANSWER SECTION: 3.6.1.5.0.1.7.1.3.0.4.e164.arpa. 3600 IN NAPTR 100 5 "U" "E2U+web:http" "!^.*$!http://ag-projects.com!" . 3.6.1.5.0.1.7.1.3.0.4.e164.arpa. 10 IN NAPTR 100 5 "U" "E2U+sip" "!^.*$!sip:saul@ag-projects.com!" . 3.6.1.5.0.1.7.1.3.0.4.e164.arpa. 3600 IN NAPTR 100 5 "U" "E2U+web:http" "!^.*$!http://saghul.net!" . 3.6.1.5.0.1.7.1.3.0.4.e164.arpa. 3600 IN NAPTR 100 5 "U" "E2U+loc:http" "!^.*$!http://bit.ly/d41V3X!" . You can put several things in DNS, the above example (real one) contains 2 websites, a SIP URI and a URL with location information (a link to Google Maps). There is an Android application called ENUMdroid which will do a ENUM query for each number you dial and it'll present a screen with it's findings: http://saghul.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/CAP201002122147.jpg http://saghul.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/CAP2010021... Apple allows you to use FaceTime and iMessage with email-style addresses, lets see if they can push the model forward :-)
- mauriciob 15y ago
  I find it rather odd that they didn't group the codes. Wouldn't it be better if they made something like this: [phone number].[area code].[country code]? I mean, I don't really have much information on the E.164 standard, but the information o Wikipedia seems to show that at least the country code is separated from the other numbers, allowing each country to have its own structure.
  - Aloisius 15y ago
    Well, using a reversed nibble format allows you to have a different nameserver at each level distributing the load and ownership. If as a telco, I have the block of phone numbers +14155551000-+141555519999, I can easily have my nameserver delegated for it as 1.5.5.5.5.1.4.1.e164.arpa. IPv6 and IPv4 reverse lookups work the same way. Besides, it isn't like users are typing this in directly. Might as well get in all the flexibility you can. You could do things like add extensions and have it route properly without any extra work or have a country with both 7 and 8 digit phone numbers.
rue 15y ago
On a related note, giving my contact information to you isn't a permission to forward it to someone else (granted in this case without your knowledge). I wish this aspect got more attention.
chrislomax 15y ago
Great! Until you realise there are 100's of Chris Lomax's in the world?! And then I become ChrisLomax103454751983, that's miles easier to remember.
perfunctory 15y ago
Why am I reading this on the home page of HN?
prof_hobart 15y ago
Firstly, the comparison with DNS doesn't really make sense. DNS works because there is a one to one mapping between name and number. There is only one johnsmith.com anywhere on the web. OTOH, there are many thousands of John Smiths out in the real world, each with their own unique set of phone numbers (and other things that this guy seems to have overlooked from an "address book", like an actual address, or an email address, or relationships to other people). DNS doesn't solve the fact that many people called John Smith may have their own websites. They won't all be found at johnsmith.com. This is solved through a combination of search engines (equivalent of a phone book) and bookmarks (which is pretty much the equivalent of a person's address book - so DNS alone clearly hasn't removed the need for address books in the online world). Secondly, that's all totally irrelevant to the actual issue with Path - whether someone's got access to a complete list of your contacts with all of the details required to contact them, and got this without your permission.
- darklajid 15y ago
  I fail to understand your point. Yes, lots of people share names. But it should be enough to store _one_ handle to get to (=> resolve) your _current_ number. That might be your domain or email address. Or something totally different. The major part for me here is not 'do we need digits without meaning', it is 'bind some name to a way of contacting the person'. DNS as a comparison makes sense for me. I store john@smith.com as a contact. When I want to call that guy my phone figures out how to reach him _and he can update that information_. Just like you can move your domain name to point to a different number. If the name server is under your control (or your hoster loves you) and ignoring certain limitations of the protocol and buggy caching behavior, you could even change the result of a lookup every minute. That, for phone numbers, would be awesome.
