I stated recently that I wasn’t go to Chair or speak at conferences this year as I had my fill of them last year. I’ve already had to decline 2 kind offers to Chair very good conferences. So I’m being very picky about the events I attend this year. If I’m to Chair or speak, it must be directly related to Segala’s business, be beneficial to the community (i.e. it’s no more than £40 to attend and not the typical £750+), or be in a sunny location Don’t get me wrong, I love to be asked. I just don’t have the time these days.

The Irish Web Technology Conference is my first speaking slot of the year.

What I’m going to talk about

I’m going to deliver a presentation on how Content Labels (AKA POWDER) will enable more trust on the Web. I’ll have with me, a tin of Heinze Baked Beans to help me demonstrate how Content Labels help consumers make better informed decisions about the suitability of products before making a purchase.

Sound interesting? Well, why not come along. As with every conference, you’re likely to get most value by hanging out in the hallway chatting to others and with around 500 delegates expected, you’re likely to meet some very interesting people. I might give away a prize as a means of keeping everyone awake. I’ve done this before and it seems to work well.

Oh by the way, all of this Content Labels malarkey is based on the Semantic Web. Don’t tell anyone though as they might assume it’s academic, boring or a nice concept.

About the conference

WHY?

This event’s aim is to showcase the sheer brilliance of the Irish Web Industry. It’s a four day, 10 track, 50 session web extravaganza.

WHAT?

The inaugural IWTC 2008 organised by IrishDev.com in association with the Dublin Java User Group and First Port Jobs, is the first of seven major technology conference in our Series 2008.

IWTC 2008 is an event by the Irish Java community for the Irish Java community and will bring many experts and internationally renowned speakers together to discuss latest trends and emerging technologies.

With almost 50 expert technology sessions to choose from, covering a breadth of Web technologies, this is yet another tech conference you can’t afford to miss!

When?

Begins Tuesday 26th February, Ends Friday 29th.

Where?

Cineworld Complex Parnell Street, Dublin 1

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As a way of thanking everyone for their contribution, I decided to give away the iPod anyway. So, tonight I pasted everyone’s name into a word document and assigned a number to each one. I then asked my Twitter friends to suggest a number so I could choose the winner. I’m extremely lucky because Pat Phelan picked Mike Butcher’s number.

That’s the good news for Mike. The lucky news for me is that one of Mike’s suggestions was powdrr.com Given that Aido and I came up with POWDR, I think Mike should have won anyway.

Talk about being lucky! And I’m referring to me being lucky, not Mike. Reading back on this post, I’m wondering if we should go with powdrr instead of POWDR. Argh!

Weird huh?

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We’re changing the name of our Firefox extension and we’d like to solicit your help in return for the opportunity to feel good and win an iPod Touch at the same time.

The current working name is ‘Search Thresher’ which I’m sure you’ll agree, is too much of a mouthful.

In order for you to win, your nomination must be used in full. Even if we decide to use your nomination in part, you won’t win. This is mainly because we’ve already thought of lots of names using terms you’re likely to think of, but perhaps in a different combination. If you come up with a name that we’ve already thought of and we decide to go with it, then obviously you’ll win.

So, we need to ensure this little competition is transparent and in no way, open to interpretation. This is especially important because bloggers are a sceptical lot and I’m certain some of you already think that this is rigged in some way

How to enter

Either drop us a comment on this post, or write a blog post of your own. If you decide to write your own post, please ensure to use a trackback so we get to see it. That’s it.

Closing date

25th January 2008 – so get moving.

Some background to help you out

Today, search engines provide the title and description of Web sites in search results, with prominence given to the highest bidder, not the most relevant or most trusted. Wouldn’t it be useful to know, which Web sites conform to industry standards and best practices without having to visit each site to find out? Wouldn’t you sometimes like to know which Web sites are accessible, child friendly, mobile friendly, endorsed by a qualified medical authority, or follow best practices for privacy and copyright?

