[foaf-dev] bio information, openID, etc

[Kjetil Kjernsmo]

On Tuesday 18 March 2008, Anthony Steele wrote:
> Most social networking or community sites include an explicit or
> de-facto area for a person to describe themselves in human-readable
> text. It's often called "bio" or "about me". It's as common as .plan
> files (which you support) were. Is there a way to do this in FOAF, or
> can it be added?

Several auxiliary vocabularies can and is used alongside FOAF, and one 
of them is http://vocab.org/bio/0.1/ . It has support for 
a "one-line-bio", which seems what you are asking for. It has also 
support for birth information, etc.

> Partial disclosure: I am particularly interested in methods of
> identifying who is requesting the information, and disclosing
> none/some or all of it depending on who is asking. E.g. a person may
> disclose their age in years (or conversely, just day and month of
> birth) to everyone, but keep their precise date of birth only for
> authenticated friends.

That's an interesting problem to explore.

> I realise that this is not part of the FOAF XML spec, it is a step to
> go through before the FOAF XML is served; 

Just be careful about the XML part. XML is just "yet another" format to 
us, it is the RDF that counts, which can be formulated in several 
different ways. 

> but is there a standard or 
> preferred way of verifying who is requesting the data? Is openID the
> way to do this? It must be tied into the FOAF XML since the listed
> friends  are the ones who can have privileged access.

This is also an interesting problem, and yes, I think I would have 
looked to OpenID for a solution. 

Also, have a look at http://www.policyawareweb.org/ which has a 
proof-of-concept implementation, but so far, I'm not aware that anyone 
has gone beyond that and into practical use, which is a shame, because 
it is a very interesting project.

(I changed the subject, you're more likely to get people's attention 
with a good subject line)

Cheers,

Kjetil
-- 
Kjetil Kjernsmo
Programmer / Astrophysicist / Ski-orienteer / Orienteer / Mountaineer
kjetil at kjernsmo.net
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