webfinger enabled for all gmail accounts with public profiles

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Brad Fitzpatrick

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Feb 11, 2010, 1:44:32 PM2/11/10
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Now that Google Buzz has launched, I wanted to give an update on WebFinger....

We've now enabled WebFinger for all gmail/google profiles with public profiles.

That is, if you already have a profile like http://www.google.com/profile/FOO, then webfinger is enabled for F...@gmail.com.  Note that F...@gmail.com might not be an SMTP-enabled email address... it's just an account identifier.  Google Profile usernames come out of the same namespace as gmail email accounts, but may not email-enabled.

For instance, if I log onto a website and tell you my email address is brad...@gmail.com , here's how you'd resolve it:

<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?>
<!-- NOTE: this host-meta end-point is a pre-alpha work in progress.   Don't rely on it. -->
<!-- Please follow the list at http://groups.google.com/group/webfinger -->
     xmlns:hm='http://host-meta.net/xrd/1.0'>
  <hm:Host xmlns='http://host-meta.net/xrd/1.0'>gmail.com</hm:Host>
  <Link rel='lrdd' 
    <Title>Resource Descriptor</Title>
  </Link>
</XRD>

<?xml version='1.0'?>
<Subject>acct:brad...@gmail.com</Subject>
<Link rel='describedby' href='http://www.google.com/profiles/bradfitz' type='text/html'/>
<Link rel='describedby' href='http://s2.googleusercontent.com/webfinger/?q=bradfitz%40gmail.com&amp;fmt=foaf' type='application/rdf+xml'/>
</XRD>


So that's the end-to-end mapping from user identifier (brad...@gmail.com, which users might call an "email address") to my real-time enabled (PubSubHubbub) updates stream.  All using decentralized, standardized, open, Free, free. protocols.  I'm pretty excited about this.  This isn't the end, though... we're just getting started.  DeWitt said it best here:


- Brad

Eran Hammer-Lahav

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Feb 11, 2010, 2:01:54 PM2/11/10
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One correction, the second step should be:

 

curl http://www.google.com/s2/webfinger/?q=acct%3Abradfitz%40gmail.com

 

Google can decide to support your un-escaped / un-prefixed version, but it must support the above for compliance.

 

EHL

Brad Fitzpatrick

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Feb 11, 2010, 2:03:09 PM2/11/10
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Oh, right, thanks!

James Walker

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Feb 11, 2010, 2:54:42 PM2/11/10
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Brad, this is awesome. One quick question : How stable is
http://schemas.google.com/g/2010#updates-from ? We've discussed
something virtually identical for OStatus [1] - which would just
provide an href to the PuSH-enabled atom feed for a user. (I'd
semi-arbitrarily labeled it - http://ostatus.org/schema/1.0/publish).
It looks to me like this is identical to your new href. Correct? Is
yours temporary ? Or "final" as far as Buzz's implementation...

This is exciting to see all this stuff coming together so quickly...

-James

[1] http://status.net/wiki/OStatus

--
James Walker :: http://walkah.net/

Brad Fitzpatrick

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Feb 11, 2010, 2:58:37 PM2/11/10
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It was a last minute decision between a dozen of us with a dozen different ideas of what it could/should be.  In the end we decided to make up something (like what you see there) and open it up for community discussion.

We won't remove it from our user XRD docs, so it's stable in the sense that you can rely on it being there if people start building apps for it.

But we'll add the "correct" one once the community decides what the correct one is.  We're not pretending that our 5-minute-discussion made-up one is the final answer, unless that's convenient and good enough for everybody.

James Walker

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Feb 11, 2010, 3:18:08 PM2/11/10
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Good to know! Now... where's that community to make said decision when
you need it...

I'd like to humbly offer up the ostatus.org domain as a "neutral"
holding ground... we've specifically been working at this with the
full intention to have it be completely vendor/platform neutral. (and
OStatus rather than OpenMicroBlogging - 'cause neither StatusNet nor
Buzz are particularly wed to the 'micro' piece). Though, tbh, we
didn't know Buzz was gonna come out first *cough* cone of silence
*cough*.

In the meantime, it's easy enough for us to consider the two equivalent.

