On Friday I was bitching about the lack of websites that can import FOAF profiles. A lot of the popular ones like Twitter and LiveJournal can export them, but they don't seem to be able to import them and make use of the actual FOAF data. A portable file format only works when you can both import and export the data.
I used FriendFeed as an example of where importing FOAF profiles would be useful:
It aggregates stuff from various social networks. I already have a list of online accounts in my FOAF file. FriendFeed, let me import that file and you can take care of the rest! I hate re-typing in all my account names so you can import them. It's annoying and boring.
Now, I'm not done yet, but I have started work on a Python script that can connect to the FriendFeed website and let it import some of your account data. I tried a test with Disqus and it appears to have worked because if I try and add an already imported account, the script will fail.
I plan to put this up as a utility for others to use and, since user information is sensitive, I'll be checking to see if I can get SSL enabled on the page. There won't be any tricks hidden in the script that will save your username or password, it will only use them once and forget about them right after it's done.
I'm not releasing it yet because the code needs more testing and more writing, but the source code will be available under the GNU GPL license, version 3 probably, I'll have to check the terms.
