Tom Morris

A while back Jeremy Keith wrote about something I added to my blog - an OpenID whitelist for access to personal information. I've finally gotten around to properly implementing the full stack. I've added foaf:openid elements to my FOAF file. Then I run a SPARQL SELECT query over it (using ARQ, part of Jena - the Java RDF library - which I started writing a tutorial for the other day on GetSemantic). I save the results out as JSON (you can use the SPARQL XML format too). My blogging application can then read in the list of OpenIDs of my friends and acquaintances from the JSON file. I could read them in dynamically on the server, but since the FOAF is static, I may as well burn some Java cycles on my Mac than burn some PHP cycles on my server.

This is part of a new FOAF workflow that I've setup in order to try and get me to keep my FOAF up-to-date. It consists of a shell script that takes my Notation-3 file, converts it to XML, runs the query through ARQ and then gets me to sign the XML using GPG and the Web Of Trust Ontology. Then it uses SCP to upload the FOAF, the ASCII-armoured signature file and the JSON to the server. You can look at the OpenID JSON file.

What happens next? Well, I'm going to extend the process soon so that it pulls in data from Twitter, last.fm and Jaiku to grab OpenIDs from. As we map more social networks to RDF - Flickr, Digg and anywhere else with an API - these will all get rolled up into one's FOAF file. I'm also planning to split up my FOAF into separate files, and also to run some smart rules over it to do other kinds of inference (ie. if you have a blog from LiveJournal or WordPress.com, that automatically becomes an OpenID identifier.

If you are not in my FOAF file and should be, don't hesitate to ping me in any of the normal ways. I hope to publish it each few days. If you are on the list, come on in.

Rachel Clarke in the comments: A challenge to you Tom. Explain that post with no acronyms or jargon in a way that is understood by the layman. With a why attached. Please. I have no real idea what you are trying to do except grab a list of identities you trust and then do something with the list.

I apologise. I get into technical details quite quickly. I have been known to write very long and convoluted explanations, but people complain that I'm not terse enough. So I may have gone too far. Perhaps I need to spend more time out in the cool November breeze and less time reading convoluted W3C specifications.

Here's what I'm trying to do. I have an hCard on my blog - over in the sidebar. I want to make it so that the people who want to get my contact details can. I've had the fun experience of auto-dialling with Skype when microformats are present, and being able to download phone numbers onto my phone. Basically, I want to simulate electronically the situation I have when one gives their business card out to someone without having to carry bits of card around with me. The user experience should something like this:

User: "I know Tom. I want to contact him by phone or send him something by post." User goes to my blog and enters their OpenID. If user is on list, user sees extra information - my home address and phone numbers. This is all in an hCard, so they can use hCard tools like Operator to use the information in a more useful way.

This is important, as often people want to make data available, but not to everyone. OpenID is a good way of letting people authenticate, but not as intrusive as having them sign up and have to give you their e-mail and so on.

The post was describing all the back-end plumbing that goes into making that possible - using FOAF and SPARQL. It's geeky because it's new. Blogging about it is intended to help others identify it as a use case, so we can work on making it simpler. Eventually, we'll have simple services that do a lot of the dirty work. As more social networks expose data either as RDF or using microformats, this will hopefully grow.

Ideally, when we have a few more pieces in place, we will have it so that we can do automatic OpenID inference - if you have a WordPress blog and I list you as a friend on say, Flickr and Twitter, then you can get access to my personal details. Personal details are also just the tip of the iceberg - everyone has things which they want only some of their friends to be able to see or use.

The general overall plan is to make it so that network connections can be used as a way of providing or denying services. Some people are using this 'graph' of connections to determine whether or not you are a comment spammer.

To see what other people are doing, have a look at FOAF Plus OpenID over on the ESW Wiki.

Oh, and Rachel, if you log in, you can see for yourself - either your blog or your MyOpenID should work.