HTTP Framework for Time-Based Access to Resource States: Memento
Herbert Van de Sompel, Michael Nelson, Robert Sanderson; IETF I-D
Representatives of Los Alamos National Laboratory and Old Dominion
University have published a first IETF Working Draft of HTTP Framework
for Time-Based Access to Resource States: Memento. According to the
editor's iMinds blog: "While the days of human time travel as described
in many a science fiction novel are yet to come, time travel on the Web
has recently become a reality thanks to the Memento project. In essence,
Memento adds a time dimension to the Web: enter the Web address of a
resource in your browser and set a time slider to a desired moment in
the Web's past, and see what the resource looked like around that time...
Technically, Memento achieves this by: (a) Leveraging systems that host
archival Web content, including Web archives, content management systems,
and software versioning systems; (b) Extending the Web's most commonly
used protocol (HTTP) with the capability to specify a datetime in
protocol requests, and by applying an existing HTTP capability (content
negotiation) in a new dimension: 'time'. The result is a Web in which
navigating the past is as seamless as navigating the present...
The Memento concepts have attracted significant international attention
since they were first published in November 2009, and compliant tools
are already emerging. For example, at the client side there is the
MementoFox add-on for FireFox, and a Memento app for Android; at the
server side, there is a plug-in for MediaWiki servers, and the Wayback
software that is widely used by Web archives, worldwide, was recently
enhanced with Memento support..."
Paul Merrell on 07 Jan 10A new IETF working group has been proposed in the Real-time Applications and Infrastructure Area. The IESG has not made any determination as yet. The following draft charter was submitted, and is provided for informational purposes only. Please send your comments to the IESG mailing list (iesg at ietf.org) by January 20, 2010. ... According to reports from developers of Internet audio applications and operators of Internet audio services, there are no standardized, high-quality audio codecs that meet all of the following three conditions: 1. Are optimized for use in interactive Internet applications. 2. Are published by a recognized standards development organization (SDO) and therefore subject to clear change control. 3. Can be widely implemented and easily distributed among application developers, service operators, and end users. ... The goal of this working group is to develop a single high-quality audio codec that is optimized for use over the Internet and that can be widely implemented and easily distributed among application developers, service operators, and end users. Core technical considerations include, but are not necessarily limited to, the following: 1. Designing for use in interactive applications (examples include, but are not limited to, point-to-point voice calls, multi-party voice conferencing, telepresence, teleoperation, in-game voice chat, and live music performance) 2. Addressing the real transport conditions of the Internet as identified and prioritized by the working group 3. Ensuring interoperability with the Real-time Transport Protocol (RTP), including secure transport via SRTP 4. Ensuring interoperability with Internet signaling technologies such as Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), Session Description Protocol (SDP), and Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP); however, the result should not depend on the details of any particular signaling technology.