[p2p-research] Fwd: Mozilla Labs Ubiquity and Linked Data

Sat Sep 6 16:53:30 CEST 2008

2008/9/4 Samuel Rose <samuel.rose at gmail.com>

> Holy Sh**! this is awesome...
>

Quite :)

See also:
http://groups.google.com/group/esp/browse_thread/thread/49f5b923931aed16

Actually, you need to be a member to see that so I'll copy it here (I think
tav should do a call out on p2p foundation blog and have told him as much
but to no avail as yet - he was worried he can't write in an academic enough
style, although I pointed out not all articles on there are like that:

Hey all,

Bit by bit, the Plexnet dream is being realised =)

Some of you may know about Mozilla Ubiquity:

* http://labs.mozilla.com/2008/08/introducing-ubiquity/

It's a Firefox extension that allows for commands to be written quite
easily in Javascript -- a peer-to-peer application framework (based on
doing mashups of web apps). They are still a way off but the core idea
is pretty sound -- some of you may recall it as what I used to refer
to as creating a command line for the internet...

Then, earlier today, Google announced a new web browser (Google Chrome):

* http://www.google.com/chrome
* http://code.google.com/chromium/

It's a pretty decent browser which uses Webkit (the same rendering
engine as used by Safari/Konqueror/iPhone/new iPhones), a new
super-fast javascript engine called V8 and a nice sandboxed feature
which means that if one tab (web app) dies then your whole browser
doesn't crash.

Now, I was going to code up a minimal "Plexnet Browser" based on
Webkit. But Chrome takes it a lot further -- including porting Webkit
to Microsoft Windows. Ironically, they've only got a Windows build of
Chrome available atm -- the Linux and OS X builds should appear before
the end of the month.

And, given the added features that Chrome offers, I'd like to shift
the Plexnet Browser to take advantage of this. For simple reasoning,
just check out the crazy performance advantage:

* http://www.sfu.ca/~cyrille/news/CFM.gif<http://www.sfu.ca/%7Ecyrille/news/CFM.gif>

Whilst I can do minimal wrapping of Webkit in Objective-C, I'm not a
C++ coder, so am never going to be able to pull it off. Which is where
you come in =)

I need your help to do the following:

# Add a Minimal Extensions support

I spoke with Aaron Boodman -- the dude behind the GreaseMonkey Firefox
extension. He's one of the main guys at the Google Chrome team
responsible for Extensions. In his words, defining the Extensions
framework for Chrome is wide open...

Mozilla Ubiquity is a very simple extension -- it uses very little of
Firefox's extensions mechanism. It's mainly just running some
"chrome-privileged" javascript and interacting with the DOM. So from
the Chrome Extensions support, all I really need is:

* Sandboxed Extension execution -- check out the Sandboxed Plugins execution

* Loading of "chrome-privileged" javascript
* Access to the Renderer's DOM and making URI calls
* Simple preferences pane for the Extension in HTML

# Mplayer Plugin

Native support for the Mplayer Plugin:
http://mplayerplug-in.sourceforge.net/

Webkit's support for HTML 5's <video> and <audio> elements needs to be
hijacked to be supported by all formats supported by the Mplayer
Plugin's (or any plugin's for that matter) Javascript API. I'd be
happy to work on the JS bit...

# Removing of Bookmarks

I find it surprising that they kept bookmarks -- it's like including
floppy disk drives in today's computers! With Ubiquity and the
capacity to dynamically add functionality like this -- e.g.
integration with delicious, I see no reason for legacy bookmarking
functionality.

# Removing of Gears

This is not a priority, so feel free to skip it. But, I'd like to have
it removed if it is just sitting around wasting memory needlessly.

Gears is in some ways a competitive element to some of the Plexnet
protocols. But, sadly, it's a shit competitor. It's not defined in a
peer-to-peer way at all. I spent a few days earlier this year trying
to make it useful, but sadly it doesn't do anything that wouldn't be
better enabled by the Ubiquity-esque extension support making calls to
a local HTTP server.

# Multi-Platform Build

Chromium (the open source code base behind Chrome) should build on OS
X and Linux in the next week or so. I'd like to have a build for the
iPhone/iPodTouch as well -- incorporating any elements of the
multi-touch events that might be missing from Apple's iPhone Safari
implementation and Google's Android Webkit modification.

A little bit of rebranding needs to take place for all builds as the
"Plexnet Browser". By default, all builds should start up a Plexnet
node in the background if one isn't already running. This is a Python
2.6 application that I will provide.

##

Let me know what you can do for this -- every line of code would help.
Thanks!! *kiss*

-- 
love, tav
plex:espians/tav |
t...<http://groups.google.com/groups/unlock?_done=/group/esp/browse_thread/thread/49f5b923931aed16&msg=61875cbd5f1ecada>
@espians.com | +44 (0) 7809 569 369

>
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Kingsley Idehen <kidehen at openlinksw.com>
> Date: Thu, Sep 4, 2008 at 11:20 AM
> Subject: Re: Mozilla Labs Ubiquity and Linked Data
> To: public-lod at w3.org
> Cc: semantic-web at w3.org, public-lod at w3.org
>
>
>
> Hausenblas, Michael wrote:
>
>> UPDATE: After a rather short night (I tell you, toying around with
>> ubiquity is *really* addictive) there are now two more commands
>> available: one for querying DBpedia (simple skos:subject on categories)
>> and a curl HEAD command (should be self-explanatory).
>>
>> If you develop (Web of Data) commands as well, please consider
>> announcing them on the Mozilla Wiki [1].
>>
>> Cheers,
>>        Michael
>>
>> [1]
>> https://wiki.mozilla.org/Labs/Ubiquity/Commands_In_The_Wild#Web_Of_Data
>>
>> ----------------------------------------------------------
>>  Michael Hausenblas, MSc.
>>  Institute of Information Systems & Information Management
>>  JOANNEUM RESEARCH Forschungsgesellschaft mbH
>>   http://www.joanneum.at/iis/
>> ----------------------------------------------------------
>>
>>
>
> Here is our initial Ubiquity command for Linked Data which has the command
> pattern: describe-page <URL>:
> http://demo.openlinksw.com/ubiq/
>
> Of course there is more to come re. a generic SPARQL command etc..
>
>
> --
>
>
> Regards,
>
> Kingsley Idehen       Weblog: http://www.openlinksw.com/blog/~kidehen<http://www.openlinksw.com/blog/%7Ekidehen>
> President & CEO OpenLink Software     Web: http://www.openlinksw.com
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> --
> Sam Rose
> Social Synergy
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>
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-- 
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