  - prof_hobart 15y ago
    Because a)that doesn't get rid of the need for address books - even with email I still need an address book to tell me which John Smith I want to email, and b) that's got absolutely nothing to do with the Path issue - them uploading my address book with a single phone number/phone DNS whatever for my contacts without my permission is just as bad as them uploading my address book with 5 different phone numbers for each of my contacts
cwilson 15y ago
While I don't necessarily agree with everything in this post, I do see two problems with phone numbers: 1. Ask yourself, how many phone numbers do you actually know at this very moment? I'm willing to bet, on average, it's less than five. It might be slightly higher on this site, but for the average consumer, I'm guessing it's between 1 and 3. I ask people this all the time, and I know many who don't know a single number other than their own, or their parents. 2. You've all seen the Facebook groups that pop up when someone loses their phone. "I lost my phone, give me your number!". Apple is doing a very good job of solving this for the masses right now with iCloud, but you have to be an iPhone user to take advantage.
- huxley 15y ago
  That's a new phenomenon though, people had to remember more phone numbers before mobile phones or built-in address books. From muscle memory alone, I can still finger dial about a dozen phone numbers belonging to friends when I was a kid, even though it's been 28 years since I last called them. Funny thing is that I can't recall the numbers without mock dialling them.
- tintin 15y ago
  These are not problems with phone numbers. 20 years ago I knew all phone numbers from my friends and kept them on paper. I still keep them on paper. The points you describe could also be said about e-mail addresses and website addresses. This is about people putting too much trust in (electronic) technology.
bilban 15y ago
How about something like the Finger Protocol?
brk 15y ago
I have solved this problem a slightly different way, and I realize that it is not perfect. 90% of my business is conducted within the US, here I have a single number I give out. This number is managed by Ribbit (www.ribbit.com , no affiliation). Ribbit knows a list of numbers for me: Office desk phone "Mobile" IP Phone (eg: sometimes it is at my house, or at my condo if I am spending more than a few days there, or possibly even travels with me if I am going someplace for an extended time). iPhone 3GS which has numbers in the US, Dubai, Caribbean and Japan via multiple SIMS. iPhone 4 which has a US number. When you call my Ribbit number, it rings ALL these services simultaneously, whichever phone I pick up is the one that gets the call. I can take numbers out of the routing loop if I want (for example when I travel, I don't need my home phone to ring and bug my wife). So, to reach me, you dial a single number. The downside to it is CallerID. While I can jump through some hoops to use apps and soft phones to get around this, it's a PITA (to me), so if I call you back from Japan for example, you're going to likely see my Japanese phone number as the caller ID, but I get more calls than I make, so it's not a huge problem. The phonebook to DNS analogy is also off in that we all have "bookmarks" of sites we want to revisit and keep in a handy list. DNS has not solved or removed the issue of list keeping and organization/management.
- andreasklinger 15y ago
  great reply. thanks for that! reg bookmarks: bookmarks is nothing you type in and make work. Its shortcuts to your favourites. And you dont bother about technical layers below.
