Do It Yourself Data Portability

[J. Trent Adams]

Portable Data Junkies -

I don't know about you, but I'm often approached by people wanting to
get into the data portability game asking me what they can do to help
the cause. There's a lot of action going on to get the Project (note
the capital "P") off the ground, but that work is often derided as
"just talk".

Even though I see it has incredibly valuable to provide a strong
foundation for what is to come, some folks aren't jazzed by it, and
would rather click some keys and see the results. Fortunately, a
project kicked off this month that should help just about everyone
step up and make an impact.

For more information, check out the DataPortability: Do It Yourself
Project [1]. The goal of the monthly DataPortabilty DIY Projects will
be to encourage playing around with small ideas that nibble away at
the grand mission of easily portable / accessible data.

The first project, launched on May 1st, is to explore the rel="me"
microformat [2]. And the cool thing is that it's something you can do
yourself:

http://wiki.dataportability.org/x/YYAj

The basic concept is that if you have any links under your control
(e.g. on your personal blog) that point to your profile pages, you
should tag them as such. For example, pretend this is your page:

+ ---------------------
| ABOUT ME
|
| Hi, I'm a social networking butterfly, and you can find out more
about me on the following site:
|
| <a href="http://www.mediaslate.org/jtrentadams">Personal Homepage</
a>
| <a href="http://twitter.com/jtrentadams">Follow me on Twitter</a>
| <a href="http://www.linkedin.com/in/jtrentadams">My LinkedIN
Profile</a>
| <a href="http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=822755553">FaceBook
Profile</a>
| <a href="http://http://www.last.fm/user/jtrentadams/">LastFM</a>
|
| Follow the links to get the meat.
+ --------------------

You can easily mark it up with the microformat by adding rel="me" to
each link so it would become:

+ ---------------------
| ABOUT ME
|
| Hi, I'm a social networking butterfly, and you can find out more
about me on the following site:
|
| <a rel="me" href="http://www.mediaslate.org/jtrentadams">Personal
Homepage</a>
| <a rel="me" href="http://twitter.com/jtrentadams">Follow me on
Twitter</a>
| <a rel="me" href="http://www.linkedin.com/in/jtrentadams">My
LinkedIN Profile</a>
| <a rel="me" href="http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?
id=822755553">FaceBook Profile</a>
| <a rel="me" href="http://http://www.last.fm/user/
jtrentadams/">LastFM</a>
|
| ... and now I'm speaking microformats!
+ --------------------

Easy eh? Yup, that's all there is to it. But so what?

This is where it gets kinda' interesting. Now, any links you've made
publicly available before, but relied on users to click on them, can
be more easily searched, crawled, and indexed together. While it's
still a nascent format, there are a few companies you might've heard
about who are already leveraging "links related to me":

Digg (http://digg.com/) - e.g. http://digg.com/users/tantek
LinkedIn (http://www.linkedin.com/) - e.g. http://www.linkedin.com/in/steveganz
MyBlogLog (http://www.mybloglog.com) - e.g. http://www.mybloglog.com/buzz/members/jbond/
Plaxo (http://plaxo.com/) - e.g. http://joseph.myplaxo.com/
Technorati (http://technorati.com/) - e.g. http://technorati.com/people/technorati/tantek
TypePad (http://typepad.com/) - e.g. http://www.markpasc.typepad.com/

Oh, yeah... and Yahoo! announced they're crawling microformats [3].
And in case you haven't heard, the Google Social Graph API speaks
microformats, too [4].

In the beginning, it starts with users (like you) stepping up and
making it happen. So if you're already comfortable with your public
links being out there, take control of your graph by marking them up.

As this is a community effort, we hope you'll return to the DIY
rel="me" Project page and continue the dialog:

http://wiki.dataportability.org/x/YYAj

And any coders who are yawning about this... perhaps you'd be
interested in jamming on some ideas how to traverse this graph of
related links. As far as projects go, this one shouldn't take you
long to tackle, and it'd be fun to see what pops.

NOTE: As a disclaimer (hopefully cutting some critics off at the
pass), we're fully aware that this is a lightweight technique. We
know it doesn't include anything in the way of formalized privacy,
authorization, or reach controls. Listen to the DataPortability: In-
Motion Podcast with Paul Trevithick on the security provided by the
Higgins Project if you want to learn more about an open source secure
framework for identity management [5]. And if that's your interest,
jump into the more technical discussions. [6]

Relate it up, and have fun!

=jtrentadams

About Me: http://www.mediaslate.org/jtrentadams
Follow Me: http://twitter.com/jtrentadams

---

[1] http://wiki.dataportability.org/x/IAsR
[2] http://microformats.org/wiki/rel-me
[3] http://www.ysearchblog.com/archives/000527.html
[4] http://code.google.com/apis/socialgraph/docs/
[5] http://www.mediaslate.org/wp/2008/05/02/dataportability-in-motion-podcast-episode-6/
[6] http://wiki.dataportability.org/display/dpmain/Technical

[danielabarbosa]

Thanks Trent

Here are some excellent post that address this project as well:

Julian Bond - http://www.voidstar.com/node.php?id=3146
Bob Ngu= http://ungeekdapo.wordpress.com/2008/04/29/a-simple-data-portability-project-or-is-it/

[Julian Bond]

J. Trent Adams <jtren...@gmail.com> Tue, 6 May 2008 15:50:31

>The first project, launched on May 1st, is to explore the rel="me"
>microformat [2]. And the cool thing is that it's something you can do
>yourself:
>
>http://wiki.dataportability.org/x/YYAj

It's perhaps too geeky, but in that case, it's a wiki. Improve it.

http://wiki.dataportability.org/display/dpmain/For+Individuals

--
Julian Bond E&MSN: julian_bond at voidstar.com M: +44 (0)77 5907 2173
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