Re: Marketing troubles - workable WebID profile generators

On 28 Sep 2011, at 10:51, Jürgen Jakobitsch wrote:

> hi all,
> 
> as you know our company set up a demo server of our main product (PoolParty Thesaurus Server)
> which is protected by webID.
> now we some people very interested in the technology and who would like to test things.
> problem is, believe it or not, these guys are from the not-so-tech-savvy front and
> do not have access to their own root server, which means they are not simply able to
> create or change their foaf-profile and therefor rely on foaf generators like foaf.me [1]
> or myxwiki [2].
> now unfortunately we are experiencing troubles with these sites, so any help is really appreciated.
> 
> foaf.me
> 
> 1. if you create a foaf-profile there's no way to edit it
> 2. especially so, if you create a foaf-profile without webID, there's no way to log in at all
> 3. nobody reacts to mails, is it a dead mailing list?

Yes, I think that is probably very much in its last stages. It never really evolved beyond what it was 4 years ago as far as I can tell. A major problem is that it allows people to edit the xml, which of course is a no go as far as ease of use goes. 

> myxwiki
> 
> 1. only creates rdfa, ok i'll write a parser or check if sesame has one to use, but availability of application/rdf+xml would be highly appreciated
> 2. the rdfa created doesn't seem right.
>   using this parser [3], i get triples that are not really ok,
>   have a try with this foaf-URI [4], try with and without #me

Yes, you are quite right. That produces WebID profiles that use the deprecated ontology.
I put that together 1 and a half years ago quickly. I could try to update it, but I am not sure I will have time 
in the near future (even if it should not take a lot of time, it's perhaps a few hours for me to remember how that whole system works, and things may have evolved a lot in the xwiki platform) I'd rather work on a better version using my branch of http://clerezza.org/ on http://github.com/bblfish/clerezza.

The best work recently put together was the server at http://webid.fcns.eu/ by Andrei Sambra.

That has a nice user interface, has a test suite and works. 

Things can still be improved a lot in my view as far as user interfaces go. We are only at the very beginning here. And because the benefits of WebID pivots around ease of use, I must say that we still don't have demos that do it full justice. 

> 
> 
> both of the above services write the rsa public key resource slightly different that i have it in my profile [5]
> but one has to adapt the foaf-profile parser to find the publickey-string.
> which one is the right one?
> 
> version one (datatype=cert#hex):
> 
> <rdf:Description>
>  <rdf:type rdf:resource="http://www.w3.org/ns/auth/rsa#RSAPublicKey"/>
>  <cert:identity rdf:resource="http://www.turnguard.com/turnguard"/>
>  <rsa:modulus rdf:datatype="http://www.w3.org/ns/auth/cert#hex">
>    bc 6d c4 be c2 a8 9a 3b 72 cf 31 74 e6 a3 d9 89
>    7e bd fc e5 bb 43 39 4d 85 cf 1e ad e4 b1 a7 83....

This is the new accepted way to do it, and this is how the examples should be written out in the spec.

> 
> version two (cert#hex is a predicate)
> 
> <rsa:RSAPublicKey>
>  <rsa:modulus>
>   <rdf:Description>
>    <cert:hex rdf:datatype="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string">
>     b549fda19426d73c7b4b486ce50de7c10cbd89cac7ba39c5bf37a0465df5
>     e4e181211d8f7ea1432b0a1afb440c1d1e7f994cddfe05dcadd10e083be9

It is worth supporting this way too, for backward compatibility. You can see the code that I use 
in Scala here:

https://github.com/bblfish/clerezza/blob/bblfish/parent/platform.security.foafssl/core/src/main/scala/org/apache/clerezza/foafssl/auth/WebIDClaim.scala

or in Java using SPARQL, which I think ends up being easier to read:

https://github.com/bblfish/foafssl-java/blob/master/foafssl-verifier-sesame/src/main/java/net/java/dev/sommer/foafssl/sesame/verifier/SesameFoafSslVerifier.java


> we seriously would like to spread the word about webID and help growing the community,
> also to world of decision makers who are interested. i guess a refactoring of the services around our topic would certainly help.

thanks a lot.

What would be great is if you could give people who have profiles on your system a WebId too. We just need more WebID generators and more competition and presentation ideas. 


> 
> any pointer, help or comment greatly appreciated
> wkr http://www.turnguard.com/turnguard
> 
> [1] http://foaf.me
> [2] http://webid.myxwiki.org/
> [3] http://www.w3.org/2007/08/pyRdfa/
> [4] http://webid.myxwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/XWiki/nagyhel#me
> [5] http://www.turnguard.com/turnguard
> 
> 
> --
> | Jürgen Jakobitsch,
> | Software Developer
> | Semantic Web Company GmbH
> | Mariahilfer Straße 70 / Neubaugasse 1, Top 8
> | A - 1070 Wien, Austria
> | Mob +43 676 62 12 710 | Fax +43.1.402 12 35 - 22
> 
> COMPANY INFORMATION
> | http://www.semantic-web.at/
> 
> PERSONAL INFORMATION
> | web   : http://www.turnguard.com
> | foaf  : http://www.turnguard.com/turnguard
> | skype : jakobitsch-punkt
> 

Social Web Architect
http://bblfish.net/

Received on Wednesday, 28 September 2011 09:29:15 UTC