Millions of Web site owners already demonstrate their conformance and commitment to standards and best practices by displaying a Trustmark on their Web site. However, search engines don’t provide this valuable information in search results.

Consumers have come to expect content labels on the back of products in the supermarket, as they provide information about the suitability of their contents. Sometimes the labels are relevant and sometimes they’re not, but everyone at some point uses them. Some people use them all of the time.

Segala is helping to bring the same concept to the Web using a new method of classifying and labelling content. Funnily enough, the method is called Content Labels.

A Content Label is a file that contains Metadata on steroids. It’s this Metadata that search engines and browsers can now use to provide more meaningful information in search results.

So, now about the Firefox extension

Segala owns a Firefox extension that reads Content Labels and does exactly what I’ve explained above. The screen shot below should give you an idea for how it annotates Google to highlight Web sites that have a Content Label. In short, red x means there is no additional information. An amber tick means the Web site owner is making a claim about their own Web site. A green tick means a trusted third party has independently verified the Web site owner’s claim.

There’s plenty more that the extension can and will do as we launch monthly builds from next month, but that should be enough information to get you thinking about a new name.

The extension is being endorsed by the W3C and is one of four applications used by the W3C Semantic Web Education and Outreach Special (SWEO) Interest group, to help demonstrate a real implementation of the Semantic Web.

Hint

Here are some keywords to consider: Trust, Security, Reliable, Relevant, Suitable, Appropriate, Semantic Web, Better Discovery.

Keywords you should not consider: censorship and filter.

Ideally the name will contain one word and a maximum of two.

You can make as many suggestions as you like. So, get going and suggest some names now. Good luck and thanks for helping out

Check out the early-stage concept browser and have a play.

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Bebo has welcomed the cross Web site application trend and has become the first to adopt the Facebook Platform Standards. They’re also planning to support OpenSocial in 2008. I really like their attitude, the idea of opening up APIs is semantically brilliant. The Semantic Web is about ‘common formats for integration and combination of data drawn from diverse sources’. Of course the facebook model and that of all social networking sites relies on advertising, advertising largely based on the valuable information gathered from each sites’ members, so the information becomes a commodity. Wherever there’s a potential commodity there will be competing forces trying to get their share of it.

Profit will always win over semantic interest, but, well done to Bebo for the move!

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The most applicable point for me in Damien’s post, was

It was in a past blog post here where I said that if we controlled our activity data, we could actually make money from search engines and the likes of Microsoft HealthVault, so there’s potential there. So I was quite interested when Mozilla announced Weave, their system which will store your Firefox preferences on their servers and when you install a new Firefox on a new computer, it can go to the Mozilla servers and download all your preferences and bookmarks.

According to Mozilla

The idea behind Weave is that all your personal information — bookmarks, passwords and account names, for example — are synced to your Mozilla account via Firefox. If you lose your computer, you can download Firefox, log into your account and you can restore all that information. You can do some of this today if you use Google Browser Sync and Dot Mac services. You can start by creating an account with Mozilla Services. You will need Firefox 3.0 or higher to get this working.

This is relevant to me as the functionality behind the Mozilla Weave has been available in Glaxstar‘s Firefox browser for more than 2 years. When I say available, I’m referring to every single last detail. Whilst Glaxtstar’s Glubble browser is new, I’ve had insight to their technology for quiet some time.

Glaxstar is possibly the only development company in the world that could build a competitive Firefox browser to Mozilla in my opinion (Flock is a 1.0 effort compared to what these guys can do!). That’s if Ian decided to take that route. As it happens, he’s just interested in helping guardians to protect their loved ones from inappropriate content.

Note that I didn’t say, help to protect minors, or help governments protect people. That’s not his job. It’s not Google’s job, it’s not Segala’s job and it’s not the Government’s job either. Ian’s job is to help guardians who are responsible for deciding what’s appropriate and inappropriate for the people they’re responsible for. Technology should be perceived and used as an enabler, not a prohibiter. Furthermore, what a guardian in Germany deems approproate is not likely to be the same as what a guardian thinks in the UK for example. This is why I’d like people to perceive Content Labels as an enabler to help mainstream search engines and browsers to provide better content discovery, not a method for policing the Web.

