PhilI'm thinking about how #discovery and #search could work in the #Fediverse. In particular, using one's social network as an alternative to a centralised search engine. One option would be to index URLs referred to in posts and boosts from your network, and I actually have the data and infrastructure set up to relatively easily try that, but I'm also thinking about a more deliberate way to post lists of bookmarks which others can index.
The simplest scheme I can think of is:
1. Use verified links to connect my #Mastodon profile to my homepage (done). This is a bit Mastodon-centric at the moment, but I'm sure there are similar approaches for other applications, and maybe we could eventually have a standard.
2. Use #FOAF autodiscovery to connect my homepage to a FOAF profile (done). This is resurrecting what seems to be a pretty dead technology, but it also does seem like a useful tool for the job.
3. Use some sort of semantic web technology to link my FOAF profile to my list of bookmarks (todo). I haven't yet found a good existing way to do this. There are various library and publishing oriented ontologies, some of which link to FOAF, but none really seem right for the job. It may be necessary to create something new here.
4. Express my list of bookmarks in a standard format (todo). Again, I haven't found an obvious existing way of doing this. The Firefox bookmark export format might be workable, but it's not great, and I think we really need things like annotations and a way to share indexing data. Maybe a single new ontology can cover both of these points.
I'd be very interested to know if anyone has any thoughts on any of this, or if anyone knows of any related projects, e.g. Ties from @raffomania and @pears.
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