status of foaf.me

[Seth Russell]

Let's start with me big things ...

1 - When are we gonna get a user friendly way to build our profiles ?
2 - When are we gonna get user friendly URLs to that user friendly
profile?
3 - When are y'all going to fix the bug that allows people to edit
other peopl's profiles?
4 - When are we gonna get a way to issue certificates to each of our
browser machines and re issue them to the machines which go bust?

Seth Russell
foaf.me/seth

Alpha testing: tagtalking.net
Facebook ing: facebook.com/russell.seth
Twitter ing: twitter.com/SethRussell
Blogging: fastblogit.com/seth/
Catalog selling: www.speaktomecatalog.com
Google profile: google.com/profiles/russell.seth

[Melvin Carvalho]

2010/6/3 Seth Russell <russel...@gmail.com>

Let's start with me big things ...

Hi Seth
 

1 -  When are we gonna get a user friendly way to build our profiles ?

FOAF.me was built really a proof of concept, rather than a robust identity provider.  It's just something I add to in my spare time, so while I try to go as fast as I can, it does sometimes depend on how much time I can free up.

The timeline will roughly coincide with that of Tabulator.  Tabulator is now it its 4th year.  FOAF.me is in its 2nd. 

Hoever, the modular nature of the semantic web means that if one person builds a user friendly way to build profiles, we all have that ability.  The web of data is not restricted to one server or one client, the tools we use should all we able to interact.  For example, there should be many clients one day that provide you the ability to edit and improve your FOAF from the desktop.

There's 2-3 projects working on this at the moment, and I'm hopefully going to be able to take the best from all and compile them into the codebase.

 

2  - When are we gonna get user friendly URLs to that user friendly
profile?

Easiest way is using content negotiation, so that HTML pages give rdfa, and rdf/xml pages give that format.

It's not a huge task, but not trivial.  Do you need this for anything specific, I can prioritize it, if you want.
 

3  - When are y'all going to fix the bug that allows people to edit
other peopl's profiles?

Accounts are editable until they are protected with a public key.  Could you remind me what bug you're referring to?  We're looking at other ways to protect an account such as username/password -- do you have any suggestions?
 

4  - When are we gonna get a way to issue certificates to each of our
browser machines and re issue them to the machines which go bust?

You mean like XWiki?  Not 100% sure of the functionality you request.

I'm working on building this functionality (multiple certs) into elgg then back into foaf.me

In short, we should have most of the above ready later in the year ... but I can prioritize something specific if it's going to be a help to you.
 

Seth Russell
foaf.me/seth

Alpha testing: tagtalking.net
Facebook ing: facebook.com/russell.seth
Twitter ing: twitter.com/SethRussell
Blogging: fastblogit.com/seth/
Catalog selling: www.speaktomecatalog.com
Google profile: google.com/profiles/russell.seth

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "foaf.me" group.
To post to this group, send email to foa...@googlegroups.com.
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to foafme+un...@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/foafme?hl=en.

[Seth Russell]

Well this may be just me.  I studied the foaf project several years ago when it first came out. I had though it might take off then.  Now, about 10 years later, i hear from a facebook friend that it is ready to go.  So that was what i expected.  But what i found was that it hasn't progressed much in the last 10 years and the tools and services to make it main-stream are still in a dreamy state, and that you "should have most of the above ready later in the year".    That said , my current study continues ...

Some new experiences this morning:   I had gone over to foaf-a-matic, which is mentioned in the /spec document and generated what looked to me like a very clean XML file which included the knowledge that i knew dana and Henry.  Then i pasted that into the raw edit field at foaf.me.   A couple of things happened.  (1) the information about my new nick name did not get updated on my user friendly profile page (2) the knowledge of my new friends did not show on my friends page in any user friendly way, and (3) when i logged out and then tried to log back in i discovered that foaf.me would no longer give me access to my profile.  So now i am totally locked out.   If i am to continue to play here i would need you to delete all records on your machine about /seth, so that i can start again as him, and perhaps also start with the XML file from foaf-a-matic.  But i don't know if i start again, what will happen to my old certificate.  

