Mar
19
Recently, I discovered this example of what the Semantic Web is about through Neville on Muti. I think this is probably one of the clearest examples I’ve seen to date. Lets look at it.
The problem:
Consider the following sentence:
Voters are heading to the polls
The word heading in this context is an action. Unfortunately in natural language, heading is also a noun which could also mean: a division or section of a subject; a class or category.
So how do we teach a machine that heading in that context is an action and not a noun? Sure, it might be possible to try and parse the sentence and try and couple the word heading with other words that might identify it as an action. For example: condition: if word heading are preceded by an auxiliary verb (i.e. is, are, etc…) then it is an action. Can you imagine though how many possible combinations there would be in only the English language alone?!
The solution:
Enter the Semantic Web. By using simple markup, we can now enable machines to “understand” the context of the words. No need for machines to go through rigorous routines to establish whether or not a word is an action, name, location, etc., the machine is simply told what it is!
I hope you can see the actual advantage of it and how it could improve our online experience tremendously. To see this example in action please visit:
http://www.cortex-intelligence.com/tech/
For a long time now, we have been speculating whether or not the Semantic web would be adopted or not and how long it would be until the big guns start adopting it. Finally, Paul told me, that Yahoo adopted some microformats in a big way! Exciting news! Paul, you asked what I thought and I think it is FANTASTIC! Now it is simply a matter of time. So start adopting and taking this serious folks!
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Semantic Web Stii
Nov
01
This is quite an interesting move. Facebook is going a wee bit more professional. Paul tweeted the other day he’d like Facebook to have a CV application (or something to that likes) and now there is. What is even more interesting is that you can import your LinkedIn public profile as your resume. Even better still is the way it is done as it parses your public profile page and uses the hResume Microformat to do so as LinkedIn does not have an API as yet. Goes to show, who actually needs an API if you’ve got Microformats.
The application is called Professional Profile. After you installed it (and used the Skip button 
), you can see who in your network also uses it. Somehow this counts as a recommendation? Not entirely sure how that works, but we’ll see…
The main thing is the My Resume tab. If you click on it, you get to your resume page. You can select to either upload your CV in MS Word doc format or if you have a LinkedIn profile that is pretty much up to date, you can enter the URL to your public profile and click the Retrieve button:
Once it retrieved your LinkedIn resume you should have a page with all your relevant work experience and work history provided your LinkedIn profile is up to date:
There is a couple of other nice features such as you can search people’s resumes. So if you need to recruit a specific skill, you can search for people with the Professional Profile installed! This could make Facebook quite a valuable tool for companies looking to recruit people, especially if you consider that there is more people on Facebook than there is CV’s in any eRecruitment site’s database!
This is great not only for Facebook as a professional networking tool, but also for demonstrating the practicality of Microformats!
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Semantic Web, Social Web, Web 2.0 Stii
Sep
27
Microformats are starting to show their usefulness. You see it being implemented more and more, which is a great thing! The latest company to hook into the power of microformats is Satisfaction. They are using MF’s to greatly simplify the sign up procedure by enabling you to import your already existing profile from various sources like Technorati, Flickr, Twitter, etc… or anywhere where you publish your profile using the hCard microformat.
To see the microformats in action, do the following:
On the right-hand side is a block where you can select from where you would like to import your profile. Click on the logo of the site where you want it imported from or click “other” to specify your own address. I used Twitter which is very basic, so it only got my real name and my blog address. I’ll test it with the other services at a later stage to see if it gets more than just the name and url of my blog. For now, this is sufficient as it demonstrate the basic functionality.
Once you’ve entered your Twitter username, it will fetch your Twitter hCard and input the values underneath the signup form without you having to go through the motions:
This demonstrates clearly how Microformats can be put to good use and make our lives much simpler. Exciting, thats for sure!
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Semantic Web Stii
Aug
21
On Friday I had a quick Twit with Uno on why the adoption of OpenID is soooo slow. We were limited by time and Twitter’s word count so it did not go on for too long. I was actually wrong in that conversation. I stated that it was being overcomplicated and thats the reason why non-technical people don’t use it.
Later on I thought, what a “twit”! The main reason for its slow adoption is due to limited support in online services. If more big sites support it, more people will start implementing it. There is currently little value for users to use OpenID, since 9 out of 10 times they will have to sign up at a web site with a normal username and password anyway since that site does not support OpenID. Simple as that. Technical folks all have an OpenID because they see the future value of it and they like the concept.
