Hello and welcome to another edition of This Month in Solid!

Solid is a set of open specifications, built on existing open standards, that describes how to build applications in such a way that users can conveniently switch between data storage providers and application providers and take the data generated along.

This is a monthly summary of Solid progress.

Want something mentioned? Contact the Solid Manager at info@solidproject.org. This Month in Solid is openly developed on GitHub. If you find any errors in this month’s issue please submit a pull request.

Updates

Events

Solid World is an opportunity to meet people who are interested in or currently working on Solid.

A big thank you to Christian Buggedei, Walter Almeida, Glen Simister, Manoharan Ramachandran, and Michiel de Jong for presenting at Solid World May last Thursday.

In the first talk, Christian Buggedei presented Darcy, a social network that knows nothing about you. Of note, Darcy recently won a Mozilla grant. You can find the Darcy source code here. Christian Buggedei is a founder and technology expert.

In the second talk, Walter Almeida presented GO for modeling and generating Solid apps quickly with minimum code. He demonstrated the GO connector between Pod and SPARQL endpoints using a location tracking Solid app that leverages DBpedia as a data source for countries and places. You can find the Go location app source code on GitHub.

In the third talk, Manoharan Ramachandran presented the Solid app built by Open University’s blockchain team, looking into how to support immunity passports as mentioned by the UK government daily briefings. The Solid app facilitates the instant verification of tamper-proof test results whilst preserving privacy.

In the fourth talk, Glen Simister presented the DVO Profile Manager, a public profile (or resume), which anyone can create for free, and update. DVO Profile Manager works in conjunction with the DVO Toolbar, a browser extension which allows people to like, dislike, and comment on any URL. You can find the DVO Profile Manager source code on GitHub.

In the fifth talk, Michiel de Jong presented his latest experiment, SNAP on Solid, explaining how Solid inboxes can be used as the messaging layer for Network Ledger Technology. Check out the SNAP source code on GitHub.

If you missed Solid World you can watch the recording on Vimeo.

The next Solid World will happen soon on the 4th June 2020. If you have any content requests or would like to present at the next Solid world email m.laszlo@inrupt.com.

Articles mentioning Solid

In Other News

Solid Implementations

External Grants

There are EU initiatives DAPSI and NGI Pointer that could be suitable for Solid app projects.

If you know of more grants that could be interesting for the Solid community submit a pull request to let others know about it via the next edition.

Job Openings

  • Digita is hiring a Full Stack Developer and a Linked Data Principal. Email tom@digita.ai for more information.
  • Inrupt is hiring a Technical Writer. Email jobs@inrupt.com for more information.

Update from the Specification Editors

A Submission for Auxiliary Resources has received editorial approval and has been merged into the Editor’s Draft of the upcoming Solid protocol specification. An auxiliary resource may provide supplementary information about a given Solid resource, or affect how that resource and others associated with it are processed, served, or interpreted. This is the first (of several) candidate proposals from a Solid panel to make it into the editor’s draft.

A Submission for Resource Access has received editorial approval and has also been merged into the Editor’s Draft. This submission provides clarity around containment of linked resources, shared slash semantics, and URI persistence.

The editorial team has been holding productive meetings every 2-3 weeks aimed at advancing progress towards normative Solid ecosystem specifications. Minutes are posted in the Solid W3C Community Group Wiki, including minutes from our meetings in April:

Other notable activity related to the Solid specification include:

This Month in Solid