Category: xml and web 2.0

First thing I have not said anything about flickr or del.icio.us recently but there very good ideas and well excuted. i think even Jon Udell is happy with these RESTful/web services/applications? In my view anything which creates semantic-ish meaning is good. Some things which I've seen recently.

FOAF
RSS 1.0
ATOM
ebay to rss
another one, rss auction
Google to Atom
bleb.org tv-listings
Netflix's rss feeds
iTunes music store rss feed generator
iTunes playlist to RSS

When's imdb going to do rss?. Now owned by Amazon they must have syndication in there future plans. I mean it wasnt long ago when imdb would allow you to copy there databases?

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Found this interesting idea in my feeds today. I think the crux of the idea can be explained through this quote.

Behavior obviously contains clues about the intent that stitches actions into meaningful streams, although the clues can be awfully misleading: If you see that I move from a web page to a word processing document, there's a chance the first inspired me to write something in the document, although it's also possible that I got bored reading the Web page and decided to get back to work. If I copy from the Web page and paste into the document, you have a stronger clue.

I've already wrote a comment so I hope the trackback works. I sent a email to David, because I think the log of data from such a client application would be perfect for his OS david application. What ever happened to that?

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I saw Platypus wiki before but wrote it off because blojsom had a wiki plugin. Actually think Poil sent me the link that time. Then quickly realised that the wiki plugin in Blojsom was only so you could input text like a wiki not an actual wiki as to say. I even considered the wiki app blojsom.com is using, because I've quickly realised there is bit of my site which really need a wiki and there are parts which could do with a blog. For example own writing, my mixes and lectures should all be blogs of somekind. While Streaming, calender and Pictures should be a wiki or some kind of application to do with those areas.

Anyway I'm going to try it out tonight, see what it can and cannot do. Will be interested in interchanging data between blojsom, cocoon and platypus. Cant be too difficult if there using rdf. Something really simple like linking definitions in the blog to the wiki would be a nice start. Already thinking of ways to blend in FOAF too.

The day afterwards…
I quickly realised that Platypus wiki will only work on Tomcat 5.x because its using a yet to be ratified Java servelet 2.4 spec for its web.xml. So I downloaded Tomcat 5 and tried it out on my laptop. It actually works quite well. I only scratched the surface but it seemed to generate tons of standard metadata. Miles asked if there was some way of keeping track of all the pages? Like a index I asked? Well I'm not totally sure but I will find out sometime today or tomorrow. I also need to setup my own wiki, rather than use the example wiki. Overall its looking quite good, not sure how it compares to JSP/Wiki with the RSS plugin though…

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I'm finally finding time to explorer the possibilies of Friend of a friend through this article on xml.com. Just created my own basic FoaF rdf for myself, looking at how to link myself to other people. I keep meaning to do more research on this whole area for ages but kept putting it off till now. Didnt realise there was a foaf-a-matic, using that now. Foaf-a-matic 2 looks like a good move, would be nice to adapt it to the pocketpc as well as the desktop.

I also in the back of my mind, I keep wanting to use the XHTML friends network but never have the site to hand when typing away. How does this fit with FOAF? and why are certain values not available? I'm very sure Xhtml meta data profiles are not as good as FOAF. Maybe I should use the XFN creator more often.

But back to FOAF. I'm quite amazed by the simplicity of foaf and the great lengths of data you can put into foaf. I mean looking at this page which describes what can go into a foaf rdf schema.
foaf:myersBriggs – A Myers Briggs (MBTI) personality classification. foaf:jabberID. foaf:geekcode A textual geekcode for this person, see http://www.geekcode.com/geek.html. foaf:weblog are just a few of the more interesting ones.

I've now completed my FOAF for now. And added links to it on every blog page. I have to say this is also a really good introduction into rdf just like RSS 1.0 because it has an outcome and tools already built so you can see the results of it.

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Adam sent me a couple of links the other day, following our nice saturday night get together in central London.

The link to iTunes RSS site:
http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZSearch.woa/wa/MRSS/rssGenerator

Now feel the power of the mac come to you Ian, with Rendezvous
Executable for PocketPC 2003:
http://developer.apple.com/darwin/projects/rendezvous/

Go on, you know you want to try it! You it makes sense 😉

My reply goes something like this…
Alright alright I'm mildly impressed with Apple.
The rendez-vous client could be useful, but your still playing with the limits of battery power and non-sync connections over bluetooth and less so wifi. I dont think Rendez-fool was made for such connections? Dont know enough on this issue…

Anyway the RSS generator – Yeah this is useful. Cant quite work out there Url scheme. But not looked at it enough really. Something like Amazon's A9.com would be sweet…

Using RSS2.0 – sweet, am option for RDF would be equally nice, but easy to convert from RSS2 to RDF using XSLT. Sure Atom wouldn’t be much of a challenge either. Really need to write the xsl's soon, as the BBC also requires something like this for RSS 0.91 to others.