So, I wouldn’t be surprised if Glaxstar gave the Weave code to Mozilla given that they’ve had it for more than a couple of years and they built Mozilla’s mainstream browser extensions for companies such as Google, Yahoo!, PayPal and eBay. They also maintain spreadfirefox.com and are responsible for resolving defects in the mainstream Firefox browser. That makes Glaxstar the most qualified company in the world to build Firefox add-ons in my opinion.

Luckily for me, Ian Howard, Founder of Glaxstar, is a personal friend of mine. So, who better to build Segala’s Firefox trust extension (not plug-in, that’s something different) Search Thresher. Our extension really is based on The Semantic Web, unlike the claims made by many of the co-called Semantic Web search engines.

Sorting the wheat from the chaff

As I’ve said, Glaxstar and Segala have been working together for the past couple of years. Although, we haven’t updated our extension in over a year (I guess that demonstrates how ahead of the curve we’ve been). As of February though, you should expect to see regular updates for our Trust extension.

Search Thresher is just one of the pieces in our jigsaw to help demonstrate why and how we feel very confident that 2008 is the year to tell Segala’s story. You will notice me talking less about conferences that I host and Chair and more about our Semantic Web method of classifying content.

What’s with the name?

The thrashing machine, or, in modern spelling, threshing machine (or simply thresher), was a machine first invented by Scottish mechanical engineer Andrew Meikle for use in agriculture. It was invented (c.1784) for the separation of grain from stalks and husks.

For thousands of years, grain was separated by hand with flails, and was very laborious and time consuming. Mechanization of this process took the drudgery out of farm labour.

Today, searching the Web is equally laborious. You may or may not find what you’re ’searching’ for and even when you do find what you want, can you trust what you find?

Think of Search Thresher as a threshing machine. It’s a Firefox extension used to demonstrate to search engines and mainstream browsers, how they can (and should!) provide users with more trust on the Web using a method called Content Labelling.

We haven’t touched the extension for over a year as we’ve been focused on other stuff that I’ll tell you about soon. If you’re a designer and would like to be recognized for your work, please feel free to volunteer your services to rebrand the Web site. Search Thresher is a non-profit standards based browser, so this may be of interest if you’re a standards enthusiasts.

We’re not emotionally attached to the name Search Thresher. What do you think of it? We’re open to suggestions if you can propose something better.

Read more about Content Labels – this post also includes sample use cases.

Watch a quick video about Content Labels

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One of the standards I’d like Microsoft to dump however, is PICS (Platform for Internet Content Selection). PICS was one of the very first W3C recommendations and the first to be adopted by Internet Explorer during the mid 90’s. It’s still in use today by the Content Advisor functionality (see screen shot below) to help parents protect children from inappropriate content.

PICS however, is inaccurate and it’s certainly not flexible enough to be meaningful in any way. This means that the filtering tool in IE is obsolete. It’s not Microsoft’s fault though, there hasn’t been an alternative until now.

What’s the alternative?

PICS will soon be formally replaced by a new method of classifying content called Content Labels in approximately two to four months. Before I move on and in case you haven’t read this blog before now, a Content Label put simply, is a file that contains Metadata on steroids. It’s this Metadata that would enable IE to learn more information about Web sites before presenting search results to end users.

As we’ve demonstrated with a Firefox extension in the screen shot below, IE could place a tiny icon beside each search result. This would tell users whether each Web site owner was making an assertion about the suitability of their content or not. As you can see from the screen shot, we’ve placed a red x beside search results where the Web site owners are not making an assertion of any kind.

The red x could just as easily be a question mark, or an exclamation mark. The search result with a green tick represents a Web site which has been independently verified by a trusted third party. The screen shot doesn’t display any search results with an amber tick but this could reflect Web sites that are making an assertion which hasn’t necessarily been verified by anyone.

