Posts tagged with: knowee

Update: Dan Brickley suggested (in a private mail to Henry and me) that "RDFAuth" is most probably not a very smart name anyway, as something that contains official/generic technologies (RDF and oAuth in this case) may send wrong signals and cause misunderstanding. And that we shouldn't waste time fighting. He suggests more specific names (BeatnikAuth/knoweeAuth) for the time being, as this is all still premature stuff, and because no one should claim to have created an "RDFAuth", especially not if it isn't backed by the whole community. Well, what can I say, he's of course right. I apologize and will s/RDFAuth/knoweeAuth/ from now on.

You may have read Henry Story's recent post about RDFAuth, an RDF-oriented mechanism to access (partly) protected web resources. He's not describing the RDFAuth protocol, though. I've tried to clarify things a couple of times on the semantic-web list, but somehow he seems to prefer to hijack the name instead, together with parts of the idea and claim it as his invention (it's not mine either, to make things clear). Now, innovation is always based on a combination of prior work and improvements, but his "following my strict architectural guidelines, I came across what I am just calling RDFAuth" preening goes a tiny bit too far to not trigger a comment.

What he describes (a PGP-based authentication protocol) is clearly interesting, but it's simply not what RDFAuth, an idea that was developed in the knowee project, is about. For knowee (which just released the alpha version, btw), we needed something that can be implemented on basic, shared web servers. PGP is simply not an option (if considered mandatory). People won't upload their private keys to 3rd party servers, and PGP libs are not necessarily available in those environments either.

Final clarifications:

• RDFAuth may support PGP, it's just not a requirement.
• I'm pretty sure that Henry's PGP-only approach will attract more SemWeb geeks than RDFAuth, it just wouldn't necessarily work for knowee's target audience.
• The RDFAuth idea is in no way special or new. It more or less predates oAuth, but long-term-ish I'll most probably have to replace it with oAuth, once there is a way to generate tokens without the browser redirect dance (fully server-side token generation is another knowee requirement).
• I read about a token-based, decentralized identification mechanism on a very early OpenID FAQ page that described a non-browser-dependent way to log into web sites. I can't find the link anymore, but this is basically what RDFAuth is based on. So, this is not my idea either.
• The possibility of combining 200 OK response headers with WWW-Authenticate was suggested by Etan Wexler on the FOAF mailing list
• Dan Brickley explored SPARQL-based group membership discovery a while back. I like this idea of de-coupling data exchange decisions from the identification/authorisation process very much (RDFers don't need things like sReg or Attribute Exchange).
• The only thing that RDFAuth adds is light-weight, personal token services (as a replacement of OpenID's browser-based identification), and the re-use of straight HTTP BasicAuth, so that partly protected resources can more easily be discovered by both server-side and client-side tools (e.g. Tabulator), and also to allow widely deployed modules like mod_php to access the login token and client identifier using built-in functionality. And I doubt that layering a protocol on top of HTTP BasicAuth hasn't been done before, so, again, nothing special to brag about here.

OK, enough geek whining ;), don't want to waste more time of my precious weekend.

Like many other SemWeb weavers, I followed Tom's call for last week-end's SemanticCamp London. So much fun! I used the opportunity to discuss a number of ideas I've been pondering for quite some time, and it was great to be able to get more direct insights from microformats community members. I had the impression that the event helped bringing RDFers and microformateers a little closer together. At least in the conversations I had. There was no childish "your approach is flawed/too limited/doomed to fail", and I think I didn't hear a single (serious) "fundamentally". A lot of "I prefer", "I don't like", and a number of tongue-in-cheek comments, but that's cool as part of a starting dialog. Much better than the progress-blocking arrogance we've seen for much too long (in both camps, btw).

I tried to substantiate this "common goal, complementary tech" notion with two little interactive demos and a tech pitch:

• On saturday we created SPARQLBot, an IRC Bot based on ARC/Trice that aggregates XFN, hCard, and FOAF data, and lets you explore your "online social graph" with simple IRC commands. SPARQLBot is a nice example how the huge amount of high-quality microformats data can be combined with RDF technologies such as flexible storage and simple querying. (And that it only took a few hours to implement a working demo also shows how SemWeb technologies can significantly improve Web app development.)
• I pulled an all-nighter from Sat to Sun and managed to demo the knowee beta on Sunday. There are still a few bugs to fix, but an official announcement should come soon now. knowee allows you to consolidate portable social network data (XFN, hCard, FOAF, feeds) and to manage the collected information via a freebase-like hyperdata editor.
• The third thing is what might be called "micrordf". I didn't run a session, but discussed the idea with a couple of people and think it's worthwhile pursuing. Although certain RDF solutions could be really handy for the µF community, there are a couple of things that are considered deal breakers. Among those are the namespace prefix mechanism (esp. in any of the current RDF-in-HTML proposals, where non-predictable prefixes break reliable self-containment and CSS styling) and the need to map HTML-encoded information to non-identical and unstable RDF Schemas. What I was trying to figure out during SemanticCamp was the possibility of creating a simplified, but still RDF-compatible mechanism that would be acceptable to microformateers. It's essentially a simple, intermediate structure to represent any microformat (no need for a different syntax), and possibly also POSH data. What that would bring to the microformats community is the ability to auto-create universal parsers, a unified mofo-style API, and a proper test suite, which still seems to be lacking. The RDF crowd would get a way to access microformats as resource descriptions, with the ability to map those to their RDF vocab of choice. It could perhaps even be possible to auto-generate GRDDL XSLTs from the micrordf definitions. More on this soon.

