Social Networking (by alaric)
Why not let Jabber look after my FOAF document? The Jabber server could take a plugin that maintains an RDF file for each user, in the server filesystem. If the server also runs an HTTP server, then that directory can be exposed via HTTP; if not, the Jabber server can start off a small one just for that purpose. So the RDF file can still have a URL pointing to it, as usual, and the Jabber server, if told what the URL of the directory is, can work out the full URL of each user's RDF file and advertise it as part of their Jabber status, visible to people they add to their contact list. The server can automatically keep your Jabber contact list and FOAF relationships in synch, where they overlap (FOAF friends who have Jabber, in other words). And it can automate privacy setups by splitting your RDF into sections based on your specified access control rules, setting up .htaccess files automatically to enforce your wishes.
Then updates to the RDF - either full refreshes with new data, or just adding a series of extra statements, or changing existing statements - can be handled by a module in the Jabber client (or a special Jabber client dedicated to the task) that sends the new data to the server. And the server can then notify all the people on your contact list who've shown interest that there's been a change.
Then web apps that generate snippets of RDF for you, to help you say things in their RDF vocabulary, can just give you an RDF file that you can drag onto your Jabber client and it'll upload it to be merged with your core RDF, which will make editing much easier.
And the fun toy apps can just be applications you run locally on your desktop, or use as a Web application, that give you an RDF snippet to join them that is really just a "See Also" reference to a URL they create for each user that shows that user's public status within the application. When that's added to your RDF, everyone who sees it can then access you in the application, too.
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Fri 9th May 2008 8:43 am 
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