[foaf-protocols] small window of foaf opportunity in realty

[Peter Williams]

I didn't get anywhere with this thread, and am thinking of abandoning the initiative (in favor of something similar, but which works today). I realize I stepped, inadvertently on a hot topic:  since the semantic web schism really got going over RSS blob formats. And, here am I trying to use a "semantic web person" in an (non semweb) RSS feed. Perhaps I really am asking for the impossible.

http://www.hanselman.com/blog/EmbraceAuthorshipTheImportanceOfRelmeAndRelauthorOnYourContentsSEOAndGoogle.aspx?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+ScottHanselman+%28Scott+Hanselman+-+ComputerZen.com%29

says what I want. Though, rather than use HTML and microformats in the author element of a syndication fee's item, Id PREFER to use FOAF. The goals WAS to indirectly help out webid (by doing  a "little" something that works, nationally).

I can sign RSS feeds, with a detached xmldsig signature blog. The feed's items cleary delivers websso-initiating URIs, orchestrating the delivery of assertion's to the user's network of relying parties. I can populate an author element of an item in the feed item's HTML fragment, delivering an attributed attribute link statement as above. This can all be "alluding" to a user-centric trust model, that overlays the authority trust model due to signatures and certs in the xmldsig. Said UCI model enables relying party to say: VISA says the merchant is good (for payment issues), but I think it stinks (for service quality and timeliness). No-one need know my belief set about the merchant (so I don't slander the merchant, now Im well identified and accountable to the merchant - who have an alternative opinion and cares about his/her public image being mis-characterized by some angry Joe, less inhibited after a drinking session say).

Now, how can I use a bit of foaf, in here? It has to work (with today's commodity world).


-----Original Message-----
From: Peter Williams 
Sent: Saturday, October 29, 2011 9:24 AM
To: 'Melvin Carvalho'
Cc: foaf-protocols at lists.foaf-project.org
Subject: RE: [foaf-protocols] small window of foaf opportunity in realty

The syndication item is supported by an API, which address personhood.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.servicemodel.syndication.syndicationitem.createperson(v=VS.95).aspx

A formatter serialize a list of such items into an actual XML blob, using various standards. In general, it will be RSS2.0. The item has optional authors, which are (generic, conceptual) Persons. 

All I want to do now is fashion a SyndicationPerson and hook it up to the item. When serialized (into RSS2.0), the formatter will populate the person elements of the RSS blob format, for the item. I want the personhood, and thus the relevant XML element for the author of a given item in the feed's blob, to be that which nicely hooks up to a foaf card - and its personhood-ness. Goto foaf card to learn about the author, I want to say.

Ideally, there will be feed reader out there, considering such author elements of syndicationItems, that can do good stuff with the kind of a person XML element that hooks up well to foaf cards, using whatever conventions folks have formulated over the last decade.

-----Original Message-----
From: Melvin Carvalho [mailto:melvincarvalho at gmail.com]
Sent: Saturday, October 29, 2011 9:15 AM
To: Peter Williams
Cc: foaf-protocols at lists.foaf-project.org
Subject: Re: [foaf-protocols] small window of foaf opportunity in realty

On 29 October 2011 18:07, Peter Williams <pwilliams at rapattoni.com> wrote:
> I need help - on a topic that is small. No religion or architecture is 
> wanted. I don't want to be converted, or be preached to. I just want 
> to point a national infrastructure system (US realty) to a foaf card, 
> and get something useful out of the exercise. The entire coding effort 
> must be less than 1 hour.
>
>
>
> In our realty world, we have adopted the homerealm pattern. Go to a 
> protected resource and the guard no longer directs you to the login 
> page, for authentication. It will direct you, by tenant, to a "home realm"
> selector. You then pick your authentication IDP (which duely presents 
> a login page for authentication). The various protocol and trust 
> models of websso hook things back together. Let's say the selected IDP is google.
> Let's say the home realm selector is azure/ACS. Let's say the resource 
> is an "MLS" website. (MLS is multiple listing service for real 
> property, in US realty land). Lets say some combo of
> OAUTHv2/openidv2/SAML2/ws-fedp08 is the websso glue hooking it all 
> together. Be assured that all that stuff works well, and is already in 
> production and being used by a million folks, seamlessly.
>
>
>
> In our deployment concept, we have gone one step beyond the above. One 
> of the guarded resources at the MLS website that can fire off all the 
> chain of events described above is itself a page of links. Following 
> these links induces a further act of websso, in which an assertion is 
> released to some other website. Perhaps it's a mashup concept.
>
>
>
> It's not the IDP that asserts, note. The asserting party is the MLS 
> site (that was a relying party, in the first flow). This idea is not 
> that different from what SAML2 calls an "IDP proxy". SAML2 proxying 
> controls that enable one IDP to "govern" another (its proxy) are NOT in effect, however.
> This is because the environment is not pure SAML2 (being some typical 
> web technology mess of OAUTH, and ws-fedp, and openid, and .)
>
>
>
> Learning from Henry about webiness, I have the page responding various 
> document type, according to http headers. It delivers signed jsonp, 
> for the world of jquery UI-building sites. It delivers HTML, for web 
> browsers. It delivers RSS to the world of feed readers, including 
> those embedded in non-browser desktop tools that do lots of web 
> services (such as the Outlook MUA). It even delivers a feed object via a web service.
>
>
>
> It's in that ordinary "browser RSS" space that Id like now, at the 
> cost of 1h, to attribute an item (a link that induces an assertion 
> release remember) with an author - using a Person class and using the 
> RSS conventions concerning Persons. And, I'd like that Personhood to 
> be delivered by, related to, or otherwise getting to the Person 
> class/type/concept/notion represented in a FOAF card "out there"
> [somewhere] in the web (if it exists). AS a result of that hopefully 
> trivial integration, the next step would be to finally connect up the 
> personhood (in the foaf card) to the certificates (in that foaf card) - and thus to the webid capabilities.
>
>
>
> Any ideas? I just want to leverage a foaf card, in an RSS context, 
> enabling someone consuming a feed of assertion-inducing links to be 
> able to click and see (via the browser) that which the linked foaf 
> card leads to  (and that's all).

Which version of RSS are you using?  Got some sample output?

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