Markus Thielmann

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Feb 11, 2010, 4:25:15 PM2/11/10
to WebFinger
This is so great, thanks to everyone who is making this possible.

I'm currently working on a small tool with webfinger support. I guess
I should ask this in the Buzz forum, but since you brought the topic
up:

Is there any chance we might get a <link rel=”me”
href=”acct:us...@gmail.com” /> tag in the Google profile pages, like
suggested by Eran on [1]?
It would make my life so much easier :-)

[1] http://hueniverse.com/2009/08/making-the-case-for-a-new-acct-uri-scheme/

Steve Ivy

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Feb 11, 2010, 4:35:09 PM2/11/10
to WebFinger
Ha! James and I were just discussing something similar to rel=updates-
from yesterday. I wrote a bit about it here [1] and here [2]. I think
having a way to link to your status updates is a much needed hook.

Brad - how soon until we can point that updates-from link to a
different service?

--Steve

[1] http://www.monkinetic.com/2009/11/status-autodiscovery-relstatus.html
[2] http://www.monkinetic.com/2010/02/googles-new-status-updates-.html

On Feb 11, 1:18 pm, James Walker <wal...@walkah.net> wrote:
> Good to know! Now... where's that community to make said decision when
> you need it...
>
> I'd like to humbly offer up the ostatus.org domain as a "neutral"
> holding ground... we've specifically been working at this with the
> full intention to have it be completely vendor/platform neutral. (and
> OStatus rather than OpenMicroBlogging - 'cause neither StatusNet nor
> Buzz are particularly wed to the 'micro' piece). Though, tbh, we
> didn't know Buzz was gonna come out first *cough* cone of silence
> *cough*.
>
> In the meantime, it's easy enough for us to consider the two equivalent.
>
>
>
>
>
> On Thu, Feb 11, 2010 at 2:58 PM, Brad Fitzpatrick <bradf...@google.com> wrote:
> > It was a last minute decision between a dozen of us with a dozen different
> > ideas of what it could/should be.  In the end we decided to make up
> > something (like what you see there) and open it up for community discussion.
> > We won't remove it from our user XRD docs, so it's stable in the sense that
> > you can rely on it being there if people start building apps for it.
> > But we'll add the "correct" one once the community decides what the correct
> > one is.  We're not pretending that our 5-minute-discussion made-up one is
> > the final answer, unless that's convenient and good enough for everybody.
>
> > On Thu, Feb 11, 2010 at 11:54 AM, James Walker <wal...@walkah.net> wrote:
>
> >> Brad, this is awesome. One quick question : How stable is

> >>http://schemas.google.com/g/2010#updates-from? We've discussed


> >> something virtually identical for OStatus [1] - which would just
> >> provide an href to the PuSH-enabled atom feed for a user. (I'd

> >> semi-arbitrarily labeled it -http://ostatus.org/schema/1.0/publish).


> >> It looks to me like this is identical to your new href. Correct? Is
> >> yours temporary ? Or "final" as far as Buzz's implementation...
>
> >> This is exciting to see all this stuff coming together so quickly...
>
> >> -James
>
> >> [1]http://status.net/wiki/OStatus
>

> >> On Thu, Feb 11, 2010 at 1:44 PM, Brad Fitzpatrick <bradf...@google.com>


> >> wrote:
> >> > Now that Google Buzz has launched, I wanted to give an update on
> >> > WebFinger....
> >> > We've now enabled WebFinger for all gmail/google profiles with public
> >> > profiles.
> >> > That is, if you already have a profile like
> >> >http://www.google.com/profile/FOO, then webfinger is enabled for
> >> > F...@gmail.com.  Note that F...@gmail.com might not be an SMTP-enabled
> >> > email
> >> > address... it's just an account identifier.  Google Profile usernames
> >> > come
> >> > out of the same namespace as gmail email accounts, but may not
> >> > email-enabled.
> >> > For instance, if I log onto a website and tell you my email address is

> >> > bradf...@gmail.com , here's how you'd resolve it:
> >> > bradfitz@mini:~$ curlhttps://gmail.com/.well-known/host-meta


> >> > <?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?>
> >> > <!-- NOTE: this host-meta end-point is a pre-alpha work in progress.
> >> > Don't
> >> > rely on it. -->

