[foaf-protocols] hcards/vcards with FOAF+SSL (today)

[Peter Williams]

take a quick looksy through

http://yorkporc.wordpress.com/2012/01/22/hooking-up-webid-to-yahoo-via-semantic-markup/. Its only remarkable becuase i can do it, with no skill and no effort. Its a marker.

 

Im beginning to change my attitude towards Google. They seem to have totally got the web, as a platform. Its that fact that I, years out of date as I am, can do things is very telling. Its also indicative that W3C reall does have a touch of magic, being able to spend a decade getting folks to this point. That takes quite some will power - particularly when one is fighting the likes of me (who are stuck in legacy, to a degree). I think I get 'the web' - for the first time in 20 years.

 

I see there to be an ecosystem, now.

 

There is https, which contains FOAF+SSL, which now has two branchs: foaf+webid validation, and vcard+webid. foaf+webid is the more formal path, leading to a formal standard. Like any such standard, it may take years to emerge, and will probably have religious overtones meantime, but, be able to gather research focus and research funds working on the 5-10 year plan. IN the meantime, we may just need to act like CISCO: deploy something now that its 80%, and induce the community to get its act together. Liek cisco, there must be no doubt that the followup standard is REALLY what matters (and that community commitment is unshakeable).

 

Since google have given me a website and blog platfrom that seems to capture the ORIGNAL RSS concept and do it with semantic markup, and they  give me the ability to insert javascripts, Im tempted to go for gold: insert the scripts that deliver the ssl client in javascript. 

 

Like the oomph demo scans the page for hcards (to act on), so another script might scan for henry's cert:keys that act as the "SSL cert store", limiting the 'https client in a page' to only certain https endpoint on the users trust list.

 

But, there we hit religion. Its going to upset browser vendors, who want exclusive control of that kind of thing, and the crypto libs, and the UI. Google is of course a browser vendor, for the converged voice/data space addressing modern PCs and phones.