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My pal Dan refers to the current crop of social networks as “walled gardens” because they do not talk to each other. I don’t care as much about the philosophy, but one practical problem with the lack of interroperability is your contact info and address book are not shared between the various sites.

Even a regular user can understand why this might be a problem. When you log on to a new social networking site, you have to add all your buddies to the account. A much better way would be if the social networking site knew about you and your buddies from a third source. That way the data would already be there.

So I couldn’t sleep the other night and I got to thinking about how you would go about implementing a Web 2.0 centralized address book. This is the braindump.

Where is the data stored?
A lot of people use a variety of different computers in their day so storing your buddy list locally is out because it ties you to the same computer and can’t be updated if you are not using that machine. So the list will have to be stored online on an “identity server”. The only real requirement is that the machine be running the correct software and be accessible from anywhere on the Internet. I’m thinking along the same lines as a Jabber server. There could be ones storing thousands of identities or a personal one with just one person’s stuff.

What does it store?
An identity record is indexed by a unique name (like Jabber), “bob@tzu.frankie.ca”, for example. The first part is a name unique in the identity database on the server. The part after the @ is a fully qualified server name. This record could be a real email address, but doesn’t have to be. The fully qualified server name effectively ensures that your “ident-name” is unique on the Internet.

Two password fields are required. The first is a password known only to the owner of the ident-name which allows them to access their record and change it. The second is a password which allows others to view the data and change certain parts of it.

An identity record has two tables. One is a table of metadata, the other is the “address book”. The address book is fairly straight forward: it is simply a list of the ident-name of the other people you know and the ident-name of who put them in there.

The metadata record contains a field with RDF-like data representing predicate and object, an ownership field and a permission field. Unlike an RDF triple, there is no need to denote subject, since the subject is always the ident-name itself. RDF-like data is useful here because it can be extended easily without breaking backwards compatibility. Like HTML tags, predicates unknown to a viewing application can be simply ignored. I haven’t fully thought through syntax, though a simplistic example of one record might be:

<meta>

xmlns:indent=”http://tzu.frankie.ca/ident/tags/1.0″

<ident:Name>Robert J. Young</ident:Name>

</meta>

In this sense the data is a lot like FOAF data. in fact, a lot of this concept is like FOAF.

How Does It Work
The owner of the record can create any metadata record they like. One of the features of the server would be a web interface to allow the owner of a ident record to view and modify their own data. A number of predefined metadata records are available in the standard: Name, Nickname, Address, Email Address, Phone Number, Occupation, Short Description, etc…

If another ident has been given the second password, they have the right to view the entire ident record. They also have the right to add a certain number of metadata records (say five) of any data they want (up to a certain length). They may also change these records as they see fit. The ownership field marks the entry as theirs.

The owner of the ident-name has the ability to:

• change any metadata record
• delete any metadata record
• lock a metadata record so only he can change it

Another ident holder with the password may also view the address book. They also have the ability to add a ident names to the address book, but they cannot remove them.

The owner of the ident-name can delete or add any address book entry they want.

In Operation
You’ve probably already figured out how the system is going to work.

When you log on to, say, Facebook, it will ask you if you have an ident account, and if so, what is the access password. Once Facebook knows this, it can download your address book, as well as your metadata. It also has acccess to metadata added to your ident-record by other social sites. Gmail may have added a gmail address record or Wordpress may have included a blog address record. If they did, Facebook would know these things too and could automatically fill out your profile.

When Facebook gets your address book, all it gets are the ident-names. If the idents are also members of Facebook and have given it their passwords, Facebook would be able to contact their ident servers to get their info as well. If they haven’t joined Facebook, they would remain just an ident-name, until they joined.

When you encounter a new friend on Facebook, you add him to your roster. The networking site then informs your ident server and adds the name. When you log on to, say, Gmail your new friend’s name and email address is already in the Gmail address book.

If you and a friend have a falling out, making him disappear is easy. Erase him from your address book on the server. His ident will disappear from every ident aware service you are on. Disappearing yourself is easy too. Simply turn off your ident server or change your account. Social networking sites are likely to cache the data they get, but they are going to notice that they can’t update what they have. Eventually they may cancel the account.

There may be a part two if I can think of more.

Ever had one of those days where you just wanted to hide?

I don’t mean in terms of stress, anxiety or depression, although I’ve had my fair share over the years. No I mean hide, as in from someone.

Now I feel a little guilty on that score. I don’t dislike the person. Not at all. But if we connect I know what will happen, and I’m just not up to it today. Cowardly, I know, but I just can’t do it. Not now, not today. Today I’d much rather hide.

What’s an “asstunnel”? I don’t know either, but couldn’t stop laughing when I first read it.

