Data-Identity Relationship Proposal
At IIW2008 this week, there was some talk about using OpenID to be able to label data across the ‘net (like blog comments) as yours, verifiable by machine, in order to better aggregate/access the data you create. There appears to be a large amount of interest in this, but people are more interested in discussing semantics or complex details… not enough people who are willing to just do it.
So I thought I’d take a stab at it. After all, I’m not only someone who wants to have my data easily identifiable… I’m also part of the other side who wants to aggregate all the data (OneSwirl).
But one of the problems is that while there are millions of users with OpenIDs, there’s only a small portion that use them. To create a system (which I’m going to tenatively call “idAuth”) around OpenID would be something that won’t see results for a long time… if ever.
Why not create an intermediary solution, that includes low-level support for OpenID (as an identifier, not as a login or authentication protocol), but also includes a more basic and accessible ID method? Why not implement this now, or at least create a proof-of-concept?
My proposal has potential solutions to these questions, using microformats and XML.
I believe the best place to start with all of this is blog comments, so that’s the usecase scenario I’ve chosen here… it also means that we could easily create some plugins for Wordpress/MoveableType/etc. to do this, without having to whine and cry to people about why this is important.
Until I get this typed up and all digital, here it is in handwritten version (PDF): idAuth Propsal - Handwritten.
Update: a digital version of the proposal can be found here, in three formats
Update (5/26/2008): the idAuth Proposal has been revised
[This is also be referenced and talked about over at the SID Group - the thread is here]
