The SWAML project fulfills a much-needed requirement for the Semantic Web: to be able to refer to semantic versions of email messages and their properties using a resource URI. I am delighted that the SWAML group have decided to use our SIOC vocabulary for their work, especially now as SIOC is beginning to achieve traction in terms of both metadata creation and applications that can make use of this metadata. By reusing the SIOC vocabulary for describing online discussions, SWAML allows users of SIOC to refer to email messages from other discussions taking place on forums, blogs, etc., so that distributed conversations can occur across these discussion media. Also, by providing email messages in SIOC format, SWAML are providing a rich source of data, namely mailing lists, for use in SIOC applications. I am also happy to see the SWAML creators developing their own applications that will work with SIOC data - the Buxon sioc:Forum visor is a great example of a program using SIOC message data that can come from one or many sources (e.g. from a “virtual forum” or container of posts from multiple sites and systems).
Monthly Archive for November, 2006
YouTube - The Semantic Web & Social Software
Here’s an interview recorded with Ina last week about the Semantic Web and social software. The video references the DERI institute at NUI Galway, our funding agency SFI and the SIOC project.
Wahey - I’m delighted to have won again!
Thank you to all our members and moderators at adverts.ie / boards.ie who have supported the classified adverts sub-site since we launched it just over six months ago…
Since then, we’ve have 10,500+ adverts placed, with nearly 2 million total views.
None of this would be possible without the help of our Adverts Moderators, who have helped users with advert posting, consigned commercial dross to the Sin Bin and ruled their categories of interest with great balance - the award includes a Galway Crystal vase, and you moderators all deserve a part of it when I find my hammer… 
On behalf of the directors of boards.ie, I’d like to say thanks to everyone for voting for me and the site, and we appreciate your continued support!
Many thanks also to the Irish Internet Association for a great night, and to Realex Payments who sponsored my award.
Colm Lyon (IIA Chairman), online trader winner John Breslin (adverts.ie/boards.ie Ltd.) and category sponsor Stephen McDonagh (Realex Payments)
My friends at Pidgin / BoardTracker have recently launched Klostu - a site that unifies bulletin boards from around the world through a central access site and unified login system. Klostu allows you to find thousands of bulletin boards in one place: you can make friends via their social network functionality or browse / search through millions of forum topics.
Klostu was recently demonstrated at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco where it generated a lot of buzz, and not surprisingly as there are very few companies operating in this space, despite the potential benefits that connecting bulletin boards offer (see my previous post on a “Technorati for bulletin boards“).
I’ve been demoing Klostu this week, and so far it’s great. Here are screenshots of the main page and my own personalised profile page. The drag and drop features for moving around blocks and customisable tab groupings for blocks are a nice touch. You simply have to double click on any block to edit the properties / features of that section. You can add as many RSS feeds as desired, comment blocks, shared files, etc., and there are many more customisable blocks on the way…
I could say more but it’s best if you try it out for yourself, just signup at klostu.com (Edit: You’ll need to request a beta test key on the signup page). Ron and the team at Klostu will be releasing modules for various bulletin boards shortly, allowing board owners to integrate the Klostu single signon system into their own sites (demo here).
Bhí mé ag caint le Conn Ó Muineacháin don podchraoladh “An Líonra Sóisialta” faoi mo obair le DERI, OÉ Gaillimh agus wikis an seachtain seo caite, agus tá sé le fáil anois ar an suíomh anlionra.com inniu.
(Craoltar An Líonra Sóisialta gach seachtain ar an Idirlíon, agus freisin ar na stáisiúin raidió seo a leanas: Flirt FM Gaillimh, Raidió na Life Baile Átha Cliath, Clare FM, Ocean FM Sligeach, KCLR Cill Chainnigh agus Ceatharlach, Wired FM Luimneach agus Failte FM Béal Feirste.)
Just looking at the latest Alexa Web Search - Top 500 for Ireland, I see that Daft.ie, eircom net and boards.ie are sitting in places 14 to 16 respectively in the listings. However, I may choose to disregard the top 13 sites (multinationals like Google, eBay etc. with or without an Irish presence) for purposes of my ego…
I’ve hacked the RSS code for adverts.ie a bit so that you can now specify a county for the full RSS feed or the per category RSS feed.
To do this, first of all copy a feed RSS URL from the main www.adverts.ie page, e.g.
or:
Then, using the ID of the county you want from the table below:
I’ve been testing out the Buxon visor for browsing SIOC forums, created by the SWAML developers and written in PyGTK.
So far, it works great (with SWAML-generated data). I used an example script packaged with python-libgmail (archive.py) to download an inbox from a GMail account (subscribed to the sioc-dev mailing list) to mbox format, and then ran swaml.py on that mbox to convert it to SIOC RDF. The resulting RDF is here, and I successfully browsed this with Buxon (as shown in the screenshot below). Great job, SWAML guys!
This is a nice demonstrator, and it just remains to do the same for a few more SW-related mailing lists…
I was driving back to Galway on Monday morning and I heard my name being mentioned on Galway Bay FM in relation to the IIA Net Visionary Awards 2006 which are being held next week.
When I looked up the nominations shortlist, I saw that the other two people in my category are also from Galway - Des Kenny from kennys.ie, and Richard Moyles from mattress.ie / furniture.ie - so someone from Galway is going to win 
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