Good use of standard namespaces rather than making there own, unlike others I've seen recently. Would be interested to see what else is inside the itms modules though.

BUT, what the hell is going on with the content:encoded elements!
TABLES in a RSS Feed? Surely the point of RSS is to syndicate not force your style on other services? XML with style, not a good idea at all, and I would usually go into a rant about how Apple always do something like this. Tease us with applications and services which claim to be standard complient and all, till you look a little deeper and find a flaw. Think Microsoft WordprocessingML! I would gladly rip out all that crap soon as possible if I was working on it.

Generally this work has to be supported with clap of hands and a happy smile. Keep it up Apple. Sure the BBC would be interested in doing something very simular some point soon. Although I would prefer something a little more like XMLTV or something from Kendra.

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So Amazon have launched there A9 search engine, and I've been checking it out.

First thoughts, its a little large and the style is down a touch from even all the web. Certainly not your google or teoma. But how good is it? Well its a odd beast. A search for cubicgarden my own site gets results close to google, but check out that url! a9.com/cubicgarden.com. Wow now interesting… No query strings for A9 it would seem.

http://a9.com/cubicgarden : A9
http://www.alltheweb.com/search?cat=web&cs=utf8&q=cubicgarden&_sb_lang=pref : All the web/Fast
http://s.teoma.com/search?q=cubicgarden&qcat=1&qsrc=0&Search.x=0&Search.y=0 : Teoma
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=imdb&btnG=Search : Google

Interesting enough Teoma looks at my mixes and finds some lostfeeds stuff, some comments I've made on city of minneapolis and built for the future. While All the web does pretty much the same, but avoids the nackerd lostfeeds links. Google and A9 generate almost the same results except… 1,510 for cubicgarden. (0.09 seconds) from Google and only 52 for A9… Looking at the results too, A9 picks the best ones of googles selection. Even when you get close to the end of 52. I'm still getting good results. Noticed the querystring finally gets used via pages.

So yeah I'm basicly saying this A9 stuff is good, and I havent signed in yet…Which you need to do to use search history and other features. Nice url by the way amazon.

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I have no idea what to make of Speechbot. This is so typical of the cutting edge work HP research labs are doing. I havent done any real research into it but even the concept alone makes me feel very sick.

Ok I've just done tests, and it couldnt find for example Mpeg4, which it should have found if its indexed content from streamingmedia.com. However streaming did match 200 items. Wow, the show me extract part is pretty slick… It also seems speechbot isnt working on semantics. As its picked up non streamingmedia.com content too. HP Labs have done it again… Kudos from the BBC.

Take this for a great example.
Search for any words with streaming in it like above. And got a link to public interest transcript, here is the section taken from the actual stream. Yes believe it…

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I heard somewhere HP are working on a wearable system which records pretty much all of your day. Its being pioneered by HP labs in Bristol, yep the same lab the semantic blogger came out of… I still stick by my thoughts that HP are really doing some interesting research in the semantic web area.

The whole concept of a always-on camera isnt a new one. Hell even I thought about it when I was doing work with Trium back in college. But the thing which comes to mind instantly is the privicy issue, you only have to look at slashdot to see what I mean. And even though I see all the points, what I'm more interested in is, the link with semantic blogging. Adding words to the pictures?

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I was speaking to an ex-student on jabber instant messager tonight, and he said something which was out of the blue.

[23:52:43] David> this is going to be the year of rss
[23:52:52] Ian> lol why do you say that
[23:53:15] David> last year was im
[23:53:15] Ian> have a answer already but just wondering why you say that
[23:53:18] David> this years rss
[23:53:58] Ian> hummm yes i guess
[23:54:26] David> and coss your working on it!
[23:56:12] Ian> just finished new intranet, uses rss all the way through
[23:57:18] David> for rave?
[23:57:34] Ian> yep
[23:57:52] David> so give me an rss demo feed

Now I've been using rss for a while now, but not in the tradional sense most people use it for. I'm tending to use it for serious syndication. As mentioned the new rave intranet and website is based on rss through and through-out. I was dropped a link by dave to live streams of new bit torrent downloads in rss, which I have aggergated into a nasty fat feed. And there is the webbased xmlrpc client which is built on jsp and html forms. All coming together really nicely, but i dont buy the this year crap – specially when you consider the Atom threat, Soap and others… But also I cant decide where the rss fits in the grand scale of things. Personal publishing or the Semantic web? And of this all links back to my one voice thought, which I still havent finished yet…

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