Karadoc 15y ago
Dude. What is wrong with a JAR file?
jpdoctor 15y ago
> Telephone numbers need a DNS system! LOL. Apparently the author is too young to remember phone books. As an aside: Older folks will remember Sun receiving a lawsuit from the newly disintegrated phone system regarding their use of "yellow pages". They issued an update which took the "yp" prefix out of their commands.
- andreasklinger 15y ago
  I mentioned telephone books. I am too old to forget this crime against nature. And imho: Telephone books are the like blackboards/dial up sites with lists of more sites.
petepete 15y ago
Isn't .tel a step in the right direction here? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.tel http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.tel
drcube 15y ago
So instead of an address book, we add telephone-dns and then we have a list of bookmarks? What's the upside again? Personally, I'm rethinking this whole DNS thing. I already have a huge list of bookmarks, I don't see why there couldn't just be IP addresses.
ageektrapped 15y ago
It's been a few years since I worked in softphones, but this "problem" is essentially solved with the SIP protocol. Everyone gets an address of the form user@domain. (The protocol scheme is sip: but the beauty of using user@domain is that one can quickly switch to mailto:). Then the immediacy of the communication dictates the medium. Don't need an answer right away? Email. Low priority? IM/Text. Must talk now? Voice. I believe Office Communicator (or whatever it's called now) was designed with this in mind. But that doesn't negate the need for an address book. One still needs to know the user@domain address, as others have pointed out.
feralchimp 15y ago
What, as exactly as possible, is the desired user experience for contacting people for voice calls? Serious question. All the discussion around whether phone numbers / something-like-DNS-for-phone-numbers-but-with-failover / GrandCentral-like things (GV, Ribbit also?) / Siri / FaceTime are okay (and for which user groups), is damn near impossible without identifying the actual goal state.
mjwalshe 15y ago
Subs eh - this is some one with a trivial knowledge trying to apply one model (dns) to another (POTS). X.500 was the proposed solution (70's/80's) where you had interconnected directories that would allow a distributed worldwide directory to work. Only trouble is that a full working x.500 system is probably still at the bleeding edge of what is possible. A Google or Microsoft could do it if they upped their game in terms of rigous adherence to standards by a few hundred % or so. Stick to the frocks hunni.
mindctrl 15y ago
It's only a disgrace to the generation that knows nothing about privacy. Why would we want a DNS-like system for contact information? Get real.
JBiserkov 15y ago
I believe Microsoft Office Communicator solves part of this problem. It supports call forwading based on powerful rules and presence status, has Web access and much more. I think the author is wrong in dismissing Skype/Microsoft in their ability to solve a complex problem and deliver both consumer- and enterptise-friendly solutions.
peterwwillis 15y ago
I think we have segregated our information services for specific uses, and the phone numbers seem to work within that paradigm. If someone needs to contact me about a specific issue or we need to have a back-and-forth conversation, or if they just want to become my friend, they'll probably ask for my Facebook (don't have one) or e-mail address. If someone wants a date, or to call me maybe once about something like a job, they'll ask for a phone number. The phone number doesn't reveal anything about you - hell, you can't even find someone's name in the White Pages most of the time. It's an impersonal identifier. The e-mail address, Facebook, Twitter, etc can reveal all sorts of personal details about you. I wouldn't give up on phone numbers yet because there exists no alternative social replacement for impersonal contact. Silly I know, but social interaction is silly.

