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Joining us in episode 6 of the DataPortability: In-Motion Podcast is Paul Trevithick, CEO of Parity and the Founder of the Higgins Project. Higgins is an incredibly well thought-out open identity framework that’s designed to integrate identity, profile and social relationship information across multiple sites, applications and devices.
We were excited to talk with Paul about Higgins, especially since they released version 1.0 of their complete identify framework in late February. As it’s been a few years in the making, it might seem like the system wouldn’t play friendly with latecomers like some of the solutions being promoted by the DataPortability Project. Not so, however, as Paul talks through how they’ll plug into OpenID and newcomers Project VRM.
We’re often asked what the DataPortability Project is doing to help the development community, and this is a prime example. We’re helping tie the pieces together of existing solutions and promoting their utility. To that point, I circled back with Joe Andrieu to get his take on VRM hooking in with Higgins:
Higgins plus CardSpace means we have both a soup-to-nuts, open source Identity stack and a built-in client application on every .Net 3 machine. With that breadth, it’s just a matter of adoption time before the Identity-enabled net, and THAT will make VRM possible across the board.
NOTE: For more about VRM, check out In-Motion episode 2.
Before getting into the meat of the podcast, however, we hit some relevant news points:
- Yahoo! Rewires for the Social Graph and Data Portability
- Microsoft Announces Live Mesh
- SocialDevCamp coming up in Baltimore
- DataPortability DIY Project for May: “rel=me”
- New DataPortability Logo Challenged (again)
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Episode 6: Listen Episode Length: 0:31:45
The fifth episode of the DataPortability: In-Motion Podcast explores data portability with Jonathan Vanasco. As the CEO of FindMeOn.com and founder of the Open SN interchange format, he brings an interesting historical perspective to the discussion.
His company was on the ground and selling the data portability vision in 2006, and met with significant resistence by the same players embracing the DataPortability Project today. He talks about the approach taken by the Open SN specification, touching on the unfortunate naming collision with OpenSocial (with which there is no relationship). Beyond the technical details how FindMeOn.com leverages the format (ie. key-signed trusted relationship sharing), the story itself is worth hearing from an early advocate.
Of note is Jonathan’s quote about the resistance he encountered back in 2006 and where we are today:
It was like this very weird cultural shift, where almost overnight people went from data portability is absolutely evil to we love data portability. Cultural shifts always happen, but I’m still absolutely amazed at how fast it happened. Usually people warm up to ideas like this over a year or two, but this was kind of like an overnight thing.
Update: Jonathan posted a follow-up to the interview expanding on the discussion. It’s a great augmentation to the conversation.
Leading into the discussion, we hit some top-level news:
- DataPortability 6-Month Report
- New DataPortability Logo
- DataSharing Summit Recap
- Web 2.0 Expo Update
- Mahalo adds microformats
- Forrester: Social network tools to drive $4.6B industry by 2013
- NewsGator releases Inbox 3.0
- MySpace Gallery Application is live
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Episode 5: Listen Episode Length: 0:28:51
In the fourth espisode of the DataPortability: In-Motion Podcast, Phil Wolff, editor of Skype Journal, and Eran Hammer-Lahav, author of the XRDS-Simple specification join hosts Trent and Steve.
Leading the episode, we touch on a few news nuggets:
- TechCrunch Donates $6,625 to the DataPortability Project
- DataPortability Project Logo Competition Update
- Will data portability be a battle like free software?
Flowing out of the news, Phil chats briefly about his discussions with folks about how data portability will impact advertising. Similar to VRM, as we learned in our previous discussion with Joe Andrieu, it seems clear that businesses and consumers will benefit from standardized portable data.
Working toward making data more portable, Phil also talks about the DataPortability “Do It Yourself” projects he and David Recordon bandied about at a recent meetup in San Francisco. While it’s still getting off the ground, he’s working to formalize a number of small projects that can easily be implemented.
Our feature discussion is with Eran Hammer-Lahav about the XRDS-Simple specification he recently authored. He leads us through the history from his time working on the oAuth specification, and how the simplification of XRDS is complementary to other easily-implemented discovery techniques.
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Episode 4: Listen Episode Length: 0:51:37
At a recent Semantic Web gathering at MIT, Maximilian Schich gave a talk about “Adding Art Research Data to the Giant Global Graph”. It sparked an interesting discussion regarding the valuable assets within some Linked Data systems and how to monetize them. It is a topic of interest to me as I believe a key adoption hurdle for Linked Data and Semantic Web technologies is in clarifying the value proposition to all parties involved (eg. producers, distributors, and consumers).
