microformats: #towerofbabel #pareto #dataportability

2009-03-12 GLIS 663 Knowledge Taxonomies, McGill

Sarven Capadisli
Creative Commons
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Overview
Tower of Babel
Humans & machines
- Syntax - How you say something
- Semantics - Meanings behind what has been said
Humans & machines
- I love books!
- I books!
- I <3 books!
We need to work on communication
What's up with XML/HTML?
- Capturing data in a most meaningful way (i.e. semantics, relationships, order)
- What about common data types?
  - contacts
  - events
  - posts
  - locations
  - reviews
  - products
  - multi-media
  - recipes
Where to?
- From Web of documents to...
- Web of things/concepts (databases)
Goal: better access to stuff
Problem domain
What's up with microformats?
- General problem: RDF(a), NLP but ..
- Solve specific problems
- Built upon existing and widely adopted standards (e.g., vCard, iCal, Atom, WGS 84, ISO8601, HTML)
- Visible vs. Hidden meta-data
Quickly: What's RDF?

Resource Description Framework
- e.g., "Albert was born in Germany"
- Simple data model
- Things are mostly defined with URIs
- Knowledge representation using Graphs
- Structure first
Quickly: What's NLP?

Natural Language Processing
- Language specific
- Data first

What's up with microformats?

microformats	RDFa
- No namespaces (e.g., URI, dirs, prefixes)	- Namespaces
- Limited vocabulary	- Any vocabulary (e.g., FOAF)
- Common problems and solutions	- Open
- Not extensible	- Extensible
- Visible data favoured	- Meta data is okay
- Community decides definition	- Anyone can create their own definitions
- Fairly easy to implement	- Medium-ish

hCard markup example



                           http://csarven.ca/
                           Sarven 
                            Capadisli

hCard markup example


<div              >
 <a                  href="http://csarven.ca/">
  <span                   >Sarven</span> 
  <span                    >Capadisli</span>
 </a>
</div>

hCard markup example


<div class="vcard"> 
 <a class="url fn n" href="http://csarven.ca/">
  <span class="given-name">Sarven</span> 
  <span class="family-name">Capadisli</span>
 </a>
</div>

hCard markup example


<div class="vcard">
 <a class="url fn n" href="http://csarven.ca/">
  <span class="given-name">Sarven</span> 
  <span class="family-name">Capadisli</span>
 </a>
</div>

Example: hCalendar




           http://csarven.ca/presentations/microformats-06 

                         GLIS 663 Knowledge Taxonomies, McGill 2009

    2009 March 12

Example: hCalendar


<ol                  >
 <li               >
  <a href="http://csarven.ca/presentations/microformats-06" 
                >
   <span                >GLIS 663 Knowledge Taxonomies, McGill 2009

    2009 March 12

  </a>
 </li>
</ol>

Example: hCalendar


<ol class="vcalendar">
 <li class="vevent">
  <a href="http://csarven.ca/presentations/microformats-06" 
     class="url">
   <span class="summary">GLIS 663 Knowledge Taxonomies, McGill 2009</span>
   <abbr class="dtstart" title="2009-03-12T14:00:00-05:00">
    2009 March 12
   </abbr>
  </a>
 </li>
</ol>

Example: hCalendar


<ol class="vcalendar">
 <li class="vevent">
  <a href="http://csarven.ca/presentations/microformats-06" 
     class="url">
   <span class="summary">GLIS 663 Knowledge Taxonomies, McGill 2009</span>
   <abbr class="dtstart" title="2009-03-12T14:00:00-05:00">
    2009 March 12
   </abbr>
  </a>
 </li>
</ol>