What we must look at is why so many sites are not implementing it. When I implemented it for Afrigator I found that there is very little support or examples of how others before me have done it and I had to go very much into the technicalities of how the protocol actually works. There was at that stage 2 libraries for PHP that one could re-use for your own apps. There might be more now, but not sure. I think Python has a little more libraries, but not to sure about that fact.
Our very own Armand du Plessis is involved in a very, very interesting project which allows people to use their Facebook logins as an OpenID provider. It is called Identitude. I applaude this effort as it not only is extremely useful, but it also creates a great awareness of the OpenID technology. Great job Armand! Here is a great post explaining most of it.
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Tags: openid, facebook, identitude
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Kick-ass Tools, Semantic Web, Social Web Stii
Jun
13
…to be so much more than just another social networking site. First of all, I hate registering at any new site. I do it because I have to, not because I want to. It would have been really, REALLY cool if they supported OpenID!
Secondly, (as Charl mentioned) it would be the easiest thing in the world for these guys to mark up their events in the hCalendar microformat. It would have been real handy if they do that for the geekiest of geeks to save events they plan to attend to their Google calendars.
It could also be cool if they implement a XFN-like network between jollers. There could be great value if they do this in the near future…
Apart from these thingy’s it is all in all a great concept. They do lack basics like RSS feeds of jols, but thats the beauty of the “release early, release often” philosophy! Its on the cards aparently.
technorati tags:ijol, social-networking, microformats, openid
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Semantic Web, Social Web Stii
Jun
12
Meaning that although I have a blog and a profile outside of Facebook, I still need to maintain my Facebook activity and profile as the two are completely disconnected from each other, albeit the lonely link in my profile. True, you can import your RSS feed of your blog into Facebook. Whoopee. Thats not the point.
It is therefore no wonder that we sometimes feel like we are suffering from multiple personality disorder! I personally think that your blog that is in your control should be the starting point. Not any given social networking platform. The services these guys offer should be first seen on your blog. Not a Christmas tree widget in your sidebar which takes you to a profile with a lot of nonsense you’ve collected on another site where you have to build yet another profile!
This is part of what is so appealing of OpenID. It is one place I authenticate myself to. It makes registering simple with new services. It allows me to use my OWN blog as a delegate. A step in the right direction, me thinks. Would it not be kind of ideal to have Facebook features and applications on your blog? Interacting with other Facebook members’ blogs? I would think so. I’m not interested into going into the whole old worn-out discussion of “why we blog”. I’m just saying that it takes hard work and dedication to maintain one’s blog. Social Networking sites should compliment it, not dilute it as it do.
Is it so far fetched? No. Can it be done? Yes. Will it happen? We’ll have to wait and see, since something like this will have a serious impact on the revenue models of a lot of these guys.
I used Facebook as an example, but it is relevant to all social networking sites and services.
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Blogging, Semantic Web, Social Web Stii
May
30
I’ve been under a rock the past 3 to 4 weeks. Only 2 nights ago, Justin told me what the whole whoohaa is about.
Today I read this article by My Broadband (found through Afrigator 
) and I was wondering (since I know sweet blow-all about legal issues - Paul, help please!).
What got me thinking was this:
“When Internet users subscribe to services that allow them to operate their own blogs or take part in anonymous discussion forums or chat rooms,they first have to register with the blog or chat room operator.
These registrations require the submission of the user’s true identity and contact details. Although the user may provide fraudulent details, his or her email address is generally authenticated by sending the username and password necessary to activate the blog or discussion forum to the email address provided.
The true identities of these users are generally governed by the operator’s terms and conditions, which prevent the operator from disclosing it unless authorised thereto by due legal process.”
But what about services using OpenID? Where all you store is the user’s OpenID and nothing else. So if you do get hammerred to reveal the user’s “true identity” all you can do is pass the buck to the OpenID provider, is that correct? I feel sorry for the oke being defamed, since he’ll go on a wild goose chase of note here! (Okay, this is not yet an issue since not many services
has adopted the use of OpenID, so its not really all that relevant… YET.)
As Vincent said:
“It is easy to track you, there is a permanent record of what you said
that you might not have any control over anymore because you were
showing your muscle on someone else’s blog and its simply in bad taste.”
