The APML community has been itching for the APML 1.0 Specification for a little while now, and Paul, our resident genius; has spec’d out the initial draft for community discussion.  You can find the intial draft, at http://groups.google.com/group/apml-public/web/apml-1-0-draft-1

From the Public Google Group:

This comes with a very large fore note: This is a very early draft only, and nothing is set in stone. Given that the community is obviously itching to start seeing APML 1.0 progress, I felt that it would be an appropriate time to release this and assist in structuring the discussion. I intend to follow this with a few more emails that detail individual sections I believe need substantial addressing.

APML version 1.0 proposes a number of substantial changes over the previous 0.6 version, with some of the changes including, but not limited to;

• The Addition of an ‘Entity’ node to describe (People, Businesses and other non-metaphysical interests.
• The Addition of a ‘Location’ node to outline places of interest.
• The inclusion of an rdf:about node attribute to allow for richer RDF-type ontologies without reducing the “simple” nature of APML.

APML has come a long way since its inital conception a little over 2 years ago.  And I am very proud to be involved with a community of people all dedicated to creating an open format to give attention back to the people who own it.

The APML Workgroup is committed to ratifying this standard as soon as public commenting is evalutated, and is tasked to provide a smooth transition to the new version; so please feel free to head over to the public Google Group and put in your 2c.

Are you in Sydney or the Bay Area? If so - come join me, Robert Scoble, Loic Le Meur and our host Ross Dawson at the Future of Media Summit 08. A Cross-continental conference.

Otherwise track #fom08 on the various social networks.

I have written on my personal blog about what I am starting to call “Personal Reality“.

As I wrote there:

Personal Media includes your friend’s shared items. It includes the comments you leave on blogs. It includes Social Media. But it also includes private updates. Updates from your Intranet. Updates from your family. Updates from broadcast media. Updates that matter to you - no one else.

Personal Media is about recognizing that people are social and private. They are interested in personal experiences.

Check it out.

Good news - I will be in Amsterdam speaking at the Next Web Conference on the 3rd and 4th of April - are you coming?

Here’s a bit of info about the conference from the website:

The Next Web Conference is THE European conference for industry thought-leaders, leading web-companies, innovative Startups, visionaries and real Web savvies. This third edition will be held in Amsterdam, The Netherlands on April 3rd & 4th, 2008.

Last night (PST Time) we had our first Steering Group Teleconference. It was great, productive call with lots of outcomes that are currently being implemented. We also agreed to meet in a similar way every 2 weeks.

Listen to a recording of the call hosted here on John Breslin’s blog.

Thanks to everyone who organized and participated.

A number of DataPortabilityAndMe videos have been released already - have you made yours?

DataPortability San Francisco Meetup Feb 7th 2008 from dataportability on Vimeo.

Time to continue the conversation about DataPortability… this time using video.

We want to hear your thoughts about DataPortability recorded as a short video. We hope to share these videos individually as well as compile them into a single video to help the community understand expectations, goals and themes that are emerging in the discussion.

Here are the questions we’d like you to answer.

• What does DataPortability mean to you?

• How do you imagine DataPortability might change the way you use the web?
• How would you explain the value of DataPortability to Vendors - those that store the data.
• How would you explain the value of DataPortability to Users - those that create and own the data.
• Ideally, what would you like to see from the DataPortability Project in the next 12 months? 24 months?
• What else would you like to say? Make up a question and answer it!
• Finally, if you agree with the sentiment, please say “My name is [your name] and I want Data Portability” at the end of your video.

If you can, please try to limit the video to a maximum of 5 minutes.

We’d like to compile these for February 20th. Please make sure you get your video in before then!

To submit the video, post it to one of the video sharing sites and tag it ‘DataPortabilityAndMe’

I look forward to seeing what the community has to say.

Special thanks to Daniela Barbosa, Chris Messina and the Evangelism Action Group for this idea!

My lovely wife (who is an Economics and Business teacher coincidentally) sent me a Podcast today which really blew me away. It’s an interview with Andreas Kluth (San Francisco correspondent for The Economist) talking about real and virtual campfires, and predicts the dissolution of standalone social networks as we know them.

Anyone interested in the next generation of internet technology really needs to listen to this podcast. Its clear, concise and really gets at the heart of many social graph issues and human behavior.