The Basics

What is an i-name?

Like many things, there are several possible answers to this. We would explain it differently if we were explaining it to a techie or to our mothers (not that mothers can't be techies, but ours aren't). For this website, we will explain it for our mothers. The techies know that they can go to www.xdi.org or even wikipedia to find a deeper answer.

An i-name is a digital address for a person, much like a domain name (www.iwantmynamenow.com) is a digital address for a website. When a request is made with an i-name, the request will go to your i-broker or service provider and the appropriate i-service will be evoked. This one address can unify all your other addresses (email, blogs, photo sites, telephone, etc.) and keep everyone important to you up-to-date.

I-Names need i-services to be useful and every i-name has the three basic services included: Authentication, Contact and Forwarding. These are explained below.

What is an i-broker?

An i-broker sells you your i-name and provides i-services to you. You will have a relationship with that company as long as you have and use your i-name. Of course, you can always change i-brokers, if you want (though there is usually a small charge to do that). This makes the i-brokers competitive for your business more likely to offer the best possible services.

What do i-names look like?

I-Names come in two basic flavors, "=" names and "@" names. Generally speaking, = names are meant for people (=john) and @ names are meant for businesses or organizations (@acmecorp or @mynonprofit).

Punctuation

An i-name may contain any combination of letters and digits, but the only punctuation characters allowed are dots and dashes, and they must not be used consecutively, or at the start or end of an i-name.

International Characters

Besides Latin characters, an i-name may contain characters from any international character script supported by the XDI.org Global Registry Service. The initial supported scripts include:

• Han (Simplified Chinese)
• Han (Japanese)
• Hangul (Korean)

Capitalization

i-names are "case-insensitive," i.e., it is the same i-name regardless of whether it is spelled with uppercase or lowercase letters. For example, "=example.name" and "=Example.Name" are equivalent. This is true for both Latin letters and those of other character scripts that support case.

Community i-names (*names)

Individuals and businesses who register global =names and @names can in turn assign lower-level i-names to others. These are called community i-names, because they are unique within the community of digital addresses created by the top-level name.

The community i-name character is "*", so these are often called "star names". Following are examples.

Note that the ability to assign community i-names is a feature available from your i-broker. Ask your i-broker for more information.

What can I do with an i-name?

There are three services that come with each i-name:

• Authentication
  • Also known as "single sign-on", this service allows you to sign on to your accounts wherever i-names are accepted. Instead of having many usernames and passwords at many different websites, you can use this identifier in multiple places. As i-name adoption grows, more and more site will accept them through i-name specific interfaces or through the widely used OpenID interfaces.
• Contact
  • This service allows you to put your identifier in public view without worrying about spam, as you would putting your email address out there. When another user wants to contact you, they do it through a contact service, which is basically a web form that requires either authentication or verification of an email address.
• Forwarding
  • Through a simple interface, you can set URLs for your content online, like your blog, photo albums etc. You can then give out a standard address that will forward them to the appropriate place. If you change the content location, you simply update the forwarding service once.

These simple, yet powerful services are just the beginning. In the coming months, more and more services will be deployed. That's when the REAL power of i-names will be clear!