[humanmarkup-comment] Points of convergence wsia-HumanML

[Rex Brooks <rexb@starbourne.com>]

Hi all,

I'm making notes about Identity issues that are being brought up in WSIA/WSRP.

Since Len brought up this issue, and I already replied this morning, I 
think it is good to bear in mind that things with regard to this issue, 
which will either affect us or we will affect are really heating up. 
Needless to say, I think we need to be in the latter case so as to avoid 
being adversely effected.

First, the key to the widespread use of HumanML is going to be in the area 
of Portal/Portlet based Web Services and particularly in the area of 
personalization. This is a very large area, and while I believe we should 
not interpose ourselves or HumanML in the single-sign-on Authentication 
side of this issue, we need to be positioned to take advantage of and 
provide real benefit to the Certification side as an add-on, not a primary 
component.

The area of preferences and molding the user interface, or allowing the 
user interface to be molded according to individual preferences, and how or 
where those preferences are stored and when and where those preferences are 
allowed to be transmitted are of paramount importance in these issues, and 
this is the area where we can shine or fall on our faces.

Note: part of the importance of HumanML individual profile info is the 
question of where in the network this information is persisted, as in a 
database on a webserver for a portal, for instance, or only on the the ISP 
webserver of the individual or only on the individual's home or office 
machine. This caching issue is a major piece of computing overhead and 
scaleability in terms of network performance.

We need to position HumanML  in this process so as to minimize our impact 
on performance and maximize the benefit we provide.

Note: I am seriously thinking about serving on two subcommittees in this 
TC, like I need more commitments, except perhaps to an appropriate 
institution, but we need to be involved in rights negotiations and liaisons 
with transport protocols standards committees, working groups, organizations.

Down the road there will be another language in web servicesan adaptation 
(modification) description language and we might as well start anticipating 
it and working it into our secondary requirements. I will try to describe 
how we can do that as I understand it. For now what I can recommend is 
getting an understanding of the Model-View-Controller Architecture, because 
it will be aimed into that architecture, and HumanML will have a place in 
that area specifically in interactions as end-users, who control their own 
profiles, and whose profiles represent a state that can change, albeit more 
slowly that screen clicks activating event cascades in interactions, like 
online shopping for a concrete example.

Consider how your own preferences change over time. When I was much younger 
I used to stay up days on end working almost non-stop then playing hearty 
non-stop as well, but I can't do that anymore. This is not likely to be 
seen in changes online, except insofar as it represents changes in our 
behavior. I hated the smell of gardenias when a child, love the fragrance 
as an adult. I may hate it again in old age. Right now I'm a member of a 
group that likes gardenias. If you have gardenias to sell, you need to be 
able to find me and your page layout look and feel ought to be in line with 
subjective emotional associations with floral environments.

The adaptation language will make it possible for, say a restaurant to 
focus on floral arrangements on its tables in its web page ads, if an 
intermediate service can identify an end-user as someone with a 
predilection for flowers, and when we get olfactory multi-media, they 
should release the correct fragrance when I want to find a romantic restaurant.

Yes, I'm trying to get you all to think long term.

Ciao,
Rex