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