Schich talked about his conundrum of what to do with an incredibly rich data set he has access to describing historical art and archeology information. He presented how the data is already well defined within their data model and retrieval scheme. He also outlined how they propose bridging the gap to embrace the current and near-future Linked Data standards. The question, then, was how they would be able to pay for all this work.
There was a lot of discussion around possibly licensing access to the data via SPARQL, but the mechanisms for metering don’t exist, yet. Kingsley Idehen and some others discussed possibilities in adding support at the server layer for a formalized data response similar to HTTP 402 (ie. “payment required”). It was clear, though, that work would need to be done in this area before adopting it as a reasonable direction.
At some point during the conversation, I asked Schich what he believes is his more valuable asset: the data itself, or the presentation layer. After having seen the GUI of the demo application showing how the user could retrieve the data, it was clear that a lot of domain expertise was required to design it. Further, when he showed us the data schema and example retrieval/traversal modes, it was even more obvious that the average researcher would have to interface via the GUI (even if the data is freely available and fully compliant with SemWeb standards).
With this in mind, my suggestion was that he consider opening up the data entirely, forgoing any programmatic metering, and possibly license commercial access to it (allowing for free non-commercial use). My proposal was that they focus on monetizing killer GUI products tuned for each of their specific user groups. In this way, they could service both their institutional and individual users as appropriate.
Fortunately, Tim Berners-Lee jumped in and agreed. He clearly articulated (undoubtedly better than I could) the benefit in separating the data source from the presentation layer. Each, then could be treated separately in context of it’s use and license model.
Thinking about it later, I was reminded of the scene in Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon when [spoiler alert] the characters find a pile of gold in the middle of the jungle on a remote Pacific island. It had been left there by the retreating Japanese army in World War II, and they were trying to figure out how to retrieve it through the unfriendly territory. Basically, what appears incredibly valuable at first glance (ie. a pile of gold = a mountain of rich data), is nearly worthless without a way to get it out.
I hope, however, that Schich is able to find a better solution than was presented in Cryptonomicon.
BTW – Since I mentioned them already, it’s worth noting that both Kingsley and Tim are giving keynotes at the Linked Data Planet conference in New York on June 17th. Also, you can listen to an interview I did with Kingsley a couple weeks ago as part of the DataPortability: In-Motion Podcast.
In the second espisode of the DataPortability: In-Motion Podcast, show hosts Trent and Steve chat with Kaliya Hamlin (aka IdentityWoman) about the upcoming Data Sharing Summit and with Joe Andrieu, founder of SwitchBook, about his work with the VRM Project lead by Doc Searls at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society.
Leading the episode, a brief news update on:
- MyBlogLog supporting FOAF
- Flickr announcing their friend finder feature
- Read/Write Web article on conversations leaving the blogosphere
Bonus Track: Danny Ayer’s “Get Your Data Out” DataPortability Project rock anthem.
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Episode 2: Listen Episode Length: 0:45:22
What started as an innocent research project into the communities related to the DataPortability Project has taken on a life of its own. While chatting with pioneering leaders in the portable data space, I realized the conversations may be valuable for others to hear as well.
The concept was well received, but some folks suggested a more formalized structure would be helpful. Enter Steve Greenberg and we bounced around a few ideas, coming up with what we’re calling the “DataPortability: In-Motion Podcast“. We’ll produce a show a week, leading with a few short news snippets, and a long format discussion with one or more guests working in and around the portable data world.
In this espisode of the DataPortability: In-Motion Podcast, Trent and Steve chat with Kingsley Idehen, CEO of OpenLink Software, about his views of data portability and accessibility.
Leading the episode, a brief news update on:
- Microsoft Announces Contact List Portability
- Magnolia Requiring OpenID
- Tribe.net Shuts Down FOAF Support
- Ringside Networks Launched
- XRDS-Simple Released
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Episode 1: Listen Episode Length: 0:20:43
Nitin Borwankar put forth a compelling commentary as it relates to Data Portability vs. a deeper Terms of Service (TOS) discussion on behalf of the consumer:
The real problem – The Elephant In the Room – is whether web app vendors “play fair” with my data when it is IN the web app, not whether they “allow” me to take my data and go play elsewhere. There are two major choices for a web app user here, just as for a dissenter in a social structure – “voice” and “exit”. Data Portability focuses only on “exit” and is not just incomplete but massively disempowering to the user of the web app.
