blog (January, 2003)
Friend of a Friend
A brave, almost presumptuous world stood before me. I kicked it square and sent it flying, face-first in the dust.
This weekend was a blast. Friday night in Buffalo with my cousin, Mark, and Saturday the Alexander Street Fest back here in Rochester. Old friends were by my sideways and new encounters set me spinning. Good to climb out of some of the stagnant water I've been wading in for the last few weeks. Opposite of way-nonplussed.
Before the eatdrinkdance festivities began, I sent my computer ninjas to work Thursday night on catching me up in social software trendiness. I've avoided the whole Friendster bit, (and am determined to continue so,) but the Friend of a Friend (FOAF) project interests me and merits mention. From their page:
The Friend of a Friend (FOAF) project is about creating a Web of machine-readable homepages describing people, the links between them and the things they create and do.
My ninjas speak RDF, so they suited up and hacked out my FOAF file. A helpful resource was Getting Started With FOAF, along with the current FOAF spec. And if your ninjas aren't so skill'd, FOAF-a-Matic will sort of automate the process.
FOAF Explorer turns the RDF into a nice viewable format, (example: mine.) And foafnaut starts heaping FOAF's meat and potatoes onto the plate, graphically mapping relationships between people.
My ninjas haven't yet begun listing folks I know in my FOAF file. I gave them the weekend off so they could have a beer and meet some people.