Re: Sketch of a very simple identification protocol

Hi Lisa!

With a calendar vocabulary, it should be easy to add a relation to  
foaf, find an existing one, or create one that in N3/Turtle would look  
like this:

@prefix : <http://lisa.org/ont/cal#> .
@prefix owl: <http://www.w3.org/2002/07/owl#> .
@prefix rdfs: <http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#> .
@prefix foaf: <http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/> .


:calendar a owl:ObjectProperty;
     rdfs:label "calendar location";
     rdfs:domain foaf:Agent;
     rdfs:range :Calendar;
     rdfs:comment "relates an agent to its calendar".

:Calendar a owl:Class;
     rdfs:subClassOf foaf:Document;
     rdfs:label "a Calendar";
     rdfs:comment """a calendar document. Should be able to return one  
of a number of calendar representations""" .


It would then be easy to add to your foaf file the link to your  
calendar. In N3 again you could have the following in your foaf file

@prefix cal: <http://lisa.org/ont/cal#> .
@prefix foaf: <http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/> .
@prefix lisa: <http://lisa.org/#> .

lisa:me a foaf:Person;
     foaf:name "Lisa Dusseault";
     foaf:homepage <http://lisa.org/> ;
     foaf:blog <http://nih.blogspot.com/> ;
     cal:calendar <http://lisa.org/cal/>;
     foaf:knows [ = <http://bblfish.net/people/henry/card#me>;
                  foaf:name "Henry Story" ].


( With RDFa [2] this could also be embedded as html in your home page. )

I am missing out the link to your GPG key and the other fun stuff that  
you could link to in there. In order to avoid making the file too big  
it may be useful as on a web page to cut some of it up of course, and  
cross link between them. In any case it is then easy to publish the  
foaf file, in a RESTful manner as I did [1], and you have a foaf name  
that can return representations of where your calendar is.

Now I can imagine that with a protocol such as the sketched RDFAuth  
you could allow access to a full view of your calendar only to people  
you know or to the people who know people you know, or to the people  
who are part of a certain organization, as specified by that org. It  
is up to you. All you need to know is their unique id [3]: and why not  
have a URL as ID. As you point out, we all have easy access to the web.

Henry

PS. You may also be interested in the SIOC (Semantically Interlinked  
Online Communities) vocabulary. http://sioc-project.org/


[1] http://blogs.sun.com/bblfish/entry/i_have_a_foaf_file
[2] http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml-rdfa-primer/
[3] The fun thing is that this also makes drag and drop across  
applications and computers really easy. see: http://blogs.sun.com/bblfish/entry/universal_drag_and_drop

On 1 Apr 2008, at 22:38, Lisa Dusseault wrote:
> Another idea in the ether these days is much the same thing, but  
> with a different focus and nomenclature: it's typically described as  
> doing service discovery in a way that doesn't require DNS changes.
>
> How do I as a person, advertise my personal blog, my calendar, my  
> work blog at all, let alone as them being related to me?   My  
> calendar is probably hosted by my company or at Google, my personal  
> blog at LiveJournal, my work blog by some IT team at my company that  
> has nothing to do with the email/calendar team.  There's no way I  
> can get those service providers to work together or do something  
> that's specific to me.  The extensive work on S-NAPTR and DDDS isn't  
> going to help because my company won't put a DNS record saying  
> "Lisa's calendar is on google under this address".  Nor will anybody  
> else except me.
>
> But since I don't run a DNS server and don't pay GoDaddy to run one  
> for me, I'd rather the information about these related resources be  
> in an HTTP resource somewhere -- that's a technology I do have  
> access to.  We do have a bootstrap problem, but to a certain extent  
> that can be solved with well-known naming conventions.  Just like  
> spiders recognize "robots.txt" today, there's a good chance that  
> robots or other automated agents can recognize a well-known file  
> name for information that advertises services.
>
> Lisa
>
> On Apr 1, 2008, at 8:47 AM, Story Henry wrote:
>
>> By thinking about a use case involving Distributed Open Social  
>> Networks we found the need for a light weight identification system  
>> such as OpenId, but without the many redirects and better able to  
>> work with REST web architecture and Linked Data. The main reasons  
>> for needing such a protocol were laid out on the Semantic Web  
>> mailing list [1].
>>
>> I summarized and illustrated a sketch of such a protocol on a  
>> recent blog post.
>>
>> http://blogs.sun.com/bblfish/entry/rdfauth_sketch_of_a_buzzword
>>
>> It is very simple, and probably could be further simplified. Some  
>> people have noted the similarity with HTTPS, and how this could be  
>> thought of as an extension to that perhaps [2]. In any case I  
>> thought that with some protocols experts on this list would be able  
>> to fill in the gaps, suggest improvements or point to specs that  
>> already do what is needed.
>>
>> Yours sincerely,
>>
>> 	Henry
>>
>>
>> [1] http://www.w3.org/mid/37747504-ABB6-4074-8C98-2EB543F80993@bblfish.net
>> [2] see http://www.w3.org/mid/62649.81.2.120.180.1206622777.squirrel@goddamn.co.uk
>>