Comments on: FOAF and OPML http://libraryclips.blogsome.com/2006/05/08/foaf-and-opml/ sharing ideas thoughts and feedback Sat, 28 Nov 2009 15:29:17 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=1.5.1-alpha by: Danny http://libraryclips.blogsome.com/2006/05/08/foaf-and-opml/#comment-30837 Mon, 08 May 2006 12:04:16 +0100 http://libraryclips.blogsome.com/2006/05/08/foaf-and-opml/#comment-30837 PS. the <a href="http://open.bbc.co.uk/catalogue/infax/" rel="nofollow">BBC Programme Catalogue</a> is a good example of FOAF being used outside of typical social networks, it uses the vocab to associate about a million people with the programmes they've appeared in. PS. the BBC Programme Catalogue is a good example of FOAF being used outside of typical social networks, it uses the vocab to associate about a million people with the programmes they’ve appeared in.

]]> by: Danny http://libraryclips.blogsome.com/2006/05/08/foaf-and-opml/#comment-30836 Mon, 08 May 2006 11:59:00 +0100 http://libraryclips.blogsome.com/2006/05/08/foaf-and-opml/#comment-30836 I think there's a lot to Fred's post, but a quick note on your comment: FOAF is far from being a dedicated service for social networks, it's a vocabulary for describing people. Sure, the most interesting term is the A foaf:knows B relation. But terms from the vocabulary can be used wherever you want to talk about people, and the data is automatically compatible with any other RDF. "...there's no reason OPML can't be used as a simple profile". Potentially yes, and a mapping could be made to FOAF/RDF just like it is with the XFN microformat (in fact microformat material can be directly interpreted as RDF, see <a href="http://micromodels.org" rel="nofollow">micromodels.org</a>). But OPML has a lot of practical issues, and support for the profiles would pretty much have to be built from scratch in OPML tools. Wouldn't be my first choice of interchange format, XHTML or RDF/XML would make a better choice, IMHO - in the first case viewing of the profiles comes for free, in the second ease of use with RDF systems. I think there’s a lot to Fred’s post, but a quick note on your comment:
FOAF is far from being a dedicated service for social networks, it’s a vocabulary for describing people. Sure, the most interesting term is the A foaf:knows B relation. But terms from the vocabulary can be used wherever you want to talk about people, and the data is automatically compatible with any other RDF.

“…there’s no reason OPML can’t be used as a simple profile”. Potentially yes, and a mapping could be made to FOAF/RDF just like it is with the XFN microformat (in fact microformat material can be directly interpreted as RDF, see micromodels.org).

But OPML has a lot of practical issues, and support for the profiles would pretty much have to be built from scratch in OPML tools. Wouldn’t be my first choice of interchange format, XHTML or RDF/XML would make a better choice, IMHO - in the first case viewing of the profiles comes for free, in the second ease of use with RDF systems.

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