junto 15y ago

Let the username battle begin. callme://junto Dibs...

nextparadigms 15y ago

It's unnecessary to try to "reinvent" the phone address book now. VOIP and IM's are already doing that.

thatjoshguy 15y ago
See Facetime and iMessage. If Facetime worked for just voice calls, and over 3G, everything would be perfect.
- andor 15y ago
  See Google Talk and Skype, both of which can do voice-only calls and video calls over 3G. It's not all perfect, though... The problem with Skype on a mobile is that keeping a connection to their P2P network requires much more power than the usual push notification channel does. It's more expensive computationally and traffic-wise. Google Talk, in comparison, needs less power, but the audio and video quality is just much worse (on my Nexus S with ICS). I also have fewer contacts in GTalk than in Skype. And for some reason, on many phones, there is no audio and video support at all.
yabai 15y ago
Agreed. Over half of my calling is via skype or other voip service. The evolution is happening...but a clear winner has yet to be identified. Perhaps there will never be a clear winner...

antihero 15y ago

This is called a phonebook, and people don't always want their numbers to be published in it. Also, how do we uniquely identify people? This post is so badly thought through.

deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
- paganel 15y ago
  > "Yeah, my phone number is 81984324894" IMHO, I haven't heard anyone telling/writing down their actual phone number for quite a long time, what I see happening a lot it's stuff like "you want my phone number? sure, let me give you a short call so that you can save it in your's phone's address book" (with the option "you want my Vodafone or Orange number"? I haven't actually never seen anyone changing their SIM cards, people just prefer to own 2 or more phones if it best suits their needs. Phones are getting damn cheep, at least in Eastern Europe).
  - route66 15y ago
    The phone number exchange protocol you describe seems to demand that at least one of the persons is spelling out his/her phone number out loud ... What I would expect is a protocol where both just should be able to connect their phones on short distance (bluetooth, whatever) and acknowledge an "exchange phone number with <person>?" dialog ...
    - dopkew 15y ago
      Nokia phones have a method for such convenience. A contact stored in one phone can be sent to another phone as a special sms message called a 'Business Card'. When the other Nokia phone gets it, they can save the contact from the message view options. Of course, it's not free, or local (bluetooth).
      - icebraining 15y ago

Sander_Marechal 15y ago

It's already a solved problem using using SIP. Some of my friends have SIP address. I can call them anywhere using the same address. Home phone, mobile, even using VoIP on a laptop.

jackalope 15y ago
Serious question: How easy is it for your friend to call you back immediately from the same device? An hour later from a different device? A week later from any device? If the convenience doesn't flow both ways, it's not a solved problem. [It might be, I really don't know.]
- Sander_Marechal 15y ago
  The return path works just like normal. Just hit the dial-back button on your phone or VoIP software and the phone that I used to phone you will start ringing. It gets interesting when we both have SIP/ENUM. I could call you from my mobile when I am at home and, when you ring me back, my home phone could ring because my SIP preference says to use that first. The only tricky thing is your own SIP/ENUM preference. It needs to know where incoming calls need to go. But that can be automated (e.g. your phone sees your home wifi network and thus sets the preference to ring the home phone first). Other neat stuff is possible too. One of my coworkers has linked his home phone to his cellphone. When you call his home number, both his home phone and cell phone will ring, even when he is at work. Whichever device answers first gets the call.

jof 15y ago

This article raises a good point, and AFAIK there's noone doing something like this on a large commercial scale. There are systems for mapping telephone numbers into DNS, like ENUM (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ENUM http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ENUM), and e164.arpa. in DNS.

mike-cardwell 15y ago

"There are only two hard things in Computer Science: cache invalidation and naming things." -- Phil Karlton There is not an easy solution to the "problem" that this article describes. The current situation allows us to look up numbers without letting some central authority know what numbers we are looking up and without letting them have our address book. Any solution to this "problem" is likely to reduce everyone's privacy by getting rid of one of these features. EDIT: You can contact me using the same "username@domain" style address for email, XMPP and SIP. I guess that's something. People still need to store my "username@domain" address in an address book though.

StavrosK 15y ago
Why? You don't have to look the numbers up.
jgw 15y ago
"There are only two hard things in Computer Science: cache invalidation and naming things." -- Phil Karlton Out of curiosity, where does this come from? And why, having never read this quote before, have I seen it three times in as many days?

bwarp 15y ago

Horse shit. There is nothing wrong with telephone system or the numbering scheme or the fact that we use numbers. It's simple, doesn't require lots of technology (a analogue phone handset only has a few components in it) and it is ubiquitous across the entire globe. The moment you add a DNS-type layer or indirection to it, it becomes more complex. Handsets become more complex, the network becomes more complex, usability declines. The problems of remembering or writing down a name versus a number are far greater. This is typical technophiles ignoring the minimal needs of about 90% of the populous of this rock.

icebraining 15y ago
Adding a DNS systems doesn't remove the phone numbers, not any more than DNS prevents you from typing IP addresses. You could very well have it on smartphones and the likes without increasing complexity on either the actual phone network or the basic analog handsets. EDIT: Personally, I think what Google Voice does - giving you a single number per person instead of per device/SIM card - fixes the major problem(s) without breaking backward compatibility. The only problem is the lack of international support.
- bwarp 15y ago
  That's a phone book! We've solved the problem already.
  - delinka 15y ago
    DNS is an automated phonebook, yes. I type a name, it figures out the number, 'dials' it for me, lets the network route my 'call' and poof I connect. It's all about the automation.
    - brk 15y ago
      Yes, but DNS also assumes there is exactly one match for a given text string. In RL, there are a lot of "John Smiths", and it would be non-trivial for a system to figure out which one you wanted to call without some serious hinting (like access to your Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, G+, etc. accounts), and it might even have to access a private list of names/numbers to figure out that you probably want the John Smith who works with Alice Bell (an entry in your phonebook)...