Seth Russell

Alpha testing: tagtalking.net
Facebook ing: facebook.com/russell.seth
Twitter ing: twitter.com/SethRussell
Blogging: fastblogit.com/seth/
Catalog selling: www.speaktomecatalog.com
Google profile: google.com/profiles/russell.seth

[Melvin Carvalho]

2010/6/4 Seth Russell <russel...@gmail.com>

Well this may be just me.  I studied the foaf project several years ago when it first came out. I had though it might take off then.  Now, about 10 years later, i hear from a facebook friend that it is ready to go.  So that was what i expected.  But what i found was that it hasn't progressed much in the last 10 years and the tools and services to make it main-stream are still in a dreamy state, and that you "should have most of the above ready later in the year".    That said , my current study continues ...

You dont want to believe everything you read on facebook! :)

Sorry you feel that way about FOAF.  Having surveyed most of the technologies in the space, my personal view is that FOAF is by far the best, and is in the process of taking off, but everyone is entitled to their world view.  I personally have been working on foaf around 2 years (mainly since the advent of FOAF+SSL) and in that time things have been progressing exponentially, and im seeing a large uptick in development, now.

Agree foaf.me needs a few improvement to be considered robust, but I do repeat it's more a proof of concept to hook into the standards and protocols discussed in this group.

A better way to do identity management, which is what you seem to describe as mainstream, is to retrofit FOAF+SSL into an existing social like solution.  This is exactly what I'm working on with the codebase at elgg.org, and already contains foaf.  I dont think the 'later this year' estimate is dreamy, simply a reasonable estimate of when things several different pieces will come together.  I wish it could be sooner, but as I say, it's what I can fit in, in my spare time.  However, I'm not the only person working on such solutions.  Tim Berners-Lee's lab will have 9 people working in this broad area under his supervision.  So hopefully, we'll all be able to leverage from each other. 
 

Some new experiences this morning:   I had gone over to foaf-a-matic, which is mentioned in the /spec document and generated what looked to me like a very clean XML file which included the knowledge that i knew dana and Henry.  Then i pasted that into the raw edit field at foaf.me.   A couple of things happened.  (1) the information about my new nick name did not get updated on my user friendly profile page (2) the knowledge of my new friends did not show on my friends page in any user friendly way, and (3) when i logged out and then tried to log back in i discovered that foaf.me would no longer give me access to my profile.  So now i am totally locked out.   If i am to continue to play here i would need you to delete all records on your machine about /seth, so that i can start again as him, and perhaps also start with the XML file from foaf-a-matic.  But i don't know if i start again, what will happen to my old certificate.  

foaf-a-matic is good, is one of the sites that inspired foaf.me -- here's how you can view youf file

http://foaf.me/?webid=http://foaf.me/seth

If you put your public key into your foaf, you can log in

You can currently edit your raw foaf vie WebDAV or SPARQL Update (e.g. with tabulator) -- I havent yet built an admin area, but I can hack together an edit for for you in html if we need to ...

Do you want to use your old certificate with your new profile, or need a new certificate?

 

[Seth Russell]

On Sat, Jun 5, 2010 at 7:33 AM, Melvin Carvalho <melvinc...@gmail.com> wrote:

2010/6/4 Seth Russell <russel...@gmail.com>

Well this may be just me.  I studied the foaf project several years ago when it first came out. I had though it might take off then.  Now, about 10 years later, i hear from a facebook friend that it is ready to go.  So that was what i expected.  But what i found was that it hasn't progressed much in the last 10 years and the tools and services to make it main-stream are still in a dreamy state, and that you "should have most of the above ready later in the year".    That said , my current study continues ...

You dont want to believe everything you read on facebook! :)

Sorry you feel that way about FOAF.  Having surveyed most of the technologies in the space, my personal view is that FOAF is by far the best, and is in the process of taking off, but everyone is entitled to their world view.  I personally have been working on foaf around 2 years (mainly since the advent of FOAF+SSL) and in that time things have been progressing exponentially, and im seeing a large uptick in development, now.

Agree foaf.me needs a few improvement to be considered robust, but I do repeat it's more a proof of concept to hook into the standards and protocols discussed in this group.

A better way to do identity management, which is what you seem to describe as mainstream, is to retrofit FOAF+SSL into an existing social like solution.  This is exactly what I'm working on with the codebase at elgg.org, and already contains foaf.  I dont think the 'later this year' estimate is dreamy, simply a reasonable estimate of when things several different pieces will come together.  I wish it could be sooner, but as I say, it's what I can fit in, in my spare time.  However, I'm not the only person working on such solutions.  Tim Berners-Lee's lab will have 9 people working in this broad area under his supervision.  So hopefully, we'll all be able to leverage from each other. 
 