Microformats: 2004 → 2009
- - XFN - distributed social network
    - blo.gs, WordPress, Rubhub, more
  - rel-license - license links
    - CC Creator, Yahoo CC search, Google Search
  - XOXO - lists and outlines
    - WordPress, Technorati, more
  - VoteLinks - for/against/abstain a link
    - Technorati
  - hCalendar - events
    - Yahoo Upcoming.org, Eventful.com, more
  - hCard - people & orgs
    - Avon.com, Eventful.com, more
  - rel-tag - content tagging
    - Technorati, Ice Rocket, more
- - adr & geo - for locations
    - Flickr geotagged photos
  - hAtom - syndication
    - Wordpress templates
  - hListing - classifieds
    - Edgeio, Oodle, WordPress plugin
  - hResume - resumes
    - Linkedin, Operator
  - hReview - reviews
    - Cork'd, JudysBook, Reevoo, more�
  - rel-directory - directory inclusion
    - Technorati Blog Finder
  - rel-payment - for tip-jars
  - xFolk - link tagging
  - � and many more in development�
Tools and Services
- Operator
- Tails
- Swignition
- Weborganics
- Optimus
- XOXO Tools
- Yahoo! Search Monkey
- ufXtract
- Microformatique
Cool stuff
- Combine information - mashups (powerful stuff)
- Show me a map of each news story
- Accidental API
- Subscribing to structured content
- Search!
- microformats -> GRDDL -> RDF (awesome!)
- DataPortability.org

Example uses

hCard	Technorati hCard to vCard export, How to use hCards to fill in forms, hCard to QR-Code, hKit - PHP serialisation of Sarven's hCard
XFN	rel-me to http://csarven.ca and http://claimid.com/sarven-capadisli, Google Social Graph - Contacts of http://csarven.ca csarven's identica contacts
geo	Company address, hCard to Google Map, Reusing geo to call Google Maps API
hAtom	hAtom to Atom for a search result
rel-tag	Article has visible tags
hCalendar, hResume	Sarven's CV exported to .ics

Example uses

.. and a zillion more out there
hReview	Book review
rel-license	Sarven's content licensed under CC 3.0, Flickr photo
currency	Items have amount (money)
Microformat Support Built Into Firefox 3	JavaScript API - Intro
Yahoo Search Monkey	Custom search results for identica Profiles, .. More Magazine
RDF/SPARQL query bot	Query data

Cost and benefits
- Open community development
- Observing common formats in our documents
- Easy to implement
- Standardised documents
- Reuse
- ...?
Good development process
- Data outlasts code: Open data > open source
- Search engine site caches + microformated data can help restore "catastrophic data loss"
- Managing projects
- Information architecture
- Development
- Content editorial
Microformats Community
- IRC
  - irc.freenode.net #microformats
    - great place to lurk and learn
- Email
  - join microformats-discuss mailing list
  - public archives
- Blog
  - tag posts with "microformats" tag
- Wiki
  - if you find errors, please fix them, like Wikipedia
  - advocate microformats support on sites you use
  - add examples, help research, brainstorm, etc.
  - help translate!
Colophon
- XHTML
- CSS
- S5 v1.1xoxo
- XOXO
- hCard
- hCalendar
- rel="license"
- Some rights reserved. CC by-3.0
Thanks!
- microformats.org
- csarven.ca/presentations/microformats-06
- csarven.ca/microformats-introduction
- http://identi.ca/csarven

microformats: #towerofbabel #pareto #dataportability

2009-03-12 GLIS 663 Knowledge Taxonomies, McGill

Creative Commons

Overview

Tower of Babel

Humans & machines

Humans & machines

We need to work on communication

What's up with XML/HTML?

Where to?

Goal: better access to stuff

Problem domain

What's up with microformats?

Quickly: What's RDF?

Quickly: What's NLP?

What's up with microformats?

hCard markup example

hCard markup example

hCard markup example

hCard markup example

Example: hCalendar

Example: hCalendar

Example: hCalendar

Example: hCalendar

Microformats: 2004 → 2009

Tools and Services

Cool stuff

Example uses

Example uses

Cost and benefits

Good development process

Microformats Community

Colophon

Thanks!

microformats.org