External FOAF field

[crschmidt]

This code will break your FOAF feed in any RDF parser. I missed a /, which confuses things, and causes parsing to fail.The external FOAF URL can be set on your Personal Information page, at http://www.livejournal.com/editinfo.bml . Under advanced options, there is a field

Comments

[anybodyhome55]

what exactly is a FOAF? im new at html. can u note me back and explain quickly?

FOAF is complex

[crschmidt]

FOAF is a difficult concept to explain quickly, and hard to demonstrate in action.

However, the simple description is that FOAF is a way to store the information about you - your contact information, your homepage, etc. - in a way that computers can understand. Basically, it's a way of rewriting your userinfo page - in the same way that RSS is a way of rewriting your main journal content so that computers can understand it.

FOAF stands for Friend-of-a-Friend because it describes you, and the people you know.

Re: FOAF is complex

[colbymulkey]

Why use FOAF?
I mean, why would you want to re-write your userinfo page?

I know nothing about it, so I thought I'd do some research... and Google pulled up this entry of your LiveJournal ahead of everything else (congrats).

Re: FOAF is complex

[crschmidt]

The rewrite isn't for humans - it's for machines. The same way that RSS is simple rewriting your most recent entries page, FOAF is a rewrite of your userinfo - both designed for programs to read them, not human beings.

An example of a tool which could take advantage of this fact is available at http://www.livejournal.com/users/crschmidt/260054.html . Simply feed a bot your information, and you can ask questions. You can even start to ask more complex ones - last night, I wrote something that would let you enter your town, find your GPS coordinates, and find out who else shares them with you - something that isn't possible just pulling the information from HTML (or at least not as easily).

help?!?

[_forever_yourz_]

how do you make your own foaf?

Re: help?!?

[crschmidt]

You have one:

http://www.livejournal.com/users/_forever_yourz_/data/foaf

Re: help?!?

[akuma13]

wow. neat stuff. i'm just starting to wrap my head around RSS. i maintain blog type things at suicidegirls, deviant art, myspace, LJ and soon my own site... trying to find a way to feed one source towards many destinations. not asking for answers just rambling. neat stuff thanks for sharing.

LP