What’s this all about? Ever wondered why some of your music downloads arrive all screwed up? It’s not because the Internet ate them, it is because a bunch of twits working for the RIAA were paid to screw them up. They also set up fake websites to entrap people and engage in DDOS attacks against tracker sites. These are the same people who think they should have the right to break into your computer to look for ’stolen’ music and movies. Real shady types. Incredibly, the government is actually working with them (Americans, you should be worried about this).

Nice to see the torrent community fighting the man and his asstunnel cronies.

Update: thanks to the Media Defender email leak (linked above) the Pirate Bay now believes they have enough information to begin a lawsuit.

Now here’s a nice beefy system core: AMD Athlon X2 6000+, 2GB of DDR2-800, a eVGA 8800GTS-320MB all on an Asus M2N SLI Deluxe. Not quite as beefy as a Core 2 Quad with an 8800Ultra, but so much prettier, and cheaper. Intel stuff never seems to cable as nicely either, I dunno why.

The picture was taken with the system running. The camera shutter was fast enough that the fans appear to be standing still, with the AMD logo clearly visible.

I just love this paragraph:

If you’re the owner of a Windows PC who is looking for a replacement computer, the choices are grim. You can step into the world of hurt that is Vista, the latest version of Microsoft Windows that was released in January. Or you can seek out a new machine that still comes loaded with the comparatively ancient Windows XP.

I’ve already ranted at length about why I don’t like it, but it’s nice to see that other people are cluing in to the fact that Vista is a fat, bloated piece of shit that doesn’t give you anymore capability than XP. Hell, XP doesn’t really give you that much more than 2K, but at least it played games OK. Oh, and it runs respectably on 256 megabytes of RAM, not two gigabytes.

They call it Me2 over at the The Register. Remember Windows Me? I’m still trying to forget it. Given all the trouble Vista has been giving its users I figure the next OS from Microsoft should be called Windows Sorry.

Apple and the Linux community really need to be exploiting missteps like Vista more. I don’t prefer MacOSX, but I can tell you that it is a better operating system than Vista is. I’ll bet there are all kinds of frustrated Vista users out there wishing there was something better. And the funny thing about that is something better is out there, if you are willing to give it a proper try. So you know what that means? Marketshare up for grabs, that’s what.

It’s nice to see that weapons of mass destruction are being made more environmentaly friendly. Yay humans!

I reckon when a thermobaric weapon goes off close by, the last thing you care about is whether the ducks are going to be okay.

Don’t ya just wish some days you were George Clooney?

Toronto International Film Festival pic courtesy of the CBC

Computer techs will recognize what is wrong with this picture right away.

Computer cases are normally held together with #6-32 1/4 inch hex head screws with a Phillips drive (three are visible in the picture), not one inch pan head Robertson wood screws. Both panels of this particular computer were held on with a pair of these. In fact, the large portions of the computer were held together with various types of Robertson screws, even the mainboard, which was held down with properly threaded #6-32 1/4 inch pan head Robertson greenies.

I keep a full set of Robbies around the shop for this kind of thing. I can’t really fault whoever did this because I too long for the day the computer industry switches over from the finicky Phillips to the sure and steady Robertson screw.

On October 10, Ontarians, like me, get to go to the polls to select our next Provincial Government. But there is going to be a twist this time — a referendum question will be attached. This should be a cause for much celebration as a referendum is a way for you, yeah you, to directly affect the decisions of government beyond choosing your MPP. It’s not like this happens every day, or even every election, so seize the opportunity.

What is being proposed is highly cool. You will be asked if you want to keep the current first-past-the-post election system, or adopt a new hybrid mixed member system. The mixed member system would give every voter two votes, one for a first-past-the-post candidate and one for a party. Around a third of the seats in the house are reserved for these party votes with the seats being filled proportionally by the registered parties, based on their number of votes.
I see this as a Good Thing and worth trying. If implemented, you will get more choice in an election. If you want a Liberal government but really like the NDP candidate, you have a good chance at having your cake and eating it too by voting for each. I think this will also give independent candidates a better shot too, for the same reason. It will even give smaller parties, like the Green Party, who often get lots of votes, but never enough to win a riding, a chance at a seat or two among the 39 party spots.

The status quo has a tendency to favour large, well established parties. This Referendum aims to change that slightly and shake things up in the house a bit, which I feel is worth supporting.

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I like this spam because it is funny. That this fellow “knows a lot of spammers” is funny enough, but his claim that he can reduce blog spam is downright hilarious.  Suuuure, they’re going to stop spamming me because I linked to you. Even if I did put the link in and even if he really does know these people like he says, how exactly will this encourage them to stop?

Richard, if that is even your real name, I use Akismet on this blog, so I only see about one percent of the spam your scumbag friends send me.  Nice try.