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From ITags

1 I-Tags
- 1.1 Why iTags?
- 1.2 Creative Commons Licensing
2 News and Events
3 Working Draft Specifications
4 Example
5 Who are we?
6 RSS Feeds
7 Comments
8 Using this Wiki

I-Tags

The basic idea of an i-tag (identity tag, independent tag, intelligent tag – take your pick) is that a user could tag an object on their own site (photo, video, sound file, text or an entire blog post), where the tag, and the object, could then go out through the RSS feed or be spidered, with some additional information that doesn't now exist in tags.

This tag and object would include the author's identity, the licensing for that object (if needed -- presumably people would use this more for rich media objects than for just a blog post, as most blogs already have licensing generally for text on the blog), the tag type, and the tag value(s). I-tagging would remove the requirement for a tag to be coupled with the originating URL (blog post URL) because identity would be inside it. It would allow CC licensing of individual media objects, which rich media producers want to do sometimes, in order to differentiate the rich media object from the rest of their blog, which may have different licensing.

I-tagging would also address these other user desires besides those who wish to add links to their tags:

Create tags that are visible on the blog as well as to RSS feeds/spiders but which do not result in an explicit link.
Create tags that are not visible on the blog but still trusted (like categories, which in some cases are not visible on the blog but are still included in tag systems like Technorati's, where of the 100% of tags, 95% are actually category entries and only 5% are explicit tags).
Create tags that can be independently verified, to prevent tag spoofing and tag spamming and support the development of reliable author reputation systems.

I-tagging would also be completely compatible with current tag formats/systems, i.e., it would:

Still allows users to create tags that do have explicit links if the user wants them.
Be backwards compatible with Technorati's rel-tag and rel-license microformats, while enabling the additional functionality described above.

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Why iTags?

Mary Hodder did a study of tagging with bloggers in the spring 2005. They reported a number of things they wanted to do with tags on their blogs that were not possible, and were dissatisfied with some things with the Technorati tags. I-tags were developed to address these use cases and requirements.

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Creative Commons Licensing

The i-tagging of rich media objects within a blog post or other content can add the licensing metadata specified by Creative Commons. See the example below and the Working Draft specification for more info.

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News and Events

A session on i-tags was held at the Internet Identity Workshop. Kudos to Christine Herron for doing a wonderful job of blogging the results. Ben Laurie also had some great suggestions. We plan to roll that feedback into a fourth Working Draft just as soon as we can.

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Working Draft Specifications

I-Tag Specification Working Draft 03 is now available. This draft incorporates feedback that helped us further generalize the i-tag format using the microformat class design pattern (see the XFolk microformat for an example). This new structure makes i-tags fully extensible yet still allows them to be placed either within the digital object they describe or completely independent of it. In addition this new format also supports both direct and third-party verification to prevent tag spoofing and tag spam and enable the development of reliable, scalable author reputation systems.

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Example

This example shows an i-tag that asserts two rel-tags and one rel-license for a Napsterization blog post by Mary Hodder in a way that can be independently verified by the i-tag header metadata.

<div class="i-tag">
  <!-- i-tag header metadata describing the i-tag itself -->
  <div>
    <a class="id" href="urn:uuid:f81d4fae-7dec-11d0-a765-00a0c91e6bf6">I-Tag</a>
    <a class="subject" href="http://napsterization.org/stories/archives/000597.html">Title: Creative Commons Upheld!</a>
    <a class="author" href="http://xri.net/=mary.hodder">Author: Mary Hodder</a>
    <a class="publisher" href="http://www.napsterization.org/">Napsterization</a>
    <a class="verifier" href="https://verify.opinity.com/">I-Tag Verifier: Opinity</a>
    <a class="date" href="http://xri.net/($d*2006-01-12T12:13:14Z)">Tag Date: 2006/03/22 08:19</a>
  </div>
  <!-- i-tag body metadata describing the subject identified above-->
  <div>
    <a class="predicate" href="http://microformats.org/wiki/rel-tag">Tags</a>
    <div>
      <a class="object" rel="tag" href="http://xri.net/+law/law">Law</a>
      <a class="object" rel="tag" href="http://napsterization.org/stories/Creative%20Commons">Creative Commons</a>
    </div>
  </div>
  <div>
    <a class="predicate" href="http://microformats.org/wiki/rel-license">Licenses</a>
    <div>
      <a class="object" rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5/">Creative Commons Attribution 2.0</a>
    </div>
  </div>
</div>

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Who are we?

Mary Hodder, Kaliya Hamlin, Drummond Reed, and Andy Dale

We've been working on this project for about 9 months, as we've met up at conferences, and wanted to solve some user problems and create something interesting for rich media. Additionally, Gabe Wachob suggested the solution to dictionaries that makes the tag backwards compatible with Technorati.

We invite others to edit this wiki, to make the solution better, or add suggestions on this or subpages.

Thanks, Mary, Kaliya, Drummond, and Andy

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