SquareCows

SVN is now up and running again. ApacheMap and MonoBackup are on google code:

ApacheMap: https://code.google.com/p/apachegeomap/source/checkout

Mono-backup: https://code.google.com/p/m0n0-backup/source/checkout

wp-rdfa and wp-dephorm are hosted by wordpress:

wp-rdfa: http://svn.wp-plugins.org/wp-rdfa/

wp-dephorm: http://svn.wp-plugins.org/wp-dephorm/

Feel free to download alter and suggest changes again.

I’m doing some work on the dev server here at SquareCows to improve performance. This however means the local SVN is not currently working. I’m planning to migrate all the SVN repositories over to google code and will be pushing lots of new software patches at the same time. Hopefully I’ll get some time over the holidays to do this. For those of you interested in what I’m doing with the server I’m trialling lighttpd to see what kind of performance boost can be achieved.

I’ve just confirmed wp-RDFa and wp-dephorm are both compatible with WordPress 2.9-RC1. So your free to test the new release without breaking your semantic web presence or leaving your readers vulnerable to the prying eyes of phorm.

If you spot any problems just drop me a mail via the contact form and I’ll look into it.

I’ve started work on creating some debian/ubuntu packages of Garlik’s 4store RDF database, currently there is source and soon there will be some RPM’s, so I thought I’d help bring  .deb’s to the party. The guys from Garlik are very helpful and can be contacted in #4store on freenode. According to their site:

4store was designed by Steve Harris and developed at Garlik to underpin their Semantic Web applications. It has been providing the base platform for around 3 years. At times holding and running queries over databases of 15GT, supporting a Web application used by thousands of people.

I’m looking at this product to build the core of system that will help create a scalable, repeatable, easy to use data store system. The idea behind this is to help organisations achieve the goal of opening their data. @johnlsheridan stated that open source is the perfect system for promoting and achieving the goal of open data and open standards, all three go hand in hand. My aim is to remove the “black magic” currently involved in setting up some of these systems and help people free their data easily, which should benefit us all in the long run.

4store has some very interesting features such as the ability of nodes to clustering database nodes for scalability. It also has a SPARQL http server which provides a RESTful API. The fact that all the data can be accessed by a URI means this data is cacheable, which in turn means you can scale this system very easily with proxies and load balancers. The beauty of the system though is that none of these extra features are a requirement, so if your a small organisation with a moderate amount of data you don’t need to break the bank to do it.

Why free your data?

Well data is key for communication and the traditional business model is to guard your data and protect it. However the internet generation is here, and they’re changing the world! As soon as you put your data in a open standard anyone can use it. Using linked data means that someone looking for information about a certain item can find your data easier and more importantly can be interpreted by machines easily which improves search algorithms. If this item searched for is a product it may get you a sale. If the item is data about health it might even save a life. Data is diverse and so is its uses, when you open your data people may find a new way of using it and progress is made. Opening your data allows people create mashups and pull in data from a multitude of sources, giving a accurate and informative view on the requested subject matter. Open source, open data and open standards if embraced by enough people will help everyone move forward. I’ve only skimmed the surface of what these systems can be used for and trying to describe the importance of open data is incredibly difficult because data can be anything! If you want to know more I’d suggest looking at these TED speaches:

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/tim_berners_lee_on_the_next_web.html

and an excellent example of open data in use:

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/hans_rosling_shows_the_best_stats_you_ve_ever_seen.html

I’ve just squashed 3 bugs in wp-rdfa, version 0.3 should be available on the #WordPress site very soon. This fixes problems within FOAF.php which failed when publishing subscribers. Also the options page didn’t save contributors or subscribers status. All fixed now and thanks to Joss Winn for pointing out the problems, keep them coming!

Ric

I’ve created a simple plugin for WordPress that sets a cookie to opt-out of phorm’s data mining and marketing system. This will allow your readers to read your site without information being gathered about them. So if you wish to help protect the privacy of your readers please install this plugin.

Its very simple just download, install and activate.

http://dev.squarecows.com/projects/wp-dephorm/

I’ve just pushed to the WordPress SVN repository the new version of wp-RDFa, this will be version 0.2! This version adds Dublin Core publishing for your blog posts. A sample of the published triplets can be seen here:

<rdf:Description rdf:about="http://dev.squarecows.com/2009/04/06/cracked-it-inline-rdfa/">
  <dc:date xml:lang="en">2009-04-06 16:54:39</dc:date>
  <dc:creator xml:lang="en">Ric_</dc:creator>
  <dc:title xml:lang="en">Cracked it! inline RDFa….</dc:title>
</rdf:Description>

You can download from the WordPress site http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-rdfa/

Please test and send any feed back in via the contact form.

Trying to work around a bug in WordPress where this code also returns pages!

if($type == "post") {.........}

Suggestions most welcome!


After a couple of attempts and a couple of breakages on my blog (hey but this is dev) I’ve managed to modify the default values for the_author() . In this case it prints the authors name from WordPress via the template and I can now modify the output to include span tags and meta data automatically. This break through will allow me to added inline RDFa elements to any WordPress theme and create triplets of data. The next phase will be to allow users to input their own RDFa tags in posts.

Watch this space and expect wp-rdfa 0.2 soon(ish)

Ric_

My plugin has just gone live on wordpress.org. This adds support to WordPress for FOAF which allows machines to parse and index your data more easily, using RDF data and its micro formats. Future versions will introduce the Dublin Core standard and allow articles and pages to be tagged in a machine friendly format.

If you use WordPress please download and give it a go, and if you like it please rate it on wordpress.org.

You can get it here: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-rdfa/

My project page for the plugin is here: http://dev.squarecows.com/projects/wp-rdfa/

Ric_