The Day the Internet Broke
Everything was going normal, until I wanted to go look at my feeds using the wonderful Google Reader of course, when this showed up in my browser:
Then, I asked twitter about it and got a reply from who is now a newfound friend @MathGeek06, who reported that he too was having troubles. After a couple messages or so, I got this:
It looks like the Internets are conspiring against me tonight. Google, tell me, why are you crashing so much lately? We need you, we depend on you, YOU ARE THE INTERNET!
I'm just kidding of course, but this has allowed me ample time to reflect on how dependent I am on central services. Just about the same time as I was giggling at Dave Winer for blogging about Why Decentralizing Twitter is so important. I'm starting to agree with him.
Fedora Issues Cease & Desist against DataPortability
Red Hat, Inc. ("Red Hat") recently became aware that on your website, located at http://www.dataportability.org, you are using art work that is identical to the Fedora Infinity design logo owned by Red Hat.
Specifically, I am referring to two images on your site: the green and white logo, as well as the blue and white logo.
Personally, I think this is ridiculous. Thoughts and comments are welcome here. I'm not going to write any more, so that I keep myself from ranting.
Using XFN with FOAF
So, before I just start splattering your screen with Acronyms, lets define a few, eh?
- FOAF: Friend of a Friend - An XML Schema containing information about you, as well as a small bit of information, or links to information, about the people you know.
- XFN: XHTML Friends Network - A Microformat generally used in links to other sites or pages to identify that person's relevance to you, such as "contact", "friend", "acquaintance", "met", "muse" and etcetera.
Generally, you wouldn't combine an XHTML standard with a different XML Schema. But, I've personally decided the best way to use the two together.
First, declare the XHTML namespace in your FOAF file. This is with all the others, and generally looks like xmlns:xhtml="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml".
Next, go to where you have included your contacts. For each <foaf:knows> tag, add inside of it xhtml:rel="contact" or similar, following the XFN standards.
And voila! You now have XFN and FOAF working together. Of course, the only problem is that nobody quite supports this standard yet, but it will hopefully come in the future.
My Guidelines for using XFN in FOAF is that it should be used when referencing another <foaf:Person>. In fact, if you want, you should probably even add xhtml:rel="me" to your own <foaf:Person>.
Microsoft joins DataPortability
DataPortability has continued moving forward. Now, word in the tubes is that Microsoft is joining, and from what I gather, they will be making a way to use their Windows Live system portable. Hopefully with OpenID and OpenAuth and etc.
Here is the original posting from Windows Live Dev:
I’m pretty excited about the news that Microsoft is joining Dataportability.org. A lot of the work we’ve been doing at dev.live.com over the last year has focused on opening up data stored in Windows Live in secure and user-friendly ways. The Windows Live Contacts control and API, for example, allows users to share their Windows Live Contacts with other sites. We’re working on more APIs that allow users to move their data around the Web—and we can’t wait to see how this new effort can help.
Here’s the official announcement:
“Today Microsoft is announcing that it has joined DataPortability.org, a group committed to advancing the conversation about the portability, security and privacy of individuals’ information online. There are important security and privacy issues to solve as the internet evolves, and we are committed to being an integral part of the industry conversation on behalf of our users.
The decision to join DataPortability.org is an outgrowth of a deeper theme that technology and the internet should be deployed to help people be at the center of their online worlds, a theme that has begun to permeate our products and services over the past few years. We believe the logical evolution of the internet is to enable the removal of barriers to provide integrated, seamless experiences, but to do so in a manner that ensures that users retain full control over the security and privacy of their information.
Windows Live is focused on providing tools and a platform to enable these types of seamless experiences. Windows Live has more than 420 million active Live IDs that work across our services and across partner sites. Through each Windows Live advancement we’re making technical investments to ensure users’ information is available to them in the places they want, even across the networks they use every day. Windows Live Writer, Mail, Photo Gallery and Spaces, for example, allow users to get access and publish to the places they want, even outside Microsoft’s network. And the Windows Live Platform and Terms of Use offer a set of APIs and controls that allow for the growth of an ecosystem based on the premise of user control and portability.
Microsoft feels strongly that getting the right balance for data portability, security and privacy is critical for the industry, and doing it well requires the participation of all the major web services. We are no stranger to these types of broad industry dialogues, and the one that is taking shape at DataPortability.org will be very effective in furthering users’ interests.”
The Portable Data Account Manager
This is my newest concept that I will one day attempt to put into reality.
If you've been reading my blog for the short period of time that I've been writing it, you'll have noticed that I have a lot of interest in standards such as HTML5, XHTML, Microformats, and the newest concept group, DataPortability.
Since I learned about DataPortability, I've been excessively interested in the idea that I would be able to share my data between websites. If you've paid attention to my twitter, you'll notice that I even went out and created such a test system on my website. I have an OpenID, FOAF, and XRDS all hosted on my own personal web server. The next step I want to take? Creating a beta system for account management. Unfortunately, one of the only things that is holding this back is how it would work. How are websites supposed to query for your XRDS, your FOAF, your APML, RDF, and so forth? You obviously don't want them to just directly download the feeds off of the webserver by themselves. Why? Privacy controls. We need privacy controls and the only thing stopping me from creating such a system, are these privacy controls.
My ideas already span over the concept of having multiple systems. For example, certain data would be added or excluded to your "Professional" FOAF and the same for your "Social" FOAF. The concept even goes over the fact that you could create as many FOAF, XRDS, RDF, APML, etc. systems so that you could share only the data that you want to share with certain websites. And that this interface.. this GUI would help you manage it all, from a single OpenID login.
Yes, it sounds impressive. But I'm not quite there yet. First thing I need to do, will be to create my own OpenID server. And by that, I don't mean download the newest PHP OpenID client/server I can find, I mean reading over OpenID 2.0 and its accompanying standards and program one from scratch.
What do my readers think of this idea? Do you like it?
Announcing Participation
Well, I don't have much to write right now, but I am announcing participation in the DataPortability group.
The goal of the DataPortability group is to "put all existing technologies and initiatives in context to create a reference design for end-to-end Data Portability. To promote that design to the developer, vendor and end-user community."
You can view more information on their website, www.dataportability.org.