Introducing the star address

What about imitating something that we know has worked well? We can try an address format such as nick*host.com which is exactly the same as e-mail addresses but with a star * instead of the 'at' simbol @. And, in order to allow you give different information to different people we can extend it into nick#key*host.com. Giving different keys you grant people access to different pieces of information. Simpler can it not be.

Here it will be the task of host.com to provide the information that other people or programs request. It will do so by running a PIRP that communicates with PIRP clients located, for example, at your desktop computer, at your mobile telephone or at the Post Service distribution office. The PIRP protocol that both servers and clients would speak will allow the request of some information by the client sending a query that encloses eventually a key and the reply of the server with the requested information that is available under the specified key. All this can be done by interchanging properly formatted XML documents via several available gateways. This is what PIRP is all about.

Now that you know the purpose of PIRP, you can start dowloading the source code of an example implementation which is here offered under the terms of the GPL along with several client applications.