Category: data-and-semantic-web

Freebase Parallax: A new way to browse and explore data from David Huynh on Vimeo.

I love the idea of Freebase, even Tim O'reilly was upbeat about the project when it first launched over a year ago. But this video of a project called Parallax by freebase is simply amazing. It looks closer to the semantic web than almost anything else I've seen. Theres so much going on in this area now, you have things like DBpedia, Freebase, Musicbrainz, last.fm, etc, etc… Then lots of Linking data projects using foaf, atom, rdfa, etc, etc. W3C and other standard bodies working on things like RulesML, APML, etc, etc. And there's even stuff you can run yourself like the many Semantic Wikis and Blogs which are starting to popup. There's some real progress being made, the semantic web is closer that we think…

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Evan from Laconica/Identi.ca/Wikitravel and much more, was on Floss Weekly this week. Here's the blurb from twit.tv.

Laconica, the open source microblogging tool implementing the OpenMicroBlogging standard used in Identi.ca.

Guest: Evan Prodromou for Laconica and Identi.ca

Its quite a long discussion but lots of lovely information about why Evan started Laconica and some of the changes he's planning for the project. I was a little shocked to find laconica isn't based on a messaging protocal but theres plan a foot to change towards that. Installing Lasconi.ca could do with being a little easier though. Some features include a Twitter compatible API, Tags, Feditaration, Jaiku like replies, FOAF, OpenAuth. Actually I missed Dan Brickleys blog post about it.

In a world where Twitter is falling apart (don't get me wrong I love twitter but whens the im bot coming back and then the total removal of the SMS service for the UK and parts of Europe), Jaiku seems to be stalled and going no where thanks to Google buying most of the developers up. And the rest of the copiers are copying the twitter silo to the pixel. Its great to have Ping.FM and Identi.ca busting these silos. I love the company name – controlyourself.ca by the way.

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One of my proposals for Xtech 2008 was accepted. I submitted two, one around APML and the other around Data Portability. As expected the Data Portability one got dropped, I guess because its maybe a little light and fluffy for a conference like Xtech. So I'll be talking about APML, which hopefully will be up to version 1.0. I'll be covering both the actual XML format but also the practical uses and services which have sprung up since APML.

The attention economy was talked about at the end of 06 to death. Through all the hype, a couple of guys from down-under started to make sense of attention and proposed APML (Attention Profiling Markup Language).Unfortunately little is known about APML and there is a lot of mis-information on APML. As one of the working group members I will run through what it is, its purpose and why its important.

Technorati Tags: apml, attention, xtech, data

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So finally I have edited and re-encoded my videos for the DataPortabilityAndMe video project. Now before you all moan about the quality or the very strange eye movements. Bear in mind this was shot while in Hamburg at about 2am in a hotel room while I was trying to talk clearly but not loudly, as to not wake my neighbours. I had also just come from a girl geekdinner where I was drinking wine and just finished a espresso before turning the camera towards myself. So yes generally not the best of conditions but I just needed to do it, or the nerves would have gotten hold of me and I would never have done it.

The quality is a little poorer that expected because I had finally run it through 3 different encoders. At the start it was shot on my Sanyo HD1 camera at HighDef 720p resoultion using the lower quality mpeg4 codec (I wish I'd used the higher quality one now). The footage was copied from SD card to hard drive and transcoded into Mpeg4 video and Mpeg1 audio so Kdenlive could edit the footage without the audio error I was getting when importing straight from the Sanyo HD1 footage. So after editing using Kdenlive (which I have to say is one of the best desktop editing tools for gnu/Linux at the moment) I exported the video in a range of video formats for uploading to Blip.tv. In the end I found it easier to just output from Kdenlive using Divx and Mpeg3 audio then once again transcode that using VLC into Mpeg4 which Blip could understand. Yes its a pain but I finally got there. Next time I would convert once to HDV files and encode again before sending to bliptv.

Some of you might have noticed I also shot two videos. DataPortabilityAndMe (Large version) is me talking for less that 5mins and the longer version where I quote “wax lyrical” (yes I wish I had not said that too) is called DataPortabilityAndMe Adhoc Talk (Small version). Enjoy and let me know what you all think.

Technorati Tags: dataportability, dataportabilityandme, portability, data, video, kdenlive, gnulinux, ianforrester, thoughts, mpeg4, mpeg, bliptv

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alt.support.divorce and diet.low-carb, hummm I guess I should be scared. Google couldn't have worked this out from my gmail because I don't tend to use that much for personal emails. My google reader subscriptions and blog might be the source if this isn't just a fluke. Problem is that I can't see the same page without logging in, otherwise I would be able to tell for sure. Now if Google only supported APML then I could know for sure. Yes another reason for APML along with Tristan's thoughts on the radio labs blog.

Technorati Tags: google, googlegroups, apml, fluke, bbc

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I have not written much about APML for a while, partly because I've been focused on Data Portability. But I saw this a while ago and forgot to blog it over December.

Attention data is an emerging concept in web circles that focusses on making people the owners of the data about the websites they visit, or pay attention to. Currently, this kind of information builds up in the individual websites that we visit, but in most cases that information is never shared us. The Attention movement seeks to remedy that by making data about what we pay attention to available in a portable format.

That format is known as APML, or Attention Profile Markup Language. And, with some simple integration with APML providers, Engagd, we’ve now made it possible for Ma.gnolia members to build an attention profile from their bookmarks.

A new setting in your profile controls, found on the newly-renamed Bookmarks tab, allows you to turn on the generation of APML from your bookmarks feed. After the profile has had some time to build up, you can grab a copy of your profile data.

When I first read this, my finger hovered the sign up button. Yes I was that close to converting from delicious to magnolia. And lets be honest Magnolia's openID signup would have made things so simple. I bet it would have taken all of about 5mins to signup and to be using it like how I use delicious right now. Its not too late either… If anything will make me move or join a new service its going to be APML support and OpenID. OAuth support is a nice touch but not essential. RSS/ATOM, a API and Microformats should now be a given. If there not, obvioulsy the service isn't serious about its dataportability policy or you could say really care about the advanced participations.

Great news about Yahoo and OpenID by the way, I look forward to seeing OpenID support on Flickr, Delicious, etc very soon.

Technorati Tags: apml, openid, profile, yahoo, oauth, magnolia, delicious

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