Google is set to announce a set of standards called OpenSocial:

OpenSocial is a set of three common APIs, defined by Google with
input from partners, that allow developers to access core functions and
information at social networks:

Peter Dietz has done some interesting work around the notion of syndicating donor activity for micro philanthropy. Here is an image of what he envisions, and here is a working mockup.

I've been thinking about the similarities and difference between syndication and social action.

Feedbacks 

Syndication solves a one-way information subscription problem. Publishers package information into feeds for aggregators to consume.

Social action demands a two-way activity collaboration problem. Doers report actions into feedbacks which produces an aggregate feed of all actions taken. Doers can act collaboratively by initiating new actions, imitating others, and refining methods.

RSSA specs are being developed.

Items under consideration:

• Microformats for representing activities on pages.
• RSS feeds
• An aggregation model
• A two-way communication user action model

Some improvements to the site today:

Here is an interesting post by Dennis Whittle of Global Giving about a class at Stanford called Creating Infectious Action, Kindling Gregarious Behavior

These is in an interesting case study for simple social action.

Tails and Operator as Firefox addons for microformats.

Mogulus as tool for interactive TV, allow folks to collaborate TV development.

I am playing with Adaptive Blue smart linking.  The entry below has a blue box after it that can be clicked to bring in more info. 

Frederick Turner's closing presentation at the Good Ancestors Principle Workshop | Uplift Academy

Here is some background information on technologies relating to RSSA

RSS (Really Simple Syndication)

Bar Camp San Diego June 2-3, 2007 will be the first public discussion of RSSA. Tom Munnecke's Presentation (PDF). and .PPT

Wine Camp, Evian, France June 15-17, 2007

Stanford/Silicon Valley Aug 3, 2007 [details to be arranged]

On October 14th, 2006, I was at a private Retreat with a number of very interesting people and during a lunch break, we got to talking about social action and how it lived or died on the Internet.

Something had been striking me is the fact that there is so much on the Internet that begs for some sort of response or action, that I find myself overwhelmed and numb. As we were talking at lunch, a phrase popped into my head, "Ambient Emotional Reations".

This is a page to track stuff that needs to be done on the Web Site itself

• Transfer domain name rssa.org
• Add wiki capabilities, either as part of Drupal or a separate Media Wiki site. If mediawiki, integrate logon/id
• Clean up bottom of submission pages so that preview/submit button is closer to text.
• Figure out sections and layouts.
• Set up clean URLs
• Add Creative Commons 2.5 license

One of my early lessons learned during my involvement with the Veterans Administration's Decentralized Computer Program was the power of networking people together. (see George Timson's view of the History of the Hardhats) I had been using a computer system called Confer II designed by Bob Parnes in the early 1980's and rewrote much of the functionality into a DHCP module called MailMan allowing threaded conversations between users.

Micro Philanthropy is an activity space for ways of using RSSA to discover and amplify patterns of uplift for philanthropic and humanitarian activities. It's notion of philanthropy is based on the definition of the word "philanthropy" as "love of humanity." Although in some circles, this has evolved to "fundraising" and "check writing," the RSSA perspective is more general and open to discovering and amplifying many other patterns of uplift.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is RSSA?

How is it being developed?

How do I find Downloads?

Are there testbeds that I can try out?

How can I contribute?

RSSA is a model for connecting people, ideas, and activities at a large scale. It is based on the model of RSS that allows sites to create web feeds of their content that can be then collected by aggregators into a common feed. RSSA is an enabling technology to allow diverse sources on the web, such as blogs, email signatures, videos, web sites, podcasts, wikis, television and radio broadcasts, etc. to attract attention to a common Activity Space.

This page will describe some examples of how RSSA might be used for supporting Social Action Networks.

Philanthropy