No More Private Domains

I’ve totally removed private domains from the app, now that there is a background process checking the visibility of each submission. This allows the submitter to toggle the visibility of any submission. I’ve also moved the blocked domains from the (now non-existent) preferences page to the domains page, where it belongs.

Privacy Checking

There has been some discussion about how to protect the privacy of submitted data to Wikidentity, since the client basically enjoys any access/privileges that the browser has. That sometimes includes private data if the user is logged in. Private domains went part of the way to solving this issue, but I’ve improved my methodology by adding a background process that tries to anonymously download the same hCard that was submitted. If it’s found, the hCard is marked public, otherwise it’s set to private. In some cases a public hCard will be marked private, if the page has transient data, but that’s a small price to pay to preserve the privacy of the data. In the short future, I’ll add the ability for users to toggle the visibility of individual hCards that they’ve submitted.

XFN Linking

I’ve added some support for the XFN microformat to Wikidentity. If you are a user, you can create XFN Relationships between yourself and the “profiles” compiled from hCard data that is submitted. You can add a person to your network from any hCard submission, search result or profile found on Wikidentity. There is a link to view your XFN network from your account page.

Perpetually Bouncing Icons

I just committed a patch which fixes a bug that was causing the flash client to stall as it loaded. If this is happening to you, it should clear up once you empty your cache.

Domain Wildcards et al

The pace of development has been slow over the past few weeks, but I’ve managed to get a few things done:

• Added wildcard domain filtering. For example, “ma.gnolia.com/people/*/tags” is now a transient domain.
• Updated the database structure and some queries to make the privacy layer a bit more efficient.
• Alphabetized hCard results for current page. (Cache clearing may be required).

The “Related” tab is becoming ridiculously slow in some cases, and it isn’t all that relevant in the first place, so I may replace that with XFN data in the coming weeks. I’m also working on some user tools to allow people to view and manage their own submissions.

Welcome to the Wikidentity Blog

This is a blog for the Wikidentity project. Wikidentity is a Flash client that shows you any hCards in a page you are browsing, and allows you to search for hCards that other users have helped index.

The goal for this blog is mainly to post updates as I make them to the app, to keep users in the know. Speaking of which, I fixed some bugs that have been hanging around, and made a few cosmetic tweaks:

• Citations and Related People are alphabetized again.
• Safari removes microformats CSS styles when you toggle microformats
• Flash Client closes on the first click of the close button
• You can re-open the client on a page that it’s already been opened on
• Drop shadow headers in Safari
• Using Wolfgang Bartelme’s Microformat Icons on the show Person pages
• Added a blog