Have you ever noticed that sometimes things become more clear when you can compare them with something you already know? Well, I certainly have.

That is why, in this episode of Solid in Short, I will explain Solid using an analogy we probably all know: email.

A first analogy is found in the openness of the specifications. Just like the specifications that underlie email such as IMAP and SMTP are open, Solid is also an open specification. Not for sending messages, but to reuse and interconnect personal data.

This brings me to the second analogy. The one about interoperability. The IMAP and SMTP email standards are meant to make exchanging emails interoperable just like the Solid standard is meant to make reusing and interconnecting personal data interoperable.

A third analogy can be found in the way emails are stored. Much like emails are stored in a mailbox on an email server, personal data is stored in a pod on a pod server.

And, fourth, just as you can have multiple mailboxes, for example, for your work or for personal use, you can have multiple pods.

This topic seamingly brings us to the last analogy, which is about combining mails from different mailboxes. Just as you can connect multiple mails from, for example, your work email address and your personal email address in your email client such as outlook, you can combine the data from multiple pods into a virtual overview such as by using Digita’s Inox browser.

Thus in conclusion, in this episode of Solid in very Short, I explained how email is in many ways analogous to Solid. I hope that by using this analogy, I made Solid a little bit more clear.