Microformats are perfect for SPAMMERS

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  January 30, 2007 @ 9:12 pm

  Marc’s Voice » Blog Archive » Time to close this month down and move into Black History month

  [...] Paul Walsh (of Segala) asks: “Have I got this totally wrong (which is likely), or is everyone else jumping on the ‘I love Microformats and OpenID’ bandwagon in case they’re not perceived as ‘with it’?!” - Two different issues here dude. 1) OpenID allows for federated IDs, for SSO (single sign-on) and hopefully (soon) attribute exchange. That’s a good thing. And easily spam resistent. 2) Microformats on the other hand are a partial solution to ‘what are the meta-data standards’. That of course is a good thing to solve, but without a complete solution - it’s - well only partially solved. So I’m not asking for more OPEN microformats - I’m asking for microformats as feeds and file formats not JUST page tags. Get it? [...]

  

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  Mike Butcher
  

  January 31, 2007 @ 3:08 am

  I am not an expert on this, but I recall having the same issues with the FOAF format - machine readable contact details.

  

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  Paul Walsh
  

  January 31, 2007 @ 3:14 am

  Thanks for dropping by Mike. You’re right, you could have the same issue with FOAF at present. The FOAF specification is still under development (sigh!). So, some trust elements could be added. The w3c Content Labels working group is lobbying to have it updated to describe organisations as well as people.

  

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  January 31, 2007 @ 4:04 am

  Marc Canter putting me straight at Segala Blog

  [...] I just noticed that Marc Canter has responded to my original post about Microformats and OpenID. Marc reminds me that they’re two different issues. I actually knew this already so I should have known better and not mentioned OpenID in my post. Although, it did attract Mike’s attention so that’s a good thing. [...]

  

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  Kingsley Idehen
  

  January 31, 2007 @ 6:10 am

  It’s important to note that FOAF or hCard by definition do not need to expose all data elements (property values). When a service provider generates FOAF or hCard they must provide their customers/members with the ability to designate what stays private and what goes public. The Semantic Web presents immense opportunities to Social Networking Service providers once they are able to understand the implications of my comments above since they are all contact management service providers at the end of the day with SPAM protection as essential part of the value they offer.

  I note that already does this re. FOAF.

  Thus, a Social Network can provide Open Data Access (via FOAF and hCard for instance) and continue to grow. The real kicker is that growth will actually be exponential since the value consumption will feed of machine to machine consumption of basic and value added services instead of the human to machine dominated interaction of today.

  

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  Conor O'Neill
  

  January 31, 2007 @ 6:48 am

  As I said over at Tom’s blog, if you don’t want your information to be used by the wrong people, don’t put it on the web. hCard makes everyone’s lives easier, both the good guys and the bad guys.

  Spammers overcame silly messing like email obfuscation years ago. I’m happy for all my details to be out there as a hCard and I’ve seen no increase in email/postal/phone spam since I did.

  

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  Kingsley Idehen
  

  January 31, 2007 @ 7:09 am

  Conor,

  Again, there is no rule that says you put data in hCard or FOAF that you don’t want to be exposed to the public. The key thing is that the hCard or FOAF generator honors this.

  For instance, you can build a valuable data source from a social network without revealing email and other contact details. The richness of the graph the underpins the social network will naturally stimulate the need for more personal connections to be established etc. And it is at this point that the hCard or FOAF provide can kick in as the communications processing manager based on in-built message handling and routing rules.

  Social Networks and contact manaement engines at the end of the day, whether they know this or not.

  Social Networks that play well with the Semantic Web (along the lines I describe) will provide valuable White List Services to a new generation of Rules Bases MTA (Mail Transfer Agent) filters and Sink Drivers (the piece that persist mails on behalf of the MTA into a file system of DBMS engine).

  SPAM will be killed by a combination of RDF Data based White Lists, Rules, and MTA filters and Sink Drivers.

  

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  Conor O'Neill
  

  January 31, 2007 @ 1:57 pm

  Yeah, I made the point about “how much” on Tom’s blog. I think the only field that is compulsory in a hCard is fn (full name).

  

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  Sam Sethi
  

  January 31, 2007 @ 3:31 pm

  Paul, we all agree the semantic web is the way forward. One way is microformats and the other way is RDF.

  The link below is from my friend Mark Birbeck who co-wrote part of the XHTML2, Xforms and RDFa specs showing there is a possible third way RDFa.
  http://internet-apps.blogspot.com/2006/10/rdfa-and-microformats.html

  Microformats are working today because they are simple to implement and are providing immediate value already. Tails, Operator and WebCards along with sites Flickr, Yahoo, Upcoming etc

  RDF is the logical systematic way to create a search and query internet but it feels like it is taking for ever to get started and is so hard to grasp for the average user with no immediate return.

  The comparison I will offer is the fight of HTML against the Client/Server C++ world.

  I remember when at Netscape presenting the idea of a browser with simple HTML and being told by corporates it will never take off it was too simple etc. Well we all know what happened there.

  I think we are going to see a convergence of semantic ideas in the next few years thanks to XHTML2 (namespaces), GRRDL and browser support for Xforms etc.

  So my interest in MF’s now is because I can do something with them and they are adding value. I am looking at RDFa and XHTML2 and waiting to see how much support Firefox3 adds.

  The one company that I think will come from left-field to make RDF work is Google. They are big supporters of Atom/GData/XQuery, Atom Publishing Protocol which is in the new Blogger release to replace XML-RPC. Add to this their support for XMPP in GTalk and GCalendar and you can see that Google could start to add in FOAF support firstly in Atom. Google have not supported MF’s which makes me think they will leap frog everyone and go straight to the RDF semantic web and make the web both searchable and easy to query. see Gdata.

  So it is actually a semantic point whether we trust hCards or FOAF.

  

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  Kingsley Idehen
  

  January 31, 2007 @ 3:38 pm

  Sam,

  Microformats vs. RDF is not a battle that anyone wants to wage. These efforts are so complimentary I cannot put into words.

  Microformats provide a nice foundation for unobtrusively producing RDF Data Model Instance Data without placing the burden on the end-user. In short, this is another effort (like Web 2.0 as a whole) that actually helps to crystallize the entire Semantic Web vision.

  Microformats and RDF are good for each other. Mark Bierbeck certainly knows that hence his effort re. RDF/A :-).

  I will soon be exposing some live demos to expose the critical point I am trying to make.

  

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  Paul Walsh
  

  February 1, 2007 @ 9:10 am

  I don’t think it’s a competition between Microformats and RDF. In fact, I don’t think you can really compare them. When I chatted with David Sifry from Technorati in Paris his face almost turned red when I mentioned RDF and FOAF. Personally I think it was the usual misconception about the Semantic Web that prompted his retort. Although he did give me Tantek’s email address when I gave examples such as Content Labels as a means of demonstrating benefits in the very near future.

  I don’t believe the Semantic Web has to be all about RDF either. Further to your question about Firefox (Sam), it’s a huge supporter of RDF already, so introducing new concepts such as Content Labels is seamless.

  

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  February 18, 2007 @ 11:36 pm

  Marc Canter putting me straight

  [...] I just noticed that Marc Canter has responded to my original post about Microformats and OpenID. Marc reminds me that they’re two different issues. I actually knew this already so I should have known better and not mentioned OpenID in my post. Although, it did attract Mike’s attention so that’s a good thing. [...]

  

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