Links are metadata on Web documents that let you get into conversations

Frederick Giasson

I just came across a blog post by Doc Searl that link to a conversation about linking vs non-linking bloggers.

I was surprised to read this from Robert W. Anderson:

“What I should have said is that as a new blogger, linking is required to get into the conversation.”

My question would be: then how old bloggers can get into conversation without linking? The thing is that a link is the best metadata element we can use to link Web documents together. All the current technologies understand what a link is, and how to work and play with it.

It is sure that in the future (the Semantic Web, the Web of meaning) we will be able to link documents without “explicit links in document”. But for now, with the current technologies available, they are essential both for writer (to get into conversations) and readers (to know where the information came-from and go-to).

Links are definitely essential to beginner and expert bloggers to get into conversations.

By the way, I saw that weird argument a couple of times on the Blogsphere in the last weeks: “Strong web bloggers no longer link”. The argument here seems to mean: stop linking because the big ones stopped (you have to stop if you want to be one of these bigs). I have to confess that I don’t get it… Some A-list bloggers probably stopped to link to other people for some reasons. One of them could be because they think that they are so bright that they don’t need other people ideas to write something intelligent. For them I would cite Emerson: “Every man I meet is my superior in some way. In that, I lean of him”. Okay, I agree, most of them probably stopped to link to other people because they see themselves as columnists and not as bloggers(people that get into conversations evolving on the Web via their personal Web log) anymores.

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Communities’ websites should use FOAF profiles to help users managing their online persona

Frederick Giasson

The social software industry (Web 2.0?) is the new buzz on the Web today. New virtual groups and communities are emerging everywhere at a terrific pace and users generated content websites are becoming the norm.

To create these communities, supporting websites are creating advanced user profiles to try to connect their users based on their interests, relationships with other people, projects involvement, etc. Recently I talked with some of my clients about their projects and each of them needed some type of user profiles into their system. Some user characteristics changed from one system to another but the core characteristics were always the same: name, homepage, geo localization, interests, etc.

It is really great, but as a user of these systems, something is bothering me with all these social websites: I always have to create a user profile, spending my time to create and update it when it changes. For example if I have to change my name (do not worry, it is not in my plans!) then I have to login into each of my user accounts, and change my profile accordingly. It is so boring that people just do not do it: they initially create their profile and forget it after.

The thing is that profiles do not grow-up with the user: the user’s interests will change in the future, but not the profiles’. Eventually the difference between the user and his profile become so big that the profile become a person of its own (okay, I admit that the concept of virtual-re-personification of a profile is weird).

Considering that, I tried to resolve the problem with the next generation of Talk Digger:

 



(Client on the image to enlarge it)

 

  1. Bob have a website (a blog?) on a web server with its own domain name (bob.com). Each month he has to make some changes to his FOAF profile because he gets new interests in life, work on new projects, etc. Considering this, he edits and changes the FOAF profile hosted on his web server accordingly.
  2. The updated FOAF profile is then saved on the web server and available to anyone connected on the Internet.
  3. Bob also have a Talk Digger user account (that is also a FOAF profile). Each week Talk Digger will check if Bob changed his FOAF profile, and if Bob changed it, then Talk Digger will update Bob’s Talk Digger user account accordingly to this new information.
  4. The new information is saved on Talk Digger and all the Talk Digger users instantly have access to that new and updated information about Bob.
  5. Bob’s FOAF profile hosted on his web server and Bob’s Talk Digger user profile are synchronized and reflect the changes in his persona.

 

What is really cool is that Bob do not have to care about his Talk Digger user account. He only has to change his FOAF profile hosted on his web server and within a week the changes will appear on Talk Digger.

It is cool with Talk Digger, but thinks about it if all the “communities’ websites” that Bob is subscribed to would do the same thing? Bob would not have to think about his users profiles scattered around the Web and he would be sure that all his information would be up-to-date.

This is exactly what the new generation of Talk Digger is doing right now and it is working quite fine. Users can import their FOAF profile into Talk Digger and then Talk Digger will crawl their profile once a week or so. That way, in two clicks, they created their Talk Digger user profile with their personal information and do not have to bother with updating their Talk Digger user profile anymore.

The advantage for communities’ websites by using FOAF profiles is that it is becoming the norm to define users’ profiles on the Web. Millions of Internet users already have and maintain their FOAF profile. But the real advantage of FOAF profile is that they are defined using RDF. So a user could extend their FOAF profile as infinitum using different vocabularies and then creating a more-than-human detailed profile. Then communities websites would only retrieve the information they need (or understand) of that profile (one website could only need his interests and another one only his connections with other people but both information would be available if they eventually need it).

This is what it is all about: helping people to manage their online persona. That way they will not have 20 different descriptions of themselves scattered on the Web as time go on.

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I will be at the Canadian Semantic Web Working Symposium 2006 in Quebec City the 6th June

Frederick Giasson

Kone Mamadou Tadiou that co-chair the event with Daniel Lemire contacted me two days ago to know if I would be there: sure I will! I registered yesterday and I am impatiently waiting after that event.