Some new experiences this morning:   I had gone over to foaf-a-matic, which is mentioned in the /spec document and generated what looked to me like a very clean XML file which included the knowledge that i knew dana and Henry.  Then i pasted that into the raw edit field at foaf.me.   A couple of things happened.  (1) the information about my new nick name did not get updated on my user friendly profile page (2) the knowledge of my new friends did not show on my friends page in any user friendly way, and (3) when i logged out and then tried to log back in i discovered that foaf.me would no longer give me access to my profile.  So now i am totally locked out.   If i am to continue to play here i would need you to delete all records on your machine about /seth, so that i can start again as him, and perhaps also start with the XML file from foaf-a-matic.  But i don't know if i start again, what will happen to my old certificate.  

foaf-a-matic is good, is one of the sites that inspired foaf.me -- here's how you can view youf file

http://foaf.me/?webid=http://foaf.me/seth

If you put your public key into your foaf, you can log in

Huh?  I'm locked out.  I can't log in to put the certificate back into my file so that i can log in?  Isn't that a catch-22 ?    Or did i miss something?

You can currently edit your raw foaf vie WebDAV or SPARQL Update (e.g. with tabulator) -- I havent yet built an admin area, but I can hack together an edit for for you in html if we need to ...

Tabulator is very kewl!  I installed it yesterday.  Now i can look at (any xml?) in user friendly way ... thanks for that :)   ... but i didnt know i could also use it to edit xml files as well ... where do i click?

Do you want to use your old certificate with your new profile, or need a new certificate?

I had though the easiest way was for you to just delete foaf.me/seth and let me start again .... but am willing to do whatever works.   Right now i truly don't know how i can get there from here.
 

[Seth Russell]

On Sat, Jun 5, 2010 at 7:33 AM, Melvin Carvalho <melvinc...@gmail.com> wrote:

You can currently edit your raw foaf vie WebDAV or SPARQL Update (e.g. with tabulator) -- I havent yet built an admin area, but I can hack together an edit for for you in html if we need to ...

Well that certainly sounded great ... so i tried it.  Didn't work ... see attached ...

[Melvin Carvalho]

2010/6/5 Seth Russell <russel...@gmail.com>

On Sat, Jun 5, 2010 at 7:33 AM, Melvin Carvalho <melvinc...@gmail.com> wrote:

2010/6/4 Seth Russell <russel...@gmail.com>

Well this may be just me.  I studied the foaf project several years ago when it first came out. I had though it might take off then.  Now, about 10 years later, i hear from a facebook friend that it is ready to go.  So that was what i expected.  But what i found was that it hasn't progressed much in the last 10 years and the tools and services to make it main-stream are still in a dreamy state, and that you "should have most of the above ready later in the year".    That said , my current study continues ...

You dont want to believe everything you read on facebook! :)

Sorry you feel that way about FOAF.  Having surveyed most of the technologies in the space, my personal view is that FOAF is by far the best, and is in the process of taking off, but everyone is entitled to their world view.  I personally have been working on foaf around 2 years (mainly since the advent of FOAF+SSL) and in that time things have been progressing exponentially, and im seeing a large uptick in development, now.

Agree foaf.me needs a few improvement to be considered robust, but I do repeat it's more a proof of concept to hook into the standards and protocols discussed in this group.

A better way to do identity management, which is what you seem to describe as mainstream, is to retrofit FOAF+SSL into an existing social like solution.  This is exactly what I'm working on with the codebase at elgg.org, and already contains foaf.  I dont think the 'later this year' estimate is dreamy, simply a reasonable estimate of when things several different pieces will come together.  I wish it could be sooner, but as I say, it's what I can fit in, in my spare time.  However, I'm not the only person working on such solutions.  Tim Berners-Lee's lab will have 9 people working in this broad area under his supervision.  So hopefully, we'll all be able to leverage from each other. 
 

Some new experiences this morning:   I had gone over to foaf-a-matic, which is mentioned in the /spec document and generated what looked to me like a very clean XML file which included the knowledge that i knew dana and Henry.  Then i pasted that into the raw edit field at foaf.me.   A couple of things happened.  (1) the information about my new nick name did not get updated on my user friendly profile page (2) the knowledge of my new friends did not show on my friends page in any user friendly way, and (3) when i logged out and then tried to log back in i discovered that foaf.me would no longer give me access to my profile.  So now i am totally locked out.   If i am to continue to play here i would need you to delete all records on your machine about /seth, so that i can start again as him, and perhaps also start with the XML file from foaf-a-matic.  But i don't know if i start again, what will happen to my old certificate.  

foaf-a-matic is good, is one of the sites that inspired foaf.me -- here's how you can view youf file

http://foaf.me/?webid=http://foaf.me/seth

If you put your public key into your foaf, you can log in

Huh?  I'm locked out.  I can't log in to put the certificate back into my file so that i can log in?  Isn't that a catch-22 ?    Or did i miss something?