Upon clicking on each icon the user is presented with a certificate, containing more information about the suitability of the content on that particular site. The certificate in the screen shot below isn’t particularly meaningful right now, but it could have a list of icons on the left side with a description of what each one represents to the right. Users could then select each icon to find out more about the actual assertions made by the site owner.

Based on the same Metadata, IE could build a better version of content advisor so users could filter Web sites based on more accurate and meaningful personal preferences. That’s what you call personalised search based on trust, relevance and safety.

Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the Web, Ivan Herman, Semantic Web Lead and others at the W3C, felt that the term Content Label would give the perception that we wanted to police the Internet. So, they asked that the name be changed to POWDER (Protocol for Web Description Resources). Don’t ask and I won’t confuse you any further.

I must admit, I was against their request for a name change but after delivering a few presentations, I quickly realised that some people, irrespective of how many times you say otherwise, think Content Labels is about policing the Web. So we decided to agree to the name change for the sake of keeping the peace and moving the project forward.

Whilst we refer to our method of classifying content in the W3C as POWDER, we will always refer to it as Content Labels outside of the W3C, as we find that it’s easier for our audience to relate to labels. I can’t even remember what POWDER stands for most of the time

So, in summary, POWDER and Content Labels is the same thing.

Why IE should read Content Labels to enable more trusted search results

1. Content Labels will replace PICS as a ratified standard in approximately two to four months, thereby making IE’s method of filtering obsolete as I said earlier.
2. IE can highlight Web sites that make assertions about conformance to industry standards and best practices. Type of assertions include accessibility, adult, privacy, copyright, eco-friendly, medical, marketing and more. PICS is only capable of making one type of assertion.
3. PICS and every other implementation of trust on the Web today, including SSL Certificates for security, are extremely limited in functionality. They only permit you to make an assertion about an entire domain. Content Labels on the other hand, are so flexible that it’s possible to make an assertion about an entire domain, or about specific Web pages.
4. Content Labels are based on the Semantic Web and therefore future proofing the Web for better content discovery.

How it works

Without getting into the technical detail, the browser would identify a Web site with a Content Label by locating a link tag in the header, just as it does with the title and description tags. It looks something like

< link rel=”meta” xhref=”http://www.segala.com/labels/tcuk_label_001.rdf” type=”application/rdf+xml” title=”Segala label” /

The browser then reads the contents of the Content Label by following the link above. Self labelled sites can be stored by site owners. Sites that have been independently verified reside on the trusted providers’ server.

Read more about Content Labels, the use cases and how mass adoption can be achieved.

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According to Jason

Web 3.0 is defined as the creation of high-quality content and services produced by gifted individuals using Web 2.0 technology as an enabling platform.

I remember saying something very similar quite some time ago, but I’ve since changed my mind. There must be more to it than that. Before getting straight into Web 3.0, I’ll start by providing my brief definition of Web 2.0.

From a technology perspective

Web 2.0 can be described as technology which enables end users to create content on the Web more quickly, easily and cheaply. Examples of such technology include blogs, wikis and platforms such as flickr.

From a marketing perspective

Enabled by technology, Web 2.0 can be described as consumer behaviour influenced by consumers. We no longer live in an era where brand owners are in total control of their own marketing. Consumers now find it quicker, easier and cheaper to communicate their opinion about products and services, which in turn, influences other consumers.

What is Web 3.0?

One thing is for sure, it has got to be something more than the ability to do all of the above, better. Let’s call that Web 2.5 service pack x. Gifted individuals who deliver higher quality content is incremental and continuous in my opinion. So I don’t think we should draw a line in the sand to define a specific milestone for people’s ability to do something better.

Jeremiah Owyang thinks that Jason is right just because Google appear to have a similar opinion. He says

By chance Jason’s definition completely matches what Google (his competitor now) just launched. Because this is a Google product, could we expect search results to favor Google products that are correctly optimized to be found over Mahalo or Wikipedia?

