

   Essentials:
      [1]Overview
      [2]Features
      [3]Screenshots
   Developers:
      [4]Guidelines
      [5]Syndication
      [6]Notes
      [7]XSLT
      [8]Parameters
      [9]More Info
   Resources:
      [10]Download
      [11]Browse CVS
      [12]Mailing Lists
      [13]Bugzilla

Reptile
A reputation-enhanced personal and distributed portal
(an [14]OpenPrivacy project)

Overview

   Reptile is:

     Open Source/Free Software

     Driven by an XML syndicated content engine (think RSS/OCS)

     Peer-to-Peer

     Java and XML driven

     Privacy protection enabled

     Reputation enabled

     Reptile nodes can publish to each other.

     Subscription driven

     Provides    a    decentralized   authentication   model   based   on
   public/private key crypto and Reputation.

     Reptile  users  can  "share"  their  Portal  experience  by  sharing
   channels and other important information with each other.

Description

   Reptile  provides  an easy way to share information with others on the
   Internet  in  a distributed and efficient manner. This information may
   be news syndicated through RSS or any content type including other XML
   formats  and  potentially  binary  data  such  as  MP3,  Ogg Vorbis or
   QuickTime.

   We  say  that  Reptile  is  Peer-to-Peer  because  Reptile scales on a
   node-by-node basis. Every user who wants to use Reptile, downloads the
   client  and  installs  it  locally.  This  approach  has  a  number of
   advantages including scalability, and privacy protection.

   Each  Reptile  user  can  subscribe  to  any  News  channel  they find
   interesting.   News   is   found   by  searching  based  on  keywords,
   description,  and  reputation.  When  new  content  is  found, Reptile
   presents  this  to the user providing an event based and decentralized
   syndication engine.

   Reptile  includes  integration  of  a  Reputation Management Framework
   (RMF)  which  is  used  to  eliminate  useless  information.  The  RMF
   integration  is distributed such that each node can access other nodes
   while maintaining the ability to tweak reputation calculation settings
   based  on  their  own taste. (My friend John is very smart, etc). This
   reputation   mechanism   supports   advanced  types  of  collaborative
   filtering and recommendations. In the short term, we will implement an
   Advogato type trust metric for our initial testing.

   Reptile  nodes  authenticate  each  other using public key pseudonyms.
   User  nodes  may  maintain  a  large set of nyms with which to publish
   content,  enabling  privacy  in  a  "crowds"  manner.  Reputations are
   attached to these nyms bestowing value onto anonymous pseudonyms.

Status

     Wed  Aug  15 2001 01:00 PM (burton@relativity.yi.org): Version 0.0.2
   of  Reptile  has  been released. This version incorporates a number of
   new  features  and  bugfixes  including  improved  OCS support, better
   weblog  integration,  and  misc performance enhancements. Reputations,
   and  the  associated  cryptographic  support  from Sierra, are not yet
   functional.

     Fri Jul 27 2001 05:37 PM (burton@relativity.yi.org): The OpenPrivacy
   project  would  like  to  announce  the  creation  and initial release
   (0.0.1)  of  Reptile.  Reptile  is  a peer-to-peer content syndication
   engine  (think  RSS/OCS)  that  has privacy protection facilities (for
   such  things  as  your  identity  and subscriptions) built in. Reptile
   nodes  can  publish  to  each other (everything is driven by XML based
   subscriptions)  and provide a decentralized authentication model based
   on  cryptographic  mechanisms  supporting  the  concept of Reputation.
   Reptile  is  built  using  Java and XML, and is fully Open Source/Free
   Software.

     Wed Jul 11 2001 04:05 AM (burton@relativity.yi.org): [15]Screenshots
   are  now  up. The best/quickest way to see what Reptile can do for you
   is to take a look at the screenshots.

     Sun Jul 08 2001 04:11 AM (burton@relativity.yi.org): Reptile nightly
   builds [16]are now available.

     Tue  Jun  26  2001  03:37  AM (burton@relativity.yi.org): Reptile is
   currently in development mode and we encourage other developers go get
   involved.

Details

   Reptile has the following facilities:

     Personalization and Reputation Management
          Channels,   articles   and   indeed   all  objects  within  the
          OpenPrivacy  framework  can  be  enhanced with Reputation. This
          provides  a  facility  to  enable  feedback  for  the creation,
          delivery  and  presentation  aspects of each object, as well as
          enabling threshold alerts and other advanced features.

     Privacy and Nym Management
          All reputation grafts (annotations of opinions and/or rankings)
          and  subscription  activities are made pseudonymously through a
          client-side   "Primary   Agent"  -  part  of  the  peer-to-peer
          OpenPrivacy Reputation Management Framework. This Primary Agent
          creates  and  manages  nyms  for  the  user  transparently, and
          enables  the  user  to  view,  modify  and/or delete reputation
          information whether stored locally or remotely.

     Channel Creation (Anyone can publish)
          Reptile  users can publish their own pseudonymous RSS channels.
          Further, as part of channel subscription and article selection,
          the  user  may  choose to publish all or part of their filtered
          feeds, creating a new 'virtual RSS channel' with a pseudonymous
          reputation.

     Channel Listing
          Reptile  can  talk  to  RSS channel feeds (and OCS feed such as
          xmltree,  10.am,  or  moreover)  and  list  them according to a
          ranking determined by an incrementally developed reputation and
          optional user-provided bias (filtering).

     Channel Subscription
          The  channels  are  presented to the user according to personal
          taste.  The user has the ability to annotate channels - whether
          subscribed  to  or not - with reputation grafts (opinions) that
          may be made public at user discretion.

     Article Selection
          The  user  can  refine  their  presentation and rate individual
          articles  according  to  an  open  set  of  criteria. While the
          reference  implementation  allows only a single value, this can
          be  expanded  by  plugging in n-space ontological understanding
          mechanisms.

     Enumeration and Sorting
          Both  channels and articles may be displayed ranked, sorted and
          edited according to their reputation and user bias.

   Reptile was inspired by [17]NewsPeek and [18]Jetspeed
     _________________________________________________________________

     Reptile  is  the  banner  freeware  project  of  the [19]OpenPrivacy
   initiative

References

   1. http://reptile.openprivacy.org/
   2. http://reptile.openprivacy.org/features.shtml
   3. http://reptile.openprivacy.org/screenshots
   4. http://reptile.openprivacy.org/guidelines.shtml
   5. http://reptile.openprivacy.org/syndication.shtml
   6. http://reptile.openprivacy.org/notes.shtml
   7. http://reptile.openprivacy.org/xslt.shtml
   8. http://reptile.openprivacy.org/parameters.shtml
   9. http://reptile.openprivacy.org/more-info.shtml
  10. http://reptile.openprivacy.org/download.shtml
  11. http://www.openprivacy.org/cgi-bin/cvsweb/cvsweb.cgi/reptile/
  12. http://www.openprivacy.org/lists/
  13. http://bugzilla.openprivacy.org/
  14. http://www.openprivacy.org/
  15. http://reptile.openprivacy.org/screenshots
  16. http://www.openprivacy.org/nightlies
  17. http://www.broadcatch.com/newspeek.shtml
  18. http://java.apache.org/jetspeed/
  19. http://www.openprivacy.org//