Yes, you did!

What we are doing is fundamentally different from what everyone else is doing. 

We are adding a social aspect to the Web itself, rather than creating a walled garden that allows social features.

What you currently have is a 'data wiki' .. it's a very powerful RDF store of an arbitrary set of data.  It's also read/write until protected.

So you can edit your FOAF file using standards based protocols e.g. SPARQL Update or WebDAV.  You're not limited to how you do this, for example sparql update can happen from a command line, from a client, a web page, a mobile phone etc.  SPARQL Update is kind of new, but an older way would be to use WebDAV .e.g. a client such as Amaya http://www.w3.org/Amaya/Amaya.html

Your client only become protected when you put your public key in there.  Future versions, will have other ways to protect, e.g. via email verification, openid, password etc.  so there is no locked out, you just have not found your way to the webform, but this is web 2.0 thinking

The important thing to note here is the web scale nature of what we're doing.  FOAF is not just a markup language, it's a means to make the whole web interoperable, so that when one person creates something, every other site can take the advantages of it.  It's a way to make the web read write.
 

You can currently edit your raw foaf vie WebDAV or SPARQL Update (e.g. with tabulator) -- I havent yet built an admin area, but I can hack together an edit for for you in html if we need to ...

Tabulator is very kewl!  I installed it yesterday.  Now i can look at (any xml?) in user friendly way ... thanks for that :)   ... but i didnt know i could also use it to edit xml files as well ... where do i click?

I dont know the taublator interface that well, id need to look at the docs at the homepage http://www.w3.org/2005/ajar/tab I know tabulator is in active development, but great that you got it working, you're ahead of most!
 

Do you want to use your old certificate with your new profile, or need a new certificate?

I had though the easiest way was for you to just delete foaf.me/seth and let me start again .... but am willing to do whatever works.   Right now i truly don't know how i can get there from here.

I'm happy to do that, just let me know   But hopefully I've given you some more of the philosophy of web 3.0.
 

[Seth Russell]

On Sat, Jun 5, 2010 at 9:57 AM, Melvin Carvalho <melvinc...@gmail.com> wrote:

2010/6/5 Seth Russell <russel...@gmail.com>

On Sat, Jun 5, 2010 at 7:33 AM, Melvin Carvalho <melvinc...@gmail.com> wrote:

2010/6/4 Seth Russell <russel...@gmail.com>

Well this may be just me.  I studied the foaf project several years ago when it first came out. I had though it might take off then.  Now, about 10 years later, i hear from a facebook friend that it is ready to go.  So that was what i expected.  But what i found was that it hasn't progressed much in the last 10 years and the tools and services to make it main-stream are still in a dreamy state, and that you "should have most of the above ready later in the year".    That said , my current study continues ...

You dont want to believe everything you read on facebook! :)

Sorry you feel that way about FOAF. 

Don't get me wrong ... i think the whole #linkdata thing is starting to happen.  Foaf is great, foaf rules, etc, etc.   I'm just trying to see if *I* can make it work.
 

Having surveyed most of the technologies in the space, my personal view is that FOAF is by far the best, and is in the process of taking off, but everyone is entitled to their world view.  I personally have been working on foaf around 2 years (mainly since the advent of FOAF+SSL) and in that time things have been progressing exponentially, and im seeing a large uptick in development, now.

Agree foaf.me needs a few improvement to be considered robust, but I do repeat it's more a proof of concept to hook into the standards and protocols discussed in this group.

A better way to do identity management, which is what you seem to describe as mainstream, is to retrofit FOAF+SSL into an existing social like solution.  This is exactly what I'm working on with the codebase at elgg.org, and already contains foaf.  I dont think the 'later this year' estimate is dreamy, simply a reasonable estimate of when things several different pieces will come together.  I wish it could be sooner, but as I say, it's what I can fit in, in my spare time.  However, I'm not the only person working on such solutions.  Tim Berners-Lee's lab will have 9 people working in this broad area under his supervision.  So hopefully, we'll all be able to leverage from each other. 
 