As Yves put it already: Yay for SemanticCamp!

Together with Morten Frederiksen and Dan Brickley (who is revisiting his SparqlPress idea), I've created a WordPress extension (called "RDF Tools") that adds an (ARC-based) RDF Store and SPARQL Endpoint to the blogging system. The store is kept separate from the WP tables (i.e. it's not a wrapper), but you can use WP's nice admin screens to configure it (screenshot), and given the amount of developer-friendly hooks that WP offers, I'm curious what can be done now, possibly in combination with other extensions such as those Alexandre Passant is working on. It could perhaps also be handy as a deployment accelerator for knowee.

While I'm unfortunately struggling to find paid projects these days, I had at least some time to work on core technology for my Trice framework and a new knowee release. The latest module is an in-browser RDF viewer and editor for Linked Data, heavily inspired by the freebase UI (hopefully with less screen flickering, though).

I'm clearly not there yet, but today I uploaded a screencast (quicktime 4MB), and I think I can start incorporating it into the knowee tools soon. Have fun watching it if you like, and Merry X-Mas!

Details (well, sort of) are available at knowee.org.

OK, I met this week's 2nd deadline and finished ARC2's SPARQL test suite report. Pass/Fail results as of today: 317/67 (Sept. 22nd: 352/84). That's a huge step forward compared to ARC1, so I'm quite happy.

Next actions: Making the knowee prototype public (deadline missed, boo!), and relaunching the ARC site, together with proper community tools and the new release.

After two months of spec implementation, I'm finally getting at the more interesting stuff again. I'm not fully on schedule, but I could at least meet the first of this week's three deadlines: I presented a first knowee proof of concept at yesterday's webmontag and feedback was positive. Deadline #3 is a working prototype by this wednesday (promised to SWEO), but I'm not sure I'll be able to deliver. We are close, but there is also deadline #2 lurking: the DAWG implementation reports are due today, and I'm still working on mine for ARC2...

Nevertheless, webmontag was really great again. Had an interesting chat with mixxt's Oliver Ueberholz about the practical problems of adding social data export to SNSs. It seems that microformats are not always the obvious answer when the public export of machine-readable profile information is meant to be implemented as a user option, or when you want to be able to block certain bots from crawling your networks. They are thinking about external files now and wonder if RDF might be an option. Keeping the template code clean, and the ability to serve content for "online social graph aggregators" like knowee from separate machines are two potential benefits. At least the "hidden information is not maintained" argument is moot in their case, as the data is auto-generated anyway.

Last week I had lunch with Alexander Linden, the guy who used to position Semantic Web on the Gartner Hype Cycles. He left Gartner for his own venture (HumanGrid), a crowdsourcing platform. Surprisingly, they are not using SemWeb technology directly, but he said that their solution could be very helpful to generate and quality-improve RDF instance data.

We also talked a bit about SemWeb startup funding, and despite Gartner's latest Hype Cycle, which put SemWeb into the trough of disillusionment for the next 10(!) years, venture capital invested in semantic technology companies is apparently increasing. At least if you are in the US, that is. In Germany, a lot of money still seems to vanish in dodgy projects like smartweb. I hope that theseus is going to have more practical outcomes. They are going to run a competition for non-partners, that's a step in the right direction.

Related to startups and their technology choice is a concern about the lack of end-user semantic web applications that demonstrate the utility of RDF. A Semantic Web is going to be one of the Next Big Things, but that doesn't necessarily mean that it'll be built with W3C technologies. The only big-potential (US) startup with an RDF infrastructure, for example, is generating so much hype that they are doomed to disappoint, no matter what they are going to launch (if they'll ever do). Maybe RDFers should hurry up a little if they want to help avoid a possible backlash. I will, at least.

