Videntity imports hCard and FOAF

Flickr hCard import

Videntity.org, an OpenID server by Dan Libby, now imports user profiles from sites which provide your profile in hCard or FOAF. I hadn’t bothered previously filling in my profile details, but now that I’ve pointed it at my Flickr profile page and my directory page from work (both of which are marked up with hCard) it’s rather terrifyingly filled in all the details for me.

This third-party service now knows my full name, nickname, job, work phone number (which I’ve made private but is still readily available on my work page), and the city and country I live in.

I also pointed it at my last.fm account, but that just confirmed my other details and expanded “UK” to “United Kingdom” (disclaimer: I have now added my jabber address by hand).

It’s been interesting watching these details import and just how much overlap there is between the information on them – not just in seeing how many times I’ve entered the same information but how it actually acts as a positive feedback mechanism, allowing certain bits of my profile to be marked as more reliable than others.

Also interestingly, I seem to recall trying to post to Sam Ruby’s OpenID comments thread using my videntity as a url (both http://pip.videntity.org and delegating from https://philwilson.org/blog, both of which the OpenID tests seem to validate), but it never worked. Alas.

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3 thoughts on “Videntity imports hCard and FOAF”

  1. Hi Phil, This is Dan Libby, author of videntity. (I’m too lazy to sign in without openid.)

    Great post. Even a screenshot. very nice.

    I don’t know why it didn’t work for you signing in to Sam Ruby’s blog. I’ll check it out in a bit.

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