Some new experiences this morning:   I had gone over to foaf-a-matic, which is mentioned in the /spec document and generated what looked to me like a very clean XML file which included the knowledge that i knew dana and Henry.  Then i pasted that into the raw edit field at foaf.me.   A couple of things happened.  (1) the information about my new nick name did not get updated on my user friendly profile page (2) the knowledge of my new friends did not show on my friends page in any user friendly way, and (3) when i logged out and then tried to log back in i discovered that foaf.me would no longer give me access to my profile.  So now i am totally locked out.   If i am to continue to play here i would need you to delete all records on your machine about /seth, so that i can start again as him, and perhaps also start with the XML file from foaf-a-matic.  But i don't know if i start again, what will happen to my old certificate.  

foaf-a-matic is good, is one of the sites that inspired foaf.me -- here's how you can view youf file

http://foaf.me/?webid=http://foaf.me/seth

If you put your public key into your foaf, you can log in

Huh?  I'm locked out.  I can't log in to put the certificate back into my file so that i can log in?  Isn't that a catch-22 ?    Or did i miss something?

Yes, you did!

What we are doing is fundamentally different from what everyone else is doing. 

We are adding a social aspect to the Web itself, rather than creating a walled garden that allows social features.

What you currently have is a 'data wiki' .. it's a very powerful RDF store of an arbitrary set of data.  It's also read/write until protected.

So you can edit your FOAF file using standards based protocols e.g. SPARQL Update or WebDAV.  You're not limited to how you do this, for example sparql update can happen from a command line, from a client, a web page, a mobile phone etc.  SPARQL Update is kind of new, but an older way would be to use WebDAV .e.g. a client such as Amaya http://www.w3.org/Amaya/Amaya.html

Your client only become protected when you put your public key in there.  Future versions, will have other ways to protect, e.g. via email verification, openid, password etc.  so there is no locked out, you just have not found your way to the webform, but this is web 2.0 thinking

Nope, apparently haven't found my way to "the webform" yet.  There was a tab for editing my document manually that appeared under the url http://foaf.me when i had the certificate in my foaf.me/seth document.  I could and did edit that form.  Now that tab is no longer visible anywhere.  Was the "the webform" that i am supposed to edit my profile?  If so, then would you be so kind as to tell me how i can get it back.  If not, could you give me instructions about how to find "the webform"?   

Sorry to be such a pest.
 

[Melvin Carvalho]

2010/6/5 Seth Russell <russel...@gmail.com>

On Sat, Jun 5, 2010 at 9:57 AM, Melvin Carvalho <melvinc...@gmail.com> wrote:

2010/6/5 Seth Russell <russel...@gmail.com>

On Sat, Jun 5, 2010 at 7:33 AM, Melvin Carvalho <melvinc...@gmail.com> wrote:

2010/6/4 Seth Russell <russel...@gmail.com>

Well this may be just me.  I studied the foaf project several years ago when it first came out. I had though it might take off then.  Now, about 10 years later, i hear from a facebook friend that it is ready to go.  So that was what i expected.  But what i found was that it hasn't progressed much in the last 10 years and the tools and services to make it main-stream are still in a dreamy state, and that you "should have most of the above ready later in the year".    That said , my current study continues ...

You dont want to believe everything you read on facebook! :)

Sorry you feel that way about FOAF. 

Don't get me wrong ... i think the whole #linkdata thing is starting to happen.  Foaf is great, foaf rules, etc, etc.   I'm just trying to see if *I* can make it work.

Totally understand, I didnt mean to infer that you were anti foaf.  You've made a very cool app already ... hopefully you can see the philosophy that once you make that app, everyone in the ecosystem can use it ... it's much more ths sharing two way process the web was designed for than, the idea going from silo to silo and doing things in isolation.
 

 

Having surveyed most of the technologies in the space, my personal view is that FOAF is by far the best, and is in the process of taking off, but everyone is entitled to their world view.  I personally have been working on foaf around 2 years (mainly since the advent of FOAF+SSL) and in that time things have been progressing exponentially, and im seeing a large uptick in development, now.

Agree foaf.me needs a few improvement to be considered robust, but I do repeat it's more a proof of concept to hook into the standards and protocols discussed in this group.