He then called out four points he sees as the consumer’s “voice” within a given service:
- Data Accessability (DA)
- Data Visibility (DV)
- Data Removal (DR)
- Data Ownership (DO)
You’ll probably want to read through his entire post for the full meat (there’s much there), but he sums up with:
In summary, incorporating Data Property Rights into the current conversation completes the picture by adding the web app user’s “voice”. This empowers web apps users and it also seeds new viable business models. For-fee services providing strong user rights without a coercive advertising model will emerge and form a new “data infrastructure” layer of the Internet Operating System – it’s a need that is crying out to be fulfilled. If the dominant players do not want to satisfy this need then market forces amplified by user emotion will disrupt them and we will see once again how the net routes around damage – in this case badly damaged Data Property Rights.
I agree with much of what Nitin is saying here. I see the DataPortability Project story as being a strong part of this picture he’s painting. I understand there are a lot of nuances here between “Data Portability” and his four points, and time will tell what consumers latch onto and how the ball is moved forward.
I believe the world’s moving quickly to a point where content units will be quantized to the degree where they will easily flow between distribution/syndication channels. Perhaps it’ll be driven by something like what people are calling the Semantic Web, basically allowing content units to be self-describing so they can be assembled by consumers and their agents (eg. sites, applications, feeds, etc.).
The value in the relationship with a customer, then, is centered around servicing them. Regardless of the content they’re seeking, companies will want to develop a solid relationship with their consumers. In this model, the long term value to the consumer could be a function of (DA,DV,DR,DO,DP). The trick will be in determining the weighted relationships between each parameter (per each consumer/provider pair).
FWIW – My bet is that there won’t be a one-size-fits-all equation, but rather a range of acceptable values based on context.
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May 2nd, 2008 | 
Value Struggle: Data, API, or Presentation Layer
At a recent Semantic Web gathering at MIT, Maximilian Schich gave a talk about “Adding Art Research Data to the Giant Global Graph”. It sparked an interesting discussion regarding the valuable assets within some Linked Data systems and how to monetize them. It is a topic of interest to me as I believe a key adoption hurdle for Linked Data and Semantic Web technologies is in clarifying the value proposition to all parties involved (eg. producers, distributors, and consumers).
Schich talked about his conundrum of what to do with an incredibly rich data set he has access to describing historical art and archeology information. He presented how the data is already well defined within their data model and retrieval scheme. He also outlined how they propose bridging the gap to embrace the current and near-future Linked Data standards. The question, then, was how they would be able to pay for all this work.
There was a lot of discussion around possibly licensing access to the data via SPARQL, but the mechanisms for metering don’t exist, yet. Kingsley Idehen and some others discussed possibilities in adding support at the server layer for a formalized data response similar to HTTP 402 (ie. “payment required”). It was clear, though, that work would need to be done in this area before adopting it as a reasonable direction.
At some point during the conversation, I asked Schich what he believes is his more valuable asset: the data itself, or the presentation layer. After having seen the GUI of the demo application showing how the user could retrieve the data, it was clear that a lot of domain expertise was required to design it. Further, when he showed us the data schema and example retrieval/traversal modes, it was even more obvious that the average researcher would have to interface via the GUI (even if the data is freely available and fully compliant with SemWeb standards).
With this in mind, my suggestion was that he consider opening up the data entirely, forgoing any programmatic metering, and possibly license commercial access to it (allowing for free non-commercial use). My proposal was that they focus on monetizing killer GUI products tuned for each of their specific user groups. In this way, they could service both their institutional and individual users as appropriate.
Fortunately, Tim Berners-Lee jumped in and agreed. He clearly articulated (undoubtedly better than I could) the benefit in separating the data source from the presentation layer. Each, then could be treated separately in context of it’s use and license model.
Thinking about it later, I was reminded of the scene in Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon when [spoiler alert] the characters find a pile of gold in the middle of the jungle on a remote Pacific island. It had been left there by the retreating Japanese army in World War II, and they were trying to figure out how to retrieve it through the unfriendly territory. Basically, what appears incredibly valuable at first glance (ie. a pile of gold = a mountain of rich data), is nearly worthless without a way to get it out.
I hope, however, that Schich is able to find a better solution than was presented in Cryptonomicon.
BTW – Since I mentioned them already, it’s worth noting that both Kingsley and Tim are giving keynotes at the Linked Data Planet conference in New York on June 17th. Also, you can listen to an interview I did with Kingsley a couple weeks ago as part of the DataPortability: In-Motion Podcast.