Strands Blog

A week ago I sent a note to Chris Saad letting him know that I’d like to participate in the Data Portability group as a part of MyStrands. I wanted to talk a little bit about why we wanted to do that.We’re really excited about the work that the Data Portability (DP) group is chartered to do. The goal of the group is to build a set of technical and policy blueprints based on existing technologies and concepts that will allow for the free-flow and control of data by users among sites on the web. Taking advantage of the building blocks like OpenID, OAuth and microformats allows the effort to move that much faster.Although we have many of the components we need to get this started, I do still believe we’re missing some key elements. We still don’t have a clear means of messaging, attention data is still being sorted out and there still isn’t a good way to describe a users general tastes. Over the coming months we’ll be working on ways to tackle this “taste” problem in hopes that it can also become one of the key building blocks of the web.Chris Saad has done a great job in getting everyone to the table for the discussion. That’s more than just about anybody else has been able to do and I think timing is a key component here. I’m really hoping that we can get folks to agree on a course of action and move things forward quickly. The only concern I would have is that we’re all sitting down to the table for dinner and I’m not sure we all know what “dinner” is. That said, we’re game and really interested in seeing this happen. Its inevitable and this is a great chance to make it happen.MyStrands is committed to the Data Portability group because we believe we can really help make things happen and be an integral part of its success.