The CSWWS will be in conjunction with the Canadian AI-2006 and the International workshop on agents and multiagent systems. If you are interested in Artificial Intelligence, in multiagent systems or in the Semantic Web, you have to be in Quebec City from the 5th to the 9th June.

The computer science department of the Laval University worked hard to get things done with that major Canadian event of 2006. It will be a great opportunity to meet new people, talk about fascinating subjects and to discuss about new academic and commercial projects related with these domains.

I hope to met you there, in one of the most beautiful and enjoyable city on the planet.

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Visialize your RDF files, visualize your contact network

Frederick Giasson

I found a cool little demo application last week called RDFRoom. It let you visualize RDF files in a Doom-like environment. There is nothing exceptional with the tool considering that many people are doing research and products that help people to visualize RDF files or any other type of digital information [you only have to perform this search to understand what I mean].

However it stimulates me to write some notes about the possible future of user web interfaces.

Just as a quick introduction, RDF (RDFS/OWL) is a way to describe relationships between Internet resources such as websites and their content. (RDFS and OWL are extensions of RDF that let you describe more complex relationships).

One good example of how RDF could be used is FOAF files (Friend of a Friend). A FOAF is the profile of a person. It describes the person’s relationships with other people, and with her or his publications, interests, etc.

The problem is that if you edit a FOAF file, you will not be able to understand anything at first glance. You will have to read the FOAF file using something that presents the information in such a way that it can be read.

You usually have two types of FOAF viewer:

  1. Text-based, like this FOAF explorer
  2. Graphic-based, like RDFRoom

The graphic-based FOAF reader is definitely more attractive. With a quick look, you can see the relation between many people and the publications of each of them.

With the emerging trend of “Web 2.0”, the tagging systems, the memetrackers, etc. everybody tries their best to present too much information in too-small text-based web interfaces. These guys have done a good job, but there is a limit (and I have no idea if we have reached it yet).

I’d bet that we will probably see some sort of embedded 3D interfaces in the future “Web 2.0” services to help users to visualize and play with this type of information.

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Semantic MediaWiki

Frederick Giasson

I just discovered this Semantic initiative by Markus Krötzsch while reading Danny Ayers.

Wow! What a great initiative – trying to develop and test some Semantic Web ideas and technologies in the mainstream.

What is this Semantic MediaWiki all about?

The WikiProject “Semantic MediaWiki” provides a common platform for discussing extensions of the MediaWiki software that allow for simple, machine-based processing of Wiki content. This usually requires some form of “semantic annotation,” but the special Wiki environment and the multitude of envisaged applications impose a number of additional requirements.

The overall objective of the project is to develop a single solution for semantic annotation that fits the needs of most Wikimedia projects and still meets the Wiki-specific requirements of usability and performance. It is understood that ad hoc implementations (i.e. “hacks”) may sometimes solve single problems, but agreeing on common editing syntax, underlying technology, exchange formats, etc. bears huge advantages for all participants.

You can read the rest to find out what Markus and his team want to do (and not do) with the Semantic MediaWiki initiative.

I didn’t have much time to check its under-the-hood construction because I am overloaded with the development of Talk Digger and another contract I have accepted. However I did want to take the time to write a bit about it and the cool things I found.

The project is really great: they are trying to build a simple and easy to use semantic system, where users would benefit from its power without caring about all the technical stuff. They have well defined goals to guide their vision of this MediaWiki add-on. This Semantic MediaWiki is intended for Mr. and Mrs. anybody, not only academics.

How will semantic web capabilities be received by Internet users? How will they use the capabilities? Will they like the new possibilities it gives them?

These are all open questions that such an initiative will help to answer.

Give it a try

Basically it defines relations between the objects of Wiki articles. These things could be a word, a group of words (referred as value in their documentation) or another article. Read the document to know what the possible relations are, how they work, and how they are defined.

Check out what a Wiki article about San Diego looks like in a Semantic Web environment. The semantic meanings of the main terms are defined directly into the article. These definitions create a RDFS graph that describes the semantic meanings of the article.

Yeah well, what does this change in my life?

There are two possible answers: (1) absolutely nothing, or (2) absolutely everything. Think about it – think about Wikipedia using that add-on in their system, such that people start to define the semantic meanings of its articles.

People would have access to the same content; however now that content would be accessible in a new way: computers would have access to the RDFS graph created with the relations defined by Wikipedia users. So a third party crawler could crawl Wikipedia, then check for this tag in each article:

<link rel=”alternate” type=”application/rdf+xml” title=”…” href=”…” />

Then the crawler would download and archive the RDFS/SMW document annotated to each article. Eventually a RDFS/(SMW?) reasonner like KAON could do marvel with all that meaningful data!

Finally I would suggest trying the Simple Semantic Search.

I will try to find more time later to check out this Semantic Wiki more in depth and to talk a little bit more about it.

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