A better way to do identity management, which is what you seem to describe as mainstream, is to retrofit FOAF+SSL into an existing social like solution.  This is exactly what I'm working on with the codebase at elgg.org, and already contains foaf.  I dont think the 'later this year' estimate is dreamy, simply a reasonable estimate of when things several different pieces will come together.  I wish it could be sooner, but as I say, it's what I can fit in, in my spare time.  However, I'm not the only person working on such solutions.  Tim Berners-Lee's lab will have 9 people working in this broad area under his supervision.  So hopefully, we'll all be able to leverage from each other. 
 

Some new experiences this morning:   I had gone over to foaf-a-matic, which is mentioned in the /spec document and generated what looked to me like a very clean XML file which included the knowledge that i knew dana and Henry.  Then i pasted that into the raw edit field at foaf.me.   A couple of things happened.  (1) the information about my new nick name did not get updated on my user friendly profile page (2) the knowledge of my new friends did not show on my friends page in any user friendly way, and (3) when i logged out and then tried to log back in i discovered that foaf.me would no longer give me access to my profile.  So now i am totally locked out.   If i am to continue to play here i would need you to delete all records on your machine about /seth, so that i can start again as him, and perhaps also start with the XML file from foaf-a-matic.  But i don't know if i start again, what will happen to my old certificate.  

foaf-a-matic is good, is one of the sites that inspired foaf.me -- here's how you can view youf file

http://foaf.me/?webid=http://foaf.me/seth

If you put your public key into your foaf, you can log in

Huh?  I'm locked out.  I can't log in to put the certificate back into my file so that i can log in?  Isn't that a catch-22 ?    Or did i miss something?

Yes, you did!

What we are doing is fundamentally different from what everyone else is doing. 

We are adding a social aspect to the Web itself, rather than creating a walled garden that allows social features.

What you currently have is a 'data wiki' .. it's a very powerful RDF store of an arbitrary set of data.  It's also read/write until protected.

So you can edit your FOAF file using standards based protocols e.g. SPARQL Update or WebDAV.  You're not limited to how you do this, for example sparql update can happen from a command line, from a client, a web page, a mobile phone etc.  SPARQL Update is kind of new, but an older way would be to use WebDAV .e.g. a client such as Amaya http://www.w3.org/Amaya/Amaya.html

Your client only become protected when you put your public key in there.  Future versions, will have other ways to protect, e.g. via email verification, openid, password etc.  so there is no locked out, you just have not found your way to the webform, but this is web 2.0 thinking

Nope, apparently haven't found my way to "the webform" yet.  There was a tab for editing my document manually that appeared under the url http://foaf.me when i had the certificate in my foaf.me/seth document.  I could and did edit that form.  Now that tab is no longer visible anywhere.  Was the "the webform" that i am supposed to edit my profile?  If so, then would you be so kind as to tell me how i can get it back.  If not, could you give me instructions about how to find "the webform"?   

You're right, I should really include the edit webform for unprotected accounts.  So that you can add your public key.  I'll have to write a quick patch for this.

Or looking at your foaf, probably easiest right now is to just start again with seth, maybe I'll just delete that entry.
 

Sorry to be such a pest.

Not a pest at all, your feedback is valued, and you help to make things better for everyone :)
 

[Seth Russell]

Well it seems to me that, If the locking mechanism is in the foaf document and only in that document, and if you allow manual editing of that document, then  there will always be a way, by mistake or design, for a person to lock themselves out of their foaf document.   If true, is that not a fundamental flaw with this approach?   How can this lock ever protect an important asset to a person if they can make a simple mistake and loose it? 

[Melvin Carvalho]

2010/6/7 Seth Russell <russel...@gmail.com>

Sorry I didnt reply sooner, been slightly unwell ...

You're absolutely right.  Allowing manual editing of a document was perhaps a mistake, sort of for seasoned FOAFers ... much better would be to make it all web front end driven

Now this was what I was working towards but then I found 2 things

1) elgg.org has a really nice user friendly front end and already has FOAF, so I thought let's add foaf+ssl to that ... which is almost done ... in fact the lorea.cc folks have it working in production

2) let's use the brand new rdf widget library : http://dig.csail.mit.edu/2010/rdf-widgets/

Since quite a bit of work went into (2) I was holding off the duplication off effort.  Not to mention nathan is on the verge of packaging a lot of cool stuff.  So there's been a slight lull in anticipation of these cool UI features ... but it's now about time that that's all come together and we can work in the best parts ... hence my estimate of ... later in the year for a really nice user experience ...

So yes you can unlock your profile ... but ideally not by mistake, going forward ... I guess the raw edit view should have a few disclaimers.

