RDFWeb and Friend of a Friend (FOAF): Getting started with FOAF

July 28, 2003

Getting started with FOAF

A new FOAF homepage and user site is on its way... (and a new spec!).

The FOAF Project homepage is now at http://www.foaf-project.org/.

There is plenty of work to do on the new site, but now seems as good a time as any to cut across to the new version. The old FOAF homepage had a (somewhat random) collection of links and information on FOAF. A version of that is included in this 'getting started' article; for more comprehensive links to FOAF-related materials, see the collaboratively maintained FoafProject wiki site.

The current www.foaf-project.org site is pretty minimalistic. Nicole Sullivan has been working on some ideas for a more complete FOAF site. One of the things we need to figure out before doing that is a sensible balance between fairly accessible end-user materials (www.foaf-project.org) and the more obscure technical and developer content familiar from rdfweb.org.

The basic recipe for getting started with FOAF is as follows. First, you'll need a basic idea of what FOAF is, and is for. Short version: FOAF is all about creating and using machine-readable homepages that describe people, the links between them and the things they create and do.

For a more in depth version, the evolving FOAF Specification should be the authoritative reference, accompanied by less technical documents such as Edd Dumbill's FOAF intro article. The FOAF FAQ has links to some other media articles, including 'Metadata Mark II' in Web Monkey Magazine which describes FOAF alongside some related efforts.

If you're still interested, the best thing to do next is to make yourself a FOAF file. For this, most people use Leigh Dodd's handy foaf-a-matic tool, which is now available in eight (8!) languages. So make yourself a FOAF file, save it online somewhere, and add an auto-discovery link to it from your homepage so that machines have an easy way to find it. If you mess about with the FOAF markup, eg. to add your own extensions, the W3C RDF Validator is a useful tool for checking the file is still in legal RDF/XML format.

Then what? Well hopefully your data will start to show up in the various FOAF navigators and aggregators, some links to which are included in this article...

Here are a few useful links relating to FOAF: FOAFNaut (and SVG-based navigator), FOAF Explorer (server-based navigator using XSLT bookmarklet), eikeon.com FOAF Web View (another server-based navigator, written in Python), JabFOAF (utilities for integrating FOAF and Jabber).

Some more Links and background... this list is not complete, but repeated here so I can reference it from the new more minimalist FOAF site.

the FOAF namespace document (technical)
add nearestAirport or myersBriggs data to your FOAF file
Ian Davis has drafted some FOAF icons for linking to your FOAF files (with SVG versions thanks to Jim Ley).
Finding friends with XML and RDF, IBM developerWorks article, Edd Dumbill (good general introduction)
see also: Japanese and Chinese versions; and more Japanese RDF links).
FOAF: el proyecto 'friend of a friend' (amigo de un amigo), Leandro Mariano; see also SemWebSpain wiki)
An Introduction to RDFWeb and FOAF by Dan Brickley and Libby Miller (the original intro, incomplete, but has reasonable summary of our goals)
codepiction writeup, codepiction demo and codepiction paths demo and paths writeup
RDFWeb Wiki
FOAF-a-matic
FOAF bulletin board wiki page ( rdf version).
FOAF's first 15 minutes of weblog fame
Jim Ley's SVG image annotation tool supports RDF, FOAF and co-depiction; you can search on Jim' person search and object search pages, or use the rdfweb.org codepiction search
usefulinc.com FOAF pages (including foafbot, PGP signing howto and seeAlso linking).
FOAFCorp! (including software)

Posted by danbri at July 28, 2003 12:46 PM

Comments

Well, this is all very good and such, but I don't see why Movable Type Bloggers would worry about getting more FOAF. Isn't being a Mac user supposed to protect you from this sort of acronym?

I mean, correct me if I'm wrong because I'm still heterosexual and haven't made "the switch."

Posted by: Mr. Darl McBride on November 12, 2003 04:05 AM

Cant make a head or tail about FOAF , can some one help!!!!!!!!!!

Rgds

RAhul

Posted by: Rahul Bahuguna on November 12, 2003 06:45 PM

I don't want friends.
Friends always hurt you in the end.
The human race is flawed from its very inception.
Nobody is really able to love unselfishly.
Everybody is cursed with the dark design of evolution, masterful yet cruel oeuvre of God.

Posted by: Isidore Ducasse on December 21, 2003 11:51 PM

H|!
Here's a small tutorial on FOAF for beginners: http://www.bulat.f0.ru/tutorials/FOAFtut/eng/

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