Alexander said the RDF stack has always been rather tough to sell (especially OWL), and identified some strategies that the SWEO group could focus on during the next couple of months:

• Admit that the full technology framework is not trivial, it's web-scale information integration after all. If you present it to newbies, always present a consumable subset only, not the full thing (Uh, I'm guilty).
• Organise more local meetings, BarCamp-style, open to people with related interests (i.e. not-yet-semweb developers)
• Provide convincing solutions that clearly show how RDF saves money and/or time, or increases productivity in a way that no alternative technology can. CEOs are just one group, a new technology has to attract the developers, because they decide how much friction losses they are willing to accept before they get at the benefits of a new technology. (SWEO is already building a collection of success stories, the Community Projects address these points, too, I think)
• Something to download and play with for those with initial interest (that's basically Danny's Semantic Web in a box suggestion)
• Public datasets (Yay LOD project)

An additional suggestion I heard yesterday was "Non-technical Marketing". And that's something SWEO is spending quite some time on, too. (The W3C comm team is actually coming up with a full SemWeb branding strategy soon.) And to cite Dan Brickley:

16:37:57 [danbri] best thing we ever did, was make those tshirts!

So, it seems the SWEO activities are moving in the right direction, but it'd be great to get more ideas. What do you think is still missing or should get a high priority?

Just a short update on knowee, one of the SWEO Community Projects. There is nice progress, although it took some time to get things moving. An early site is now online, and we have a first design for the app.

I still have to flesh out knowee's approach to "social graph portability" (or whatever it's called this week), but then I'll focus on the prototype which will hopefully be available by Mid/End-September.

The webinale slides are online now. The session went OK, I'd say. I always make the mistake to look at the high conference prices and then end up trying to squeeze too much information into my talks to give the people some value for their money. It also was a bit hard to predict what the audience of the newly introduced webinale would be like. I did receive some great feedback from PHP coders (sneaking in from co-located IPC) who already had specific questions and asked about RAP and ARC. But I could see from many faces right after the session, that a very basic talk may have been better. Leo suggested to skip the ontology stuff entirely, the amount of different flavours (SKOS, RDF Schema, OWL Lite/DL/Full/+/-/1.1) is surely a whole mess marketing-wise. Next time I'll try to stick to the more intuitive stuff. At least I had a convincing demo about how (low-level) ontologies can be useful to greatly reduce custom application code.

I had a short chat with pageflakes' CEO Christoph Janz. Semantic Web technologies are not on their radar yet (maybe they are now ;), but we talked a bit about the possibility to add some RDF functionality to their widgets (which they call "flakes"). They may let us try some things in the context of the knowee project, e.g. a flake that could store contact data retrieved via GRDDL or a SPARQL endpoint. Might be worth checking out their SDK.

So, next time: less OWL, more wild colours:

I finally sent out a call for participation for knowee, one of the projects supported by SWEO (just in time for the F2F reports tomorrow).

The project is about creating a semwebby address book thingy, but there actually is another dimension to the "outreach" aspect beyond running code. I'd really like to bring RDFers and microformateers closer together (from both directions). RDFers can learn a lot from the pragmatic microformats community, and adding data integration (+query) functionality to microformats can enable a whole new set of applications.

This is going to change everything. Well, almost. I will continue to work on my Semantic Web solutions, but there will be a major re-branding and finally a focused roadmap. My code experiments and projects are going to be critically reviewed and consolidated. (I can't tell yet what stuff is going to be continued, but I'll keep my SWEO commitments, esp. the knowee community project which is going to start in April).
Quite some orga action coming up, but I'm looking forward to a clean bengee.reboot()

• I'll move from Essen to Düsseldorf, which is closer to Cologne, the DUS airport, and also a little away from the Web periphery here, with the Ruhr Valley still in reach, though.
• The appmosphere wordplay is going to be discontinued. No German really managed to pronounce or remember it correctly, and the *-osphere naming is rather overused these days anyway.
• The new brand will most probably be semsol.com which is going to be transformed to a Semantic Web Agency. (I've always been a frontend developer, combing this with an in-house RDF system will hopefully form a nice USP for the anticipated move towards info-driven Web apps.)
• The open source RDF framework currently named semsol will get a new name (perhaps just "semsol suite", we'll see), and there will be more product-style solutions (a browser, an editor, a schema manager, etc.).
• ARC will keep its name, but is going to be re-coded as ARC2 based on the experience and feedback obtained so far.
• Less research-y slippery slopes.
• More Germany-targeted activities.

Kjetil Kjernsmo has initiated a new Semantic Web Education and Outreach Interest Group Task Force called "Community Projects". A great idea.


Just added a proposal for "knowee", a web-based contact organizer (a project similar to something Ivan mentioned some weeks ago, and I think also similar to the work Henry Story recently started).