Weekend Project: Set Up Webfinger on Your Server(s)
Jul 13, 2010, 20:08 (0 Talkback[s])
(Other stories by Nathan Willis)
"Webfinger is a new Internet "identity discovery" mechanism,
with which you can make personal or professional information about
you or your organization discoverable through email addresses.
Several well-known web service providers have implemented Webfinger
for their customers' profiles, but if you manage your own mail
server, all it takes to join the game is a little time.
"Let Your Fingers Do the Walking
"The name Webfinger is a reference to the old finger protocol
(RFC 1288) from the 1990s. Those of us who are old enough to have
had email addresses then remember how it worked -- an acquaintance
from a mailing list might know only your email address; running
finger yourname@example.com at the command line would return a
block of text from the example.com mail server.
"Its contents might be domain-wide standard information, such as
your first and last name and login state, but it could be anything
else, via a customized file that you edited. Phone number, office
hours, ASCII artwork, page after page of obscure Klingon poetry --
it was entirely up to the email account owner and often reflected
his or her tastes as much as it provided concrete data."
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