Jeremiah’s first commentator responded by saying

To give something a label like web 3.0 there has to be some major innovation behind it. Minus Googles credibility this product is not bringing anything new. This is more like baby steps in that direction.

I agree.

According to Udi Manber on Google’s official blog to which Jeremiah refers

The web contains an enormous amount of information, and Google has helped to make that information more easily accessible by providing pretty good search facilities.

What a load of crap. Google doesn’t ‘make information any more accessible’ than Excite did during the 90’s. It certainly doesn’t provide ‘pretty good search results’.

The only thing that Google has done for search is turn it into a mass of untrustworthiness. What they do well is mix organic search results with those that have been paid for. What’s worse, is that Google gives precedence to the highest bigger.

Don’t get me started on Web sites that are created specifically to market products they don’t sell, but instead, redirect you to Web sites that do sell them.

Google could just as easily provide more information about Web sites to allow users make better-informed decisions based on the suitability of content on each Web site. The only information it provides (admittedly the only information that any search engine provides today) is the title and description. How do you know which ones to trust? The answer is, you don’t!

My definition of Web 3.0

There is a philosophy enabled by a technology that’s not yet understood or utilized properly and I think the realization of that, should be referred to as Web 3.0. That philosophy is called the Semantic Web. The technology can be described as ‘interoperable metadata that lies beneath each Web page’ (for the techies it’s called Resource Description Framework). It’s not all about RDF, but it is pretty central to the conversation.

By reading additional metadata about Web sites, Google could provide end users with more information from the search results. Wouldn’t it be useful to know which Web sites are appropriate for minors, accessible to disabled users or mobile friendly? Wouldn’t you also like to know at times, which Web sites adopt advertising and marketing best practices, adopt privacy best practices, or have been independently verified by a medical authority?

This is all possible with the aid of metadata. That’s what I call better content discover based on trusted search results. The problem is, search engines such as Google choose not to read it.

That’s what I call Web 3.0

[Update: 00:50] I forgot to mention that Jason and I have discussed a possible collaboration. I believe there’s a place for Mahalo. I also think there’s a need to improve all major search engines (including Mahalo) based on open standards.

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I don’t wish to commentate on OpenID or FOAF. I do however, want to voice my concern over the misuse of the word ‘identity’ and how it is being associated with OpenID and other so-called solutions to solve identity.

OpenID , is a central register of user names and passwords. So, rather than having say, 10 different user names and passwords for 10 different Web sites, you create an OpenID account and associate it with the 10 user names. That is of course, assuming the 10 Web sites support OpenID by connecting to your account.

FOAF stands for Friend of a Friend. The FOAF project is creating a Web of machine-readable pages describing people, the links between them and the things they create and do.

According to Steve Ivy to which Sam refers in his twitter message

In less than a nutshell, the DIG is using the relationship data in their members’ FOAF files to build a whitelist of users (identified by their OpenID) who can comment on the site.

According to the image on Steve’s blog, which I think he borrowed from Tim Berners-Lee (looking at the file name when I save it)

OpenID Login proves identity

According to Dan Connolly from the W3C

As Simon Willison notes, OpenID solves the identity problem, not the trust problem.

I have to take issue with their use of the word ‘identity’.

OpenID does not prove identity. Identity has a universal meaning to just about everyone on the planet. So why is there so much confusion on the Web?

What is Identity?

When asked for ID by a car rental company for example, you know without fail, that they’re asking for either your passport or drivers license.

Why? Well, because before you were issued with a passport or drivers license, you had to prove ‘who’ you say you are. You did this by getting a trusted third party such as a solicitor or police officer who knows you, to verify your identity. Your identity as confirmed and documented by a trusted third party, was then sent to the appropriate authority for final processing.

Going back to OpenID, you can setup an account under any name and associate it with any number of profiles. None of this information is verified by anyone. Does this prove you are who you say you are? In other words, does it prove your identity? The answer is no. It does prove your identity if by that you mean something entirely different to what the vast majority of the population already believe identity to mean.