> >> > <!-- Please follow the list athttp://groups.google.com/group/webfinger


> >> > -->
> >> > <XRD xmlns='http://docs.oasis-open.org/ns/xri/xrd-1.0'
> >> >      xmlns:hm='http://host-meta.net/xrd/1.0'>
> >> >   <hm:Host xmlns='http://host-meta.net/xrd/1.0'>gmail.com</hm:Host>
> >> >   <Link rel='lrdd'
> >> >         template='http://www.google.com/s2/webfinger/?q={uri}'>
> >> >     <Title>Resource Descriptor</Title>
> >> >   </Link>
> >> > </XRD>
> >> > bradfitz@mini:~$ curl

> >> > http://www.google.com/s2/webfinger/?q=bradf...@gmail.com


> >> > <?xml version='1.0'?>
> >> > <XRD xmlns='http://docs.oasis-open.org/ns/xri/xrd-1.0'>

> >> > <Subject>acct:bradf...@gmail.com</Subject>

> >> > href='http://s2.googleusercontent.com/webfinger/?q=bradfitz%40gmail.com&...


> >> > type='application/rdf+xml'/>
> >> > <Link rel='http://schemas.google.com/g/2010#updates-from'
>
> >> > href='http://buzz.googleapis.com/feeds/115863474911002159675/public/posted'
> >> > type='application/atom+xml'/>
> >> > </XRD>
>
> >> > So that's the end-to-end mapping from user identifier

> >> > (bradf...@gmail.com,


> >> > which users might call an "email address") to my real-time enabled
> >> > (PubSubHubbub) updates stream.  All using decentralized, standardized,
> >> > open,
> >> > Free, free. protocols.  I'm pretty excited about this.  This isn't the
> >> > end,
> >> > though... we're just getting started.  DeWitt said it best here:
>

> >> >  http://www.google.com/buzz/dclinton/XxER6oP4WGe/The-best-way-to-get-a...

Brad Fitzpatrick

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Feb 11, 2010, 4:53:21 PM2/11/10
to webf...@googlegroups.com
On Thu, Feb 11, 2010 at 1:35 PM, Steve Ivy <stev...@gmail.com> wrote:
Ha! James and I were just discussing something similar to rel=updates-
from yesterday. I wrote a bit about it here [1] and here [2]. I think
having a way to link to your status updates is a much needed hook.

Brad - how soon until we can point that updates-from link to a
different service?

Can't name an exact date, but it's something we all want to do & allow as soon as somebody hacks it up.

Maybe I can interest Noogler Joseph Smarr into doing it.  :-)

Brad Fitzpatrick

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Feb 11, 2010, 5:35:30 PM2/11/10
to webf...@googlegroups.com
On Thu, Feb 11, 2010 at 1:25 PM, Markus Thielmann <ma...@markusthielmann.com> wrote:
This is so great, thanks to everyone who is making this possible.

I'm currently working on a small tool with webfinger support. I guess
I should ask this in the Buzz forum, but since you brought the topic
up:

Is there any chance we might get a <link rel=”me”
href=”acct:us...@gmail.com” /> tag in the Google profile pages, like
suggested by Eran on [1]?
It would make my life so much easier :-)

Yeah, I'm told that there's no problem with that.  I'll send the team a little patch.

John Panzer

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Feb 11, 2010, 5:42:53 PM2/11/10
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(And thus the circle is complete... :) )

John Panzer

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Feb 11, 2010, 6:11:32 PM2/11/10
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This is exciting for the obvious reasons, it's also a step in my grand master plan for Salmon.  See http://www.abstractioneer.org/2010/02/webfinger-now-available-for-google.html, but the important bit is:


links {
  rel: "magic-public-key"
  type: "application/magic-public-key"
  href: "data:application/magic-public-key;,RSA.mVgY8RN6URBTstndvmUUPb4UZTdwvwmddSKE5z_jvKUEK6yk1u3rrC9yN8k6FilGj9K0eeUPe2hf4Pj-5CmHww.AQAB"
}
--
John Panzer / Google
jpa...@google.com / abstractioneer.org / @jpanzer
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