Caught you will get caught, so watch you tongue…
technorati tags:openid, patriciadelille
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Blogging, Semantic Web Stii
May
11
I’ve always been a HUGE fan of “Beauty/Power in Simplicity”. The indomitable Tyler Reed developed us a series of plugins which takes your blog post category and Technorati tags in your post body and display it as seen under this post’s title post’s content (changed it to display it without having to edit your template files). If you click it you can see all related blog posts on either Afrigator, Amatomu or Muti. (Currently I’m only displaying Afrigator… for all obvious reasons! Which is… I have only done the rel-tag filters on one plugin, not all, so far!). An extremely simple idea which is extremely useful!
Now in the same breath, I just HAVE to mention that this also demonstrate some of the benefits of microformats. If the Technorati tags was not in a machine recognizable format (the rel-tag microformat), we would not have been able to extract them from the content of the post all that easy!
[UPDATE]
I’ve also changed it to be 3-in-1. Will pass it back on to Tyler for approval. You can get it there later!
technorati tags:afrigator, amatomu, muti, wordpress, plugin
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Afrigator, Blogging, Semantic Web, Web 2.0 Stii
May
04
I’m a big fan of microformats and their potential. Its “early days” still as far as adoption of it goes, but when we developed Go2SA I thought, “Hey, you better practice what you preach…”. So I took a day and formatted some of the data.
Data that has been formatted so far:
The articles is formatted using the hAtom format.
The events is formatted using the hCalendar format.
The members’ listings is formatted using the hCard format.
The tags are all rel-tag formatted.
There is still lots of scope for improvement. We’d like to geo tag all our members. Maybe geo tag the photos in the photo gallery.
As soon as some of my most major projects are completed, I am going to attend to those!
Oh, btw, for the guys that have the Operator+ Firefox/Flock Plugin: If you go to Go2SA and you go into an event, you’ll be able to save it to your Google Calendar using the Operator+ plugin! Cool, eh?
technorati tags:go2sa.co.za, semanticweb, microformats, google, calendar, operator-plugin, firefox, flock
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Go2SA, Semantic Web Stii
Apr
05
Some of our myXchange group had a meeting about if and how we can implement a microformat for tourism related service providers. The main source of tourism businesses is through the internet and more specifically web sites like Go2SA and SA-Venues. What if we could implement a microformat to describe a guest house with its features/accolades to enable a much more targetted search on establishments and companies providing services to the tourism industry.
This meeting ignited an extremely valid and interesting arguement. Who needs to adopt the standard and more so, who will in effect benefit from it. The benefits is obvious to the establishments and to users. The problem is that internet services/portals like Go2SA and SA Venues will stand to loose their “hard earned” data.
We’ve spent hunderds of thousands of rands to build our web applications. We’re spending even more getting tourism providers to subscribe to using our services. It takes YEARS to build up a decent database of tourism providers and then offer users certain services like searching for accommodation, etc… Now if we offer a value added service to publish the tourism service provider’s details in a microformat, we are exposing our hard earned data for others to easily obtain and use it.
Yes, that is extremely beneficial to the accommodation establishment, since his data is much more accessible and distributable, but I’m selling myself short as I now say “Hey, don’t worry about spending tons of money to compile a database of data! Here it is for free”. Noble of me isn’t it? In a perfect, open source world, yes. Is it going to happen? No ways!
The adoption of microformats under these circumstances is going to have to come from ground level. In other words, the accommodation establishments are going to HAVE to expose their details in microformats themselves. Service providers (i.e. portals, etc.) are simply NOT going to venture out and do it for them as the financial implications are to risky. The main issue with that is that these accommodations establishment we talk about here would not have a clue what we’re talking about when we say, “Expose your data using microformats. This and that is the advantages”. Most of them hardly even know what a RSS feed is, whats to say a microformat!
Now I know a lot of open source people would think the same way as I did initially in that data, like source code, should be public domain. Yes, in a perfect world it should be. Is that going to happen when it comes done to losing hard spent cash? I’m thinking not!
This, I personally think, could be the main reason for the slow adoption of the microformats/semantic web standards. It has to come from ground level. And the folks at ground level in this case are simply not as up to date as we in the industry are. A classic catch 22! Do we try and educate them for free? Do we have the time and resources doing that? What do you think?
technorati tags:microformats, semanticweb, web3.0, tourism
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Semantic Web Stii
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