I have only witnessed one person articulate the same opinion as me and that’s Saul Klein. Saul understands identity, he co-founded TRUSTe which is the most widely recongnised Trustmark for privacy on the Internet. Saul articulated his opinion about identity after a Garlic presentation at Essential Web, where he was on the panel to whom Garlik pitched. I was on a different panel but was dying to quiz Garlik about their terminology.

How to solve the problem

Just like we do with passports and drivers licenses in the offline world, we can have our company and personal details verified by a trusted third party such as Experian or Equifax. I chose these companies because they already hold personal details and credit scores for most of us.

We could then associate that verified information with a technical solution such as Content Labels (known as POWDER by the W3C for political reasons), FOAF or some other kind of Certificate which can be recognized by a browser or other tool. Only then can you solve the ‘identity’ problem. By default, it would mean we’re half-way to resolving the trust issue at the same time.

If you consider the passport scenario… Experian and Equifax act as the solicitor or police officer who knows you. The Content Label/Certificate authority act as the passport office by issuing the proof of identity.

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About Content Labels

When browsing the Web, wouldn’t it be nice to get more information about Web sites before having to visit each one? Wouldn’t it be nice if Google provided more that just the title and description of each Web page from the search results.

For example, wouldn’t it be nice to know which sites comply with accessibility standards, or which sites are appropriate for children or mobile phone browsing? You might want to know which sites have been independently verified by a medical authority when searching for advice on something which may influence your decision to buy medication online. Well, until Content Labels came along, none of this has been possible.

In summary, a Content Label is a file that contains Metadata. To help enable more trust on the Web, organisations use a Content Label alongside Trustmarks to demonstrate that their Web site complies with specific Web standards and best practices.

In concept, Content Labels act in a similar fashion to SSL Certificates. SSL Certificates are used so browsers can tell if a site is secure for credit card transactions. However, Content Labels are much more flexible. They can be used to make claims about a specific section of a Web site without the restriction of having to make a claim about an entire domain. They can also be used to make claims about any type of standard, best practice or code of conduct.

As you can see from the screen shot of our Firefox extension above, browsers that read Content Labels provide more information about Web sites by placing a small icon next to each search result. When a user clicks on the icon, more information about the appropriateness of the Web site is presented in a certificate.

Some people jump to the conclusion that we’re trying to ‘police the Internet’. We’re not. Web site owners don’t have to use Content Labels to make assertions about anything. Furthermore, it’s possible to label your own Web site without having to use a trusted third-party such as Segala to verify your claims. For example, Creative Commons is free, so you won’t have to pay for a Content Label for that type of badge when we’ve created one.

Content Labels, now known as POWDER in the W3C, will replace an old W3C standard called PICS; the system currently used by Internet Explorer for filtering content. POWDER (Content Labels) is not owned or patented by Segala. It’s soon to be a ratified standard.

Read one of my previous blog posts for an in-depth explanation to help you gain a better understanding.

What’s needed

We need a brand identity that represents terms such as Trust, Relevant and Reliable. Iconography would include an icon in the browser status bar. The icon would light up when a user visits a Web page which contains a label. We also need iconography for the Web site.

Take a look at Microformats.org for an insight to what’s needed for ContentLabel.org – it’s pretty much the same. Contentlabel.org is intended to help industry create new best practices to help improve trust on the Web.

Getting paid

This is an open standards project so we’ll ensure your work is widely recognized. We’ll also buy you a beer or two, or three
If you’re interested, please provide us with a few examples of your work. We’ll publish the short list and get the public to decide on the most appropriate designer. This project is open to agencies, freelancers and students.

We must have the brand identity and main logo complete by December 4th as we have a marketing campaign setup for around that time.

Get in touch now if you’re interested in contributing to this new exciting project.

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Next on the agenda is a vocabulary for the mobile web best practices and blogs.

If there is a code of conduct YOU would like seen turned into a content label vocabulary then drop me a message on http://contentlabel.org/ and we’ll try and cook one up

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