OT: Managing a Contact List

[Matt Graham]

On 2014-02-12 12:49, Ed wrote:
>> If you are managing the list for the group - then go with an LDAP
>> server

If you are the only person who's going to use this contact list, then 
setting up and administering an LDAP server will be much more of a pain 
than anything useful.

>> The most flexible format is likely vCard

This is true.

>> The most modern would use the semantic web - create FOAF files for
>> your contacts (much like vCard) and either present them like files or
>>  set up an RDF store and publish a SPARQL endpoint.

"Most modern", maybe, but does that translate into "most useful"?[0]

Brian Cluff wrote:
> My point was that faxing is old technology that can (and should) be
> completely replaced by email/web/cloud storage...

You can fax something, and the faxed copy that comes out the other end 
has the same legal standing as the original.  Something that's been 
e-mailed may not (does not?) have that quality.[1]  So, when I needed to 
sign a legal document last year, the lawyers first asked me if they 
could fax it, then snail-mailed the thing to me.  Fax is equivalent to 
transmitting a set of low-res G3-compressed TIFFs over the phone, but 
transmitting a set of high-res G4-compressed TIFFs in a PDF wrapper over 
TCP/IP is somehow inferior?  (PLUG-reading law-talking folks, feel free 
to chime in.)

I may be one of the only people ever who doesn't have a "contact list" 
in my e-mail.  Everyone I need to mail has their address in my Sentmail 
already, and it's trivial to search that.  Phone numbers are stored in 
my phone and exportable in vcard format via bluetooth.  People's 
snailmail addresses go in ~/Text/snailmail.txt .

[0] FORTRAN and slide rules got men to the moon and returned them 
safely to earth multiple times, after all.

[1] They may be making assumptions about there being only 1 copy of the 
faxed document and subsequent copies of that document being 
progressively worse through the analog hole.

-- 
Crow202 Blog: http://crow202.org/wordpress
There is no Darkness in Eternity
But only Light too dim for us to see.