Tag: foaf

Social Graph API

Google’s announcement today of the Social Graph API is a major step in the development of what I’ve called “the Internet Operating System.” In a nutshell, what the Social Graph API does is to lower the barrier to re-use of information that people publish about themselves on the web. It’s the next step towards the vision that Brad Fitzpatrick and David Recordon outlined in Thoughts on the Social Graph.

i have had a FOAF profile since 2003. now it is finally useful for something.

Google, as usual, is not far behind. But they are taking a much different and more open approach to the social graph. Today they are launching the Social Graph API, which will allow third parties to grab social graph data that is produced by every day activities across the web – linking. Who you are (defined by Flickr, blogs, Twitter and other web services) and who you know, can be determined by data included with links, or in other data included on web pages but not shown in a browser. The 2 standards around this, XFN and FOAF, provide explicit and public data to Google (and anyone else that looks) on who you are and who you know. Technically this is pretty simple stuff. Links may contain XFN tags to state a a relationship, such as “me” or “friend.” These are explicit, public statements of relationships and are built in to many web applications, or can simply be added by humans.

bradfitz++

fun with blogrolls

i tried to synchronize between my newsfeeds and blogrolling.com, using their OPML import feature. unfortunately, it does not work. not even with special tools.
as usual, the workable solution was to install yet another MT plugin, do yet another scp to get my OPML from my aggregator onto my blog, which then gets rendered as my blogroll. so far so good, but i hate to do all this crap again to keep the 2 in sync. this weblog stuff is still far too fragmented. we need better integration.
i also added a new blogroll link tag to my template in the hope that some interesting autodiscovery (like autofoaf) will go on. it seems there is no consensus on the tag as of yet though, some use type=”text/x-opml”, others type=”application/opml+xml”

More jibbering

i played around with foafnaut some more.

i also added <link rel=”meta” type=”application/rdf+xml” title=”FOAF” href=”foaf.rdf” /> to my templates for the use of harvesters. i guess sometime in the future i will regret this spam-inducing move.

#foaf

i’m hanging out on #foaf these days, trying to learn as much about FOAF and semantic web killer apps as possible.
<gregor> do you think mobloggers could be tricked into expanding the dataset
<zool> that’s what my plan is with noderunner london – not tricking though, just playing games, without exposing the underlying mapping agenda 🙂
<gregor> “a picture tells a 1000 words”
<zool> maps are stories…
<gregor> tricking in the sense that they wouldn’t care if they knew 🙂
zool smiles yes
<gregor> word. heard that some mobiles can determine their location
<gregor> useful for location -> text mapping
<gregor> or piccies
zool nods, convergence of tech, decentralization of data, hopes

Giving the levers away

ben hammersley reports that the hosted version of MT will sport a FOAF creator:

Other features include real-time statistics, posting by email, and automatic creation of Friend of a Friend data – instantly taking an experimental standard and taking it to the mainstream.

can you say manufactured serendipity? with the move of these powerful social network technologies to the mainstream, and the formation of standards bodies, who knows where this very interesting field will be in one years time. then again, the pessimist in me wonders what will happen when these neat toys pass from the realm of the elite to the unwashed masses. reputation spam?