On Thu, 2009-04-30 at 09:39 +0100, Benjamin M. A'Lee wrote: > Would there be a way of marking two accounts on different sites (say > identi.ca and libre.fm) as being the same person?
This is the intention of the WebID field. Essentially URLs are normally used to indicate documents, images and other files. But it's also possible to define a URL which represents not a document, but a physical person, or a car, or a boat, or a sandwich. (Of course, by typing this URL into your web browser, you can't expect a physical person/car/boat/sandwich to be broken up into TCP packets and sent down the wire to your computer.) For example, my WebID is <http://tobyinkster.co.uk/#i>. That URL represents me, a physical person. It should not be confused with <http://tobyinkster.co.uk/> which is a URL representing a document about me. It's important that these URLs are different, because that way I can make statements about their relationship with each other, such as: <http://tobyinkster.co.uk/#i> made <http://tobyinkster.co.uk/> . identi.ca automatically provides WebIDs for all their users (they take the form http://identi.ca/user/XXXX where XXXX is a number), so does the My Opera site and a few other sites as well. If you've got your own website, you could also define a WebID there -- just make sure you pick a URL which doesn't represent a document (if it 404s, that's OK, but it would be more useful if it redirected to a file that contained information about you). libre.fm allows you to tell us your existing WebID, which will be used in its RSS feeds and FOAF files to identify you. If you don't provide one, libre.fm will make one up for you, taking the form <http://alpha.libre.fm/user/YOURNAME#me>. Background reading on WebIDs: <http://esw.w3.org/topic/WebID> Anyway, that it the purpose of the WebID field. That said, I'm also adding a "laconica profile" field which will specifically allow you to indicate your laconica/identi.ca profile, which will allow us to find your RSS feed and perhaps in the future offer even closer integration. -- Toby Inkster <[email protected]> _______________________________________________ Libre-fm mailing list [email protected] http://lists.autonomo.us/mailman/listinfo/libre-fm