furyg3 15y ago

I've been using GV for a while now, which is certainly a next step in solving the problem (short of cell phone DNS). The problem is that I get the impression that GV has stalled. I still can't forward my GV number internationally, after years of this being one of their most-requested features. Google has GV in the US, and in NL, yet you can't forward between these countries or have a US & NL number associated with one GV account. It's a bit silly, as many other services offer this feature. It's also easy money for Google.

ragmondo 15y ago

Heh."The address book needs a DNS system" ... It was launched. It was called ".tel". It failed.

fenesiistvan 15y ago

The whole article is just an advertisement for vox.io

saghul 15y ago

I'm happy to see someone ranting about this, I couldn't agree more. This was solved years ago in the VoIP world by ENUM, but it didn't get enough traction because nobody can earn any money with it. Here is how it works: your phone "number" would be sip:saghul@domain.tld and you'd have a legacy alias which is a regular phone number, for example: +40317105163. Then someone which knows my legacy number may use DNS to get my SIP URI and call me for free: dig NAPTR 3.6.1.5.0.1.7.1.3.0.4.e164.arpa ; ANSWER SECTION: 3.6.1.5.0.1.7.1.3.0.4.e164.arpa. 3600 IN NAPTR 100 5 "U" "E2U+web:http" "!^.*$!http://ag-projects.com!" . 3.6.1.5.0.1.7.1.3.0.4.e164.arpa. 10 IN NAPTR 100 5 "U" "E2U+sip" "!^.*$!sip:saul@ag-projects.com!" . 3.6.1.5.0.1.7.1.3.0.4.e164.arpa. 3600 IN NAPTR 100 5 "U" "E2U+web:http" "!^.*$!http://saghul.net!" . 3.6.1.5.0.1.7.1.3.0.4.e164.arpa. 3600 IN NAPTR 100 5 "U" "E2U+loc:http" "!^.*$!http://bit.ly/d41V3X!" . You can put several things in DNS, the above example (real one) contains 2 websites, a SIP URI and a URL with location information (a link to Google Maps). There is an Android application called ENUMdroid which will do a ENUM query for each number you dial and it'll present a screen with it's findings: http://saghul.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/CAP201002122147.jpg http://saghul.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/CAP2010021... Apple allows you to use FaceTime and iMessage with email-style addresses, lets see if they can push the model forward :-)

mauriciob 15y ago
I find it rather odd that they didn't group the codes. Wouldn't it be better if they made something like this: [phone number].[area code].[country code]? I mean, I don't really have much information on the E.164 standard, but the information o Wikipedia seems to show that at least the country code is separated from the other numbers, allowing each country to have its own structure.
- Aloisius 15y ago
  Well, using a reversed nibble format allows you to have a different nameserver at each level distributing the load and ownership. If as a telco, I have the block of phone numbers +14155551000-+141555519999, I can easily have my nameserver delegated for it as 1.5.5.5.5.1.4.1.e164.arpa. IPv6 and IPv4 reverse lookups work the same way. Besides, it isn't like users are typing this in directly. Might as well get in all the flexibility you can. You could do things like add extensions and have it route properly without any extra work or have a country with both 7 and 8 digit phone numbers.

rue 15y ago

On a related note, giving my contact information to you isn't a permission to forward it to someone else (granted in this case without your knowledge). I wish this aspect got more attention.

chrislomax 15y ago

Great! Until you realise there are 100's of Chris Lomax's in the world?! And then I become ChrisLomax103454751983, that's miles easier to remember.