Timbl once said that he never expected URI's and HTML to be exposed to the end user, but was amazed when people started editing HTML to create their own pages.  I guess this is similar ... we want to give user choice, but need to avoid people doing semi dangerous things ... I guess your feedback is very handy to that end ...

So would you like me to delete foaf.me/seth ... there's not much there right now

Of course if you've tried Amaya, you can edit it using a classic web browser that is read/write, and maybe you'll have an idea of the way in which the web was supposed to be read/write from the start ....

Hope that helps!
 

Seth Russell
Alpha testing: tagtalking.net
Facebook ing: facebook.com/russell.seth
Twitter ing: twitter.com/SethRussell
Blogging: fastblogit.com/seth/
Catalog selling: www.speaktomecatalog.com
Google profile: google.com/profiles/russell.seth

[Melvin Carvalho]

2010/6/5 Seth Russell <russel...@gmail.com>

On Sat, Jun 5, 2010 at 7:33 AM, Melvin Carvalho <melvinc...@gmail.com> wrote:

2010/6/4 Seth Russell <russel...@gmail.com>

Well this may be just me.  I studied the foaf project several years ago when it first came out. I had though it might take off then.  Now, about 10 years later, i hear from a facebook friend that it is ready to go.  So that was what i expected.  But what i found was that it hasn't progressed much in the last 10 years and the tools and services to make it main-stream are still in a dreamy state, and that you "should have most of the above ready later in the year".    That said , my current study continues ...

You dont want to believe everything you read on facebook! :)

Sorry you feel that way about FOAF.  Having surveyed most of the technologies in the space, my personal view is that FOAF is by far the best, and is in the process of taking off, but everyone is entitled to their world view.  I personally have been working on foaf around 2 years (mainly since the advent of FOAF+SSL) and in that time things have been progressing exponentially, and im seeing a large uptick in development, now.

Agree foaf.me needs a few improvement to be considered robust, but I do repeat it's more a proof of concept to hook into the standards and protocols discussed in this group.

A better way to do identity management, which is what you seem to describe as mainstream, is to retrofit FOAF+SSL into an existing social like solution.  This is exactly what I'm working on with the codebase at elgg.org, and already contains foaf.  I dont think the 'later this year' estimate is dreamy, simply a reasonable estimate of when things several different pieces will come together.  I wish it could be sooner, but as I say, it's what I can fit in, in my spare time.  However, I'm not the only person working on such solutions.  Tim Berners-Lee's lab will have 9 people working in this broad area under his supervision.  So hopefully, we'll all be able to leverage from each other. 
 

Some new experiences this morning:   I had gone over to foaf-a-matic, which is mentioned in the /spec document and generated what looked to me like a very clean XML file which included the knowledge that i knew dana and Henry.  Then i pasted that into the raw edit field at foaf.me.   A couple of things happened.  (1) the information about my new nick name did not get updated on my user friendly profile page (2) the knowledge of my new friends did not show on my friends page in any user friendly way, and (3) when i logged out and then tried to log back in i discovered that foaf.me would no longer give me access to my profile.  So now i am totally locked out.   If i am to continue to play here i would need you to delete all records on your machine about /seth, so that i can start again as him, and perhaps also start with the XML file from foaf-a-matic.  But i don't know if i start again, what will happen to my old certificate.  

foaf-a-matic is good, is one of the sites that inspired foaf.me -- here's how you can view youf file

http://foaf.me/?webid=http://foaf.me/seth

If you put your public key into your foaf, you can log in

Huh?  I'm locked out.  I can't log in to put the certificate back into my file so that i can log in?  Isn't that a catch-22 ?    Or did i miss something?

You can currently edit your raw foaf vie WebDAV or SPARQL Update (e.g. with tabulator) -- I havent yet built an admin area, but I can hack together an edit for for you in html if we need to ...

Tabulator is very kewl!  I installed it yesterday.  Now i can look at (any xml?) in user friendly way ... thanks for that :)   ... but i didnt know i could also use it to edit xml files as well ... where do i click?

Do you want to use your old certificate with your new profile, or need a new certificate?

I had though the easiest way was for you to just delete foaf.me/seth and let me start again .... but am willing to do whatever works.   Right now i truly don't know how i can get there from here.

I deleted seth ...
 

