- From: Toby Inkster <tai@g5n.co.uk>
- Date: Fri, 21 Aug 2009 15:29:08 +0100
- To: Danny Ayers <danny.ayers@gmail.com>, foaf-dev Friend of a <foaf-dev@lists.foaf-project.org>, foaf-protocols@lists.foaf-project.org, webfinger@googlegroups.com, semantic-web@w3.org
Fingerpoint is an alternative draft specification offering much the same facilities as Webfinger. The current draft spec can be found at: http://buzzword.org.uk/2009/fingerpoint/spec I think it offers the following advantages over Webfinger: 1. Minimal reinvention. Fingerpoint reuses FOAF for descriptions of people, and reuses the W3C SPARQL Query Language for searching for their information. It uses Mark Nottingham's Web Linking draft for discovery. 2. Integration with the world of Linked Data. 3. It's very easy to set up a small-scale Fingerpoint service - no programming knowledge needed! A basic command-line client for Fingerpoint can be found at: http://buzzword.org.uk/2009/fingerpoint/FingerpointClient.pl To run it you type: FingerpointClient.pl account@example.com To show how easy it is to set up a fingerpoint service, I've set one up here: http://fingerpoint.tobyinkster.co.uk/ Note that no fancy .htaccess tricks are required, no PHP, no programming at all. It can be implemented easily on a cheap host that just serves up static files. (Though there are scalability advantages if you can run your own SPARQL endpoint.) To try it out, install the FingerpointClient.pl client and try fingering the following identifiers: me@fingerpoint.tobyinkster.co.uk somebody@fingerpoint.tobyinkster.co.uk mail@tobyinkster.co.uk -- Toby A Inkster <mailto:mail@tobyinkster.co.uk> <http://tobyinkster.co.uk>
Received on Friday, 21 August 2009 14:29:53 UTC