perfunctory 15y ago

Why am I reading this on the home page of HN?

prof_hobart 15y ago

Firstly, the comparison with DNS doesn't really make sense. DNS works because there is a one to one mapping between name and number. There is only one johnsmith.com anywhere on the web. OTOH, there are many thousands of John Smiths out in the real world, each with their own unique set of phone numbers (and other things that this guy seems to have overlooked from an "address book", like an actual address, or an email address, or relationships to other people). DNS doesn't solve the fact that many people called John Smith may have their own websites. They won't all be found at johnsmith.com. This is solved through a combination of search engines (equivalent of a phone book) and bookmarks (which is pretty much the equivalent of a person's address book - so DNS alone clearly hasn't removed the need for address books in the online world). Secondly, that's all totally irrelevant to the actual issue with Path - whether someone's got access to a complete list of your contacts with all of the details required to contact them, and got this without your permission.

darklajid 15y ago
I fail to understand your point. Yes, lots of people share names. But it should be enough to store _one_ handle to get to (=> resolve) your _current_ number. That might be your domain or email address. Or something totally different. The major part for me here is not 'do we need digits without meaning', it is 'bind some name to a way of contacting the person'. DNS as a comparison makes sense for me. I store john@smith.com as a contact. When I want to call that guy my phone figures out how to reach him _and he can update that information_. Just like you can move your domain name to point to a different number. If the name server is under your control (or your hoster loves you) and ignoring certain limitations of the protocol and buggy caching behavior, you could even change the result of a lookup every minute. That, for phone numbers, would be awesome.
- prof_hobart 15y ago
  Because a)that doesn't get rid of the need for address books - even with email I still need an address book to tell me which John Smith I want to email, and b) that's got absolutely nothing to do with the Path issue - them uploading my address book with a single phone number/phone DNS whatever for my contacts without my permission is just as bad as them uploading my address book with 5 different phone numbers for each of my contacts

cwilson 15y ago

While I don't necessarily agree with everything in this post, I do see two problems with phone numbers: 1. Ask yourself, how many phone numbers do you actually know at this very moment? I'm willing to bet, on average, it's less than five. It might be slightly higher on this site, but for the average consumer, I'm guessing it's between 1 and 3. I ask people this all the time, and I know many who don't know a single number other than their own, or their parents. 2. You've all seen the Facebook groups that pop up when someone loses their phone. "I lost my phone, give me your number!". Apple is doing a very good job of solving this for the masses right now with iCloud, but you have to be an iPhone user to take advantage.

huxley 15y ago
That's a new phenomenon though, people had to remember more phone numbers before mobile phones or built-in address books. From muscle memory alone, I can still finger dial about a dozen phone numbers belonging to friends when I was a kid, even though it's been 28 years since I last called them. Funny thing is that I can't recall the numbers without mock dialling them.
tintin 15y ago
These are not problems with phone numbers. 20 years ago I knew all phone numbers from my friends and kept them on paper. I still keep them on paper. The points you describe could also be said about e-mail addresses and website addresses. This is about people putting too much trust in (electronic) technology.

bilban 15y ago

How about something like the Finger Protocol?

brk 15y ago

I have solved this problem a slightly different way, and I realize that it is not perfect. 90% of my business is conducted within the US, here I have a single number I give out. This number is managed by Ribbit (www.ribbit.com , no affiliation). Ribbit knows a list of numbers for me: Office desk phone "Mobile" IP Phone (eg: sometimes it is at my house, or at my condo if I am spending more than a few days there, or possibly even travels with me if I am going someplace for an extended time). iPhone 3GS which has numbers in the US, Dubai, Caribbean and Japan via multiple SIMS. iPhone 4 which has a US number. When you call my Ribbit number, it rings ALL these services simultaneously, whichever phone I pick up is the one that gets the call. I can take numbers out of the routing loop if I want (for example when I travel, I don't need my home phone to ring and bug my wife). So, to reach me, you dial a single number. The downside to it is CallerID. While I can jump through some hoops to use apps and soft phones to get around this, it's a PITA (to me), so if I call you back from Japan for example, you're going to likely see my Japanese phone number as the caller ID, but I get more calls than I make, so it's not a huge problem. The phonebook to DNS analogy is also off in that we all have "bookmarks" of sites we want to revisit and keep in a handy list. DNS has not solved or removed the issue of list keeping and organization/management.

andreasklinger 15y ago
great reply. thanks for that! reg bookmarks: bookmarks is nothing you type in and make work. Its shortcuts to your favourites. And you dont bother about technical layers below.