[Seth Russell]

On Thu, Jun 17, 2010 at 5:11 AM, Melvin Carvalho <melvinc...@gmail.com> wrote:

2010/6/5 Seth Russell <russel...@gmail.com>

On Sat, Jun 5, 2010 at 7:33 AM, Melvin Carvalho <melvinc...@gmail.com> wrote:

I had though the easiest way was for you to just delete foaf.me/seth and let me start again .... but am willing to do whatever works.   Right now i truly don't know how i can get there from here.

I deleted seth ...

Thanks :)

I noticed that the foaf.me server responds with some triples even for files which apparently don't exist, Example: foaf.me/xxxxxxx  .   Is that the way the this is supposed to work?

Seth

[Melvin Carvalho]

2010/6/17 Seth Russell <russel...@gmail.com>

Yes, there's an autocreate option ... tho that'll get turned off it it get's abused ...but as we're quite small it works quite well so far ...
 

Seth

[Seth Russell]

It works quite well, huh?    Even though it does assert statements into the Semantic Web which are not true.  If i read the triples correctly they say, among other things, that there is a foaf:peson with a nickname seth, and that there is a foaf:document at the uri http://foaf.me/seth; but, no there is no such thing there.      Come on now, admit that is a bug and not  a feature.

Ok, ok, i'll shut up now and go away now.

 
Seth Russell
Alpha testing: tagtalking.net
Facebook ing: facebook.com/russell.seth
Twitter ing: twitter.com/SethRussell
Blogging: fastblogit.com/seth/
Catalog selling: www.speaktomecatalog.com
Google profile: google.com/profiles/russell.seth

[Melvin Carvalho]

2010/6/17 Seth Russell <russel...@gmail.com>

It works quite well, huh?    Even though it does assert statements into the Semantic Web which are not true.  If i read the triples correctly they say, among other things, that there is a foaf:peson with a nickname seth, and that there is a foaf:document at the uri http://foaf.me/seth; but, no there is no such thing there.      Come on now, admit that is a bug and not  a feature.

The web was designed as a blank page. 

What you write on it can be true or false. 

The semantic web is just an extension of the web, so any triples asserted can be true or false. 

The aim is to create profiles on demand (hopefully without filling our disk! :)), you can judge for yourself whether it's a bug of a features ... but it was specifically programmed :)
 

[Henry Story]

On 17 Jun 2010, at 16:58, Melvin Carvalho wrote:

> 2010/6/17 Seth Russell <russel...@gmail.com>
>

>> It works quite well, huh? Even though it does assert statements into the
>> Semantic Web which are not true. If i read the triples correctly they say,
>> among other things, that there is a foaf:peson with a nickname seth, and
>> that there is a foaf:document at the uri http://foaf.me/seth; but, no
>> there is no such thing there. Come on now, admit that is a bug and not
>> a feature.
>>
>
> The web was designed as a blank page.
>
> What you write on it can be true or false.

Yes. It is important to realise this.

By the way, the same is true of Facebook: anyone there can put up an account and pretend
to be anyone they want to. The way you tell that the Facebook URL refers to the person you believe the page described - ie, that the information is true - is through many indicators such as if the person has friends in common with you, if the URL was given to you at a party by the person in question, or over a business lunch, etc, whether the communication you have with the person makes sense, etc....

The same can be done on the semweb. But foaf.me has not implemented the easy friending part, the ability to communicate with people in a few clicks, the friends in common page, etc, nor the access control part. When done it will be a lot easier to spot fake profiles. But it is clear that those are very important tools to help create a feeling of confidence in the system.

Henry

[Seth Russell]

Come on now guys, don't totally miss the point.   This is not about anybody can say anything on the web or semantice web.    This is about a server which makes up shit because it has been programmed with the wrong assumptions.     The response from http://foaf.me/X is incorrect ... go look.   The foaf.me server asserts triples that nobody has ever asserted.  

Seth Russell
Alpha testing: tagtalking.net
Facebook ing: facebook.com/russell.seth
Twitter ing: twitter.com/SethRussell
Blogging: fastblogit.com/seth/
Catalog selling: www.speaktomecatalog.com
Google profile: google.com/profiles/russell.seth

[Henry Story]

On 17 Jun 2010, at 17:27, Seth Russell wrote:

> Come on now guys, don't totally miss the point. This is not about anybody
> can say anything on the web or semantice web. This is about a server
> which makes up shit because it has been programmed with the wrong
> assumptions. The response from http://foaf.me/X is incorrect ... go
> look. The foaf.me server asserts triples that nobody has ever asserted.

Yes, that seems wrong.

Henry