Re: slow down and organize

Hi All, 

Following on from Nathan's original post to this thread. I too am having trouble following all the mail in circulation on this XG. I have been guilty of not being able to attend the first couple of telecons, and am finding it really hard to catch up with all of the talk/work going on. It would be nice if the issues were categorised in a way that would allow people with different skill sets to remain engaged and involved in the XG. 

I have a strong understanding of RDF and FOAF, but I am not a security nor a crypto expert. I have had experience developing services using OpenID, OAuth, and very recently I have had to play around with SAML (joy!) - and as a developer I am not really impressed with the convoluted back and forwarding required by the aforementioned protocols. 

In terms of my interests in WebID, the concept of being to prove that a URI on the web is me, and the ability to transport additional information about me, is what I am most interested in, and it is this which I hope I can help out with. 

Slightly off topic, I am sure that you guys are aware that Microsoft have pulled their InfoCards initiative [1], and quoting the blog post, I too have similar concerns when it comes to the adoption of WebID. 

Quoting [1] : 

<!--

So with all this support and energy behind Information Cards, why aren’t we on the path to ubiquitous adoption? While there are many reasons, I’ll highlight two, based upon my personal experiences…

Not solving an immediate perceived problem: In my extensive experience talking with potential adopters, while many/most thought that CardSpace was a good idea, because they didn’t see it solving a top-5 pain point that they were facing at that moment or providing immediate compelling value, they never actually allocated resources to do the adoption at their site.
Not drop-dead simple to use: Users were often confused by their first encounter with CardSpace; many didn’t succeed at the task at hand. Indeed, many saw it as something complicated getting in the way of what they were actually there to do.

--> 

Hopefully I will be able to make next weeks telecon, and am looking forward to being of some help in the future. 

Cheers, 

Mischa

[1] http://self-issued.info/?p=458 

On 24 Feb 2011, at 10:20, Henry Story wrote:

> Hi Cosimo,
> 
>  I hope Nathan's overview was clear enough. The second video on my home page
> http://bblfish.net/ shows what it looks like from the user perspective, but
> we need to  working on improving the  implementations and the presentations. 
> 
> Of the two servers running there, the one creating the certificates is a simple Java based wiki. The other authenticating server is a php based server. Those are both prototypes, and may not be working. 
> 
> On 24 Feb 2011, at 01:45, Cosimo Streppone wrote:
> 
>> I had never heard of Clerezza before, and I tried to look up its
>> documentation, but it feels like a giant beast. Do I need it
>> to get WebID up and running?
> 
> No you don't need something as big as Clerezza. (though it's not that big: Reto got it to work on his Nokia cell phone I think) Clerezza is just a tool I am happy to work on being a Java person trying to move to Scala. And you are quite right the documentation is on the todo list there. :-)
> 
> There are a number of other implementations out there, listed at http://esw.w3.org/foaf+ssl
> in perl, python, c, php, ... I hope Clerezza gives them some competition soon, so they improve their user friendliness :-)
> 
> What we need is to make sure we all interoperate, which is why I am really keen on getting a test suite out.
> 
> 
>  Henry
> 
> 
> Social Web Architect
> http://bblfish.net/
> 
> 

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Mischa Tuffield PhD
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Homepage - http://mmt.me.uk/
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