[foaf-dev] Discovery, ID and FOAF

[Story Henry]

On 25 Mar 2008, at 13:46, Phillip Rhodes wrote:
> I really need to get some sleep, but I wanted to throw this question
> out real quick... is anybody here aware of any research on the topic  
> of, or has anybody thought much about, Discovery and how it related
> to FOAF and digital identity?
>
> What I mean is, if I have a single piece of identifying
> information (a URI/URL) for a user, that serves as their
> identity (maybed I got it from someone else's FOAF), is
> there any standard discovery mechanism to go from that
> URI/URL to that entity's own FOAF description (if one
> exists)?  If not, does anybody see any value in trying to
> come up with a standard way to address this?

It depends what info you have. If the user has a foaf id

http://blogs.sun.com/bblfish/entry/i_have_a_foaf_file

then you just HTTP GET that URL.
If you have an openid, then it would be dead easy for the openid web  
page to point to the foaf

as I describe here

http://blogs.sun.com/bblfish/entry/foaf_openid

If you have an email, then of course things are more difficult. You  
could ask an rdf search engine
like sindice

http://www.sindice.com/

or any other number of ways.

One way would be to keep aggregating triples and using simple inverse  
functional reasoning on foaf:mbox
find out somewhere else that information

Page on friends.com may contain

[] foaf:name "Henry Story"
    foaf:mbox <mailto:henry.story at bblfish.net> .

friends of joe.com may contain

[] foaf:mbox <mailto:henry.story at bblfish.net>;
    foaf:openid <http://openid.sun.com/bblfish>;
    rdfs:seeAlso <http://bblfish.net/people/henry/card> .

finally on http://bblfish.net/people/henry/card

you would find my info.

Henry

>
>
> It seems as though this problem would largely fall with the
> identity providers (OpenID provider, SAML provider, whoever), does  
> that
> sound right to you guys?  Eg, if I know an identity is
>
> openid.example.com/mindcrime, I should be able to find the
> user's FOAF by asking the identity provider at example.com
> "where do I find this user's detailed profile information?"
>
> If that provider were a social network AND an identity
> provider, I could imagine a scenario where it might be
> as simple as:
>
> openid.example.com/mindcrime/foaf
> or
> foaf.example.com/mindcrime
>
> or something.
>
> Anyway, just a dicussion I've been meaning to get into for a while...
> all thoughts, rants, etc. appreciated.  :-)
>
>
> TTYL,
>
>
> -- 
> Phillip Rhodes
> Chief Architect - OpenQabal
> https://openqabal.dev.java.net
> LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/philliprhodes
> <mindcrime.vcf>_______________________________________________
> foaf-dev mailing list
> foaf-dev at lists.foaf-project.org
> http://lists.foaf-project.org/mailman/listinfo/foaf-dev

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