[foaf-dev] DataPortability, SPARQL and the "Connect!" button

Fri May 2 17:31:32 BST 2008

Danny Ayers wrote:
> In one of timbl's Design Issues pieces he describes the "Oh yeah?" 
> button [1] - something you press to get a chain of proof about some 
> statements. This really neat "showing" came to mind when I was putting 
> together my cheesy DataPortability video [2] - I reckon DP done right 
> on the Web could be summarised as a "Connect!" button. So I included a 
> mockup of a possible UI for DataPortability across social networking 
> sites - slides I used are at [3], ASCII version below. While my 
> mock-up is no doubt suboptimal, it's not hard to imagine how one might 
> use it (click the button!), or for that matter how it might work 
> behind the scenes. Because everyone here knows DataPortability is a 
> Simple Matter of Programming given RDF. But it'd be nice to have 
> something implemented before we see something emerge and gain mass 
> adoption that solves the immediate part of the problem in an ugly 
> one-off fashion, leaving a mess to clear up afterwards once the next 
> special case comes along...rant.abort()
>
> Anyhow, how I imagine this particular thing working is that OpenID is 
> used for authentication, and SPARQL CONSTRUCT is used to build a graph 
> based on the selections the user's made. That graph gets posted from 
> system A to system B. Job done.
>
> I believe SPARQLPress/the ARC plugin for WordPress has most of the 
> necessary with the OpenID stuff around WordPress already, the 
> RDF-in-Drupal work seems to have made great strides recently, and then 
> there are all the SIOC plugins.
>
> What I'm really not sure about is what would be the quickest way to 
> get (at least part of) this up & running. Some tech points I've not 
> really figured out are the best approach to the sequence - would extra 
> auth be needed on the service-service wire? Then there's the 
> integration at the receiver side - how could this be set up so it'd 
> behave reasonably consistently across different CMSs/social network 
> thingies?
>
> I'd be delighted to get together something that, say, passed across x 
> foaf:knows y with enough to build a blogroll. Once the basic setup was 
> in place, extending it should be straightforward. Making suitable 
> plugins for the various thingies might be hard work - perhaps needing 
> intermediary services to do the proprietary API/RDF+HTTP mapping, but 
> maybe OpenSocial might help (along with the existing SIOC stuff).
>
> Ok, I'm not 100% sure the approach I have in mind is the best one, and 
> the kind of UI interaction I've sketched is mighty crude - but I think 
> it might be near enough to work, both technically and in terms of 
> getting folks used to Facebook or whatever to follow what's going on. 
> What I am sure of is the big red "Connect!" button. It must have one 
> of those :-)
>
> Thoughts?
>
> Cheers,
> Danny.
>
> *** Page 1 ***
>
> To join Yet Another Social Network
>
> [Sign Up]   [Connect!]
>
> *** Page 2 ***
>
> Connect your...
>
> [x] Personal Profile
> [x] Social Contacts
> [ ] Business Contacts
> [ ] Content
>
>      [Connect!]
>
> *** Page 3 ***
>
> From...
>
> [x] Your Homepage
> [ ] MySpace
> [ ] Flickr
> [x] Twitter
> [ ] Etc .etc.
>
>      [Connect!]
>
> *** Page 4 ***
>
> Your URI:
>
> [ <openid>    ]
>
> Password:
>
> [ ******  ]
>
>      [Connect!]
>
> *** Page 5 ***
>
> Connected!
>
> ---------------
>
>
>
> [1] http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/UI.html#OhYeah
> [2] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6eGcsGPgUTw
> [3] http://hyperdata.org/dataportability/docs/
>
> -- 
> http://dannyayers.com
> ~
> http://blogs.talis.com/nodalities/this_weeks_semantic_web/
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> _______________________________________________
> foaf-dev mailing list
> foaf-dev at lists.foaf-project.org
> http://lists.foaf-project.org/mailman/listinfo/foaf-dev
Danny,

Sure!

But what about the additional benefit of a URI e.g a .Name based URI 
provides a canonical entry point into resulting data graph?

Your post + my comments above = OpenLink Data Spaces  :-) This is part 
of what OpenLink Data Spaces has always been about, plus some more such as:
1. Automatic association of Tags with formal meaning via MOAT
2. Tag stats via SCOT
3.  Formal typing of Tags as Concepts via SKOS

This is congruent with my LODW presentation 
<http://community.linkeddata.org/%7Ekidehen2/Public/DataPortability_and_DataSpaces.ppt> 
(I do apologize in advance or the PPT presentation format when it should 
have a  Slidy style variant).

Demos:

1. http://community.linkeddata.org/dataspace/person/kidehen2
2. http://myopenlink.net/dataspace/person/kidehen

Notes ( I am deliberately not using URI universally for intended clarity):

My Person Entity URIs:
1. http://community.linkeddata.org/dataspace/person/kidehen2#this
2. http://myopenlink.net/dataspace/person/kidehen#this

My OpenID & FOAF Profile Page URLs:
1. http://community.linkeddata.org/dataspace/person/kidehen2
2. http://myopenlink.net/dataspace/person/kidehen

My resulting Data Space Page URL (the conjunction of all the data I've 
choosen to share with good use of foaf:made):
1. http://community.linkeddata.org/dataspace/kidehen2
2. http://myopenlink.net/dataspace/kidehen

My Data Space URIs:

1. http://community.linkeddata.org/dataspace/kidehen2#this
2. http://myopenlink.net/dataspace/kidehen#this

Also note:
My various URIs are connected across Data Spaces via owl:sameAs.
I can arbitrarily enrich my FOAF via a URI associated with the Profile 
Page UI.

Anyway, I like the layout you are suggesting, it is quite concise and 
easier to comprehend :-)  We will make a tweak or two to ODS.

BTW - there is a live instance at: http://community.linkeddata.org/ods  
(OpenID is accepted etc..).

-- 

Regards,

Kingsley Idehen	      Weblog: http://www.openlinksw.com/blog/~kidehen
President & CEO 
OpenLink Software     Web: http://www.openlinksw.com