Background
The OSLO protocol is the coming together of multiple location based companies to define how location can be shared between member networks.
The OSLO protocol comprises a suite of protocols that facilitate location federation between member networks. OSLO enables:
- users to share their location with friends on member networks
- users to search for people nearby across all member networks
- users to send messages between networks
- users to display standardised public profile that works on all networks
OSLO does not:
- specify the location lookup system
- share user location information with member networks, just their friends on each network.
Examples of OSLO
OSLO federates three services: location, nearby and messaging.
Benefits of OSLO
- to the user: Connecting to people on other networks gives mobile social networking users a more exciting experience.
- Application builders can create better products on top of shared location information.
- OSLO member companies can focus on differentiation and adding value to users rather than bothering with re-building another location system, which is a commodity anyway. The alternative is a fragmentation of technologies.
Implementation
OSLO defines a suite of existing protocols to enable members to federate their users' location, nearby queries, messaging and profile sharing. OSLO can be thought of as a recipe, that when implemented, connects you to member networks.
The following documents lay out implementation:
- OSLO components: The required ingredients to connect to OSLO members
- Server Discovery: Looking up and connecting to OSLO compliant servers
- Technology Choices: Understand the background to OSLO's architecture decisions.
- Nearby query specification: Description of the protocol used to find nearby people, places, advertisements or media objects.
OSLO Todo
- quick implementation recipe: the three steps to become OSLO enabled.
- pub-sub server discovery using DNS
- check urn:xmpp:... namespace check (nearby spec)
- define: oslo/name@membercompany.com/profile/name
- define: oslo/name@membercompany.com/profile/photo
- define: oslo/name@membercompany.com/profile/work