Karadoc 15y ago

Dude. What is wrong with a JAR file?

jpdoctor 15y ago

> Telephone numbers need a DNS system! LOL. Apparently the author is too young to remember phone books. As an aside: Older folks will remember Sun receiving a lawsuit from the newly disintegrated phone system regarding their use of "yellow pages". They issued an update which took the "yp" prefix out of their commands.

andreasklinger 15y ago
I mentioned telephone books. I am too old to forget this crime against nature. And imho: Telephone books are the like blackboards/dial up sites with lists of more sites.

petepete 15y ago

Isn't .tel a step in the right direction here? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.tel http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.tel

drcube 15y ago

So instead of an address book, we add telephone-dns and then we have a list of bookmarks? What's the upside again? Personally, I'm rethinking this whole DNS thing. I already have a huge list of bookmarks, I don't see why there couldn't just be IP addresses.

ageektrapped 15y ago

It's been a few years since I worked in softphones, but this "problem" is essentially solved with the SIP protocol. Everyone gets an address of the form user@domain. (The protocol scheme is sip: but the beauty of using user@domain is that one can quickly switch to mailto:). Then the immediacy of the communication dictates the medium. Don't need an answer right away? Email. Low priority? IM/Text. Must talk now? Voice. I believe Office Communicator (or whatever it's called now) was designed with this in mind. But that doesn't negate the need for an address book. One still needs to know the user@domain address, as others have pointed out.

feralchimp 15y ago

What, as exactly as possible, is the desired user experience for contacting people for voice calls? Serious question. All the discussion around whether phone numbers / something-like-DNS-for-phone-numbers-but-with-failover / GrandCentral-like things (GV, Ribbit also?) / Siri / FaceTime are okay (and for which user groups), is damn near impossible without identifying the actual goal state.

mjwalshe 15y ago

Subs eh - this is some one with a trivial knowledge trying to apply one model (dns) to another (POTS). X.500 was the proposed solution (70's/80's) where you had interconnected directories that would allow a distributed worldwide directory to work. Only trouble is that a full working x.500 system is probably still at the bleeding edge of what is possible. A Google or Microsoft could do it if they upped their game in terms of rigous adherence to standards by a few hundred % or so. Stick to the frocks hunni.

mindctrl 15y ago

It's only a disgrace to the generation that knows nothing about privacy. Why would we want a DNS-like system for contact information? Get real.

JBiserkov 15y ago

I believe Microsoft Office Communicator solves part of this problem. It supports call forwading based on powerful rules and presence status, has Web access and much more. I think the author is wrong in dismissing Skype/Microsoft in their ability to solve a complex problem and deliver both consumer- and enterptise-friendly solutions.

peterwwillis 15y ago

I think we have segregated our information services for specific uses, and the phone numbers seem to work within that paradigm. If someone needs to contact me about a specific issue or we need to have a back-and-forth conversation, or if they just want to become my friend, they'll probably ask for my Facebook (don't have one) or e-mail address. If someone wants a date, or to call me maybe once about something like a job, they'll ask for a phone number. The phone number doesn't reveal anything about you - hell, you can't even find someone's name in the White Pages most of the time. It's an impersonal identifier. The e-mail address, Facebook, Twitter, etc can reveal all sorts of personal details about you. I wouldn't give up on phone numbers yet because there exists no alternative social replacement for impersonal contact. Silly I know, but social interaction is silly.