On Wed, Jul 30, 2008 at 4:37 PM, Ayende Rahien <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> At the end user UI, this is a simple issue,
> associate an icon with each service, which
> doesn't take a lot of room.
> Or use Susan  (twitter.com)

To associate an icon with each service, you would first need to know all
possible services. But, in a federated system, it is unlikely that you could
know this since not everyone will know all services that are federating at
any one moment. Can you imagine that your idea of using icons would work for
email? (I don't think so.) You might build some sort of "icon fetching
service" but that would be a mess. (You'd have connectivity issues, problem
with unregistered icons, etc.) As a result, what you're probably forced to
do is something like what we have in email today:

  Susan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

But, since that is the display convention, why not use it as the input
convention as well? Users will appreciate the symmetry.

bob wyman

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