A reminder that we have a meetup happening in San Francisco next Wednesday, December 9th, at Freebase HQ. We have three talks lined up:

1. Alec Flett will talk about an iPhone app using Freebase’s geodata to encourage photo contributions
2. Arthur van Hoff will demo the Ellerdale Project, a new website mashing up Freebase with realtime data streams
3. I’ll talk about guessing people’s gender based on Freebase’s data about given names

Details at meetup.com — please RSVP there!

Community meeting next Monday

Next Monday is the first one of the month so our regular internal Monday community meeting will be open to all via Skype.

When: 2:30pm PST (GMT-8), Monday December 7th

Where: Metaweb, 631 Howard St, 4th floor, San Francisco

RSVP: Please email kirrily@metaweb.com before 2pm Monday if you plan to attend corporeally or digitally (and provide your Skype username in the latter case).

More details at Community meeting via Skype on our wiki, or see the agenda.

NY workshop is full

Our full-day workshop in New York has filled up quickly, and we have no more open slots for general signup. However, if we get any dropouts we’ll be sure to let you know! If you’d like to be put on a waiting list, please email Robert.

When: December 10th, 2009
Where: Daylife’s Offices, 444 Broadway, Fifth Floor, New York, New York 10013

Our speakers include:

• Robert Cook, co-founder of Metaweb Technologies and SVP Platform Partnerships
• Jamie Taylor, Freebase’s Minister of Information and co-author of Programming the Semantic Web
• Will Moffat, Freebase Acre developer and integration expert

A full schedule of the workshop sessions is available on our wiki; highlights include:

• Introduction to Freebase, graph data, strong identifiers
• Using Freebase on your website: Freebase Suggest, TopicBlocks, Wordpress plugin, build your own topic pages
• Connecting your data to Freebase: input widgets, reconciliation service, spreadsheet loader
• Freebase in the Data Service Ecosystem: MQL extensions, topic hubs, Freebase + entity extraction

The workshop will run from 10am to 4pm; lunch is provided. If you’d like to attend, please email robert+nycworkshop@metaweb.com to reserve your place. Please note that spaces are very limited.

David Tunkelang, who was at the meetup, has also blogged about it.

If you’re here too, please look out for me and say hi! My nametag says: “Kirrily Robert [[User:Skud]] Freebase” and I have a bunch of Freebase stickers and buttons to give away.

It’s not often I get to announce a book launch! However, I’m sure many of you will be interested in Programming the Semantic Web, a new book just launched last week, written by Freebase data team members Toby Segaran, Colin Evans, and Jamie Taylor.

With this book, the promise of the Semantic Web — in which machines can find, share, and combine data on the Web — is not just a technical possibility, but a practical reality. Programming the Semantic Web demonstrates several ways to implement semantic web applications, using existing and emerging standards and technologies. You’ll learn how to incorporate existing data sources into semantically aware applications and publish rich semantic data. This book will also help you: Learn how the semantic web allows new and unexpected uses of data to emerge Understand how semantic technologies promote data portability with a simple, abstract model for knowledge representation Become familiar with semantic standards, such as the Resource Description Framework (RDF) and the Web Ontology Language (OWL) Make use of semantic programming techniques to both enrich and simplify current web applications Learn how to incorporate existing data sources into semantically aware applications

Each chapter walks you through a single piece of semantic technology, and explains how you can use it to solve real problems. Whether you’re writing a simple “mashup” or a maintaining a high-performance enterprise solution, Programming the Semantic Web provides a standard, flexible approach for integrating and future-proofing systems and data.

You can buy it now from Amazon or any good bookseller. You can also check out the companion website at semprog.com.

In related news, there will be a Semantic Web meetup hosted at the Freebase.com office on August 12th. You can find details and RSVP over on meetup.com.

Quick notes:

Yoz started the show with a 15 minute version of a longer “Folk Programming” talk he does, followed by me talking about how the concepts apply to open source software, and then Jason talking about how we (i.e. Freebase.com) applied the concepts to our new app development platform to help encourage adoption and a strong developer ecosystem.

Yoz starts out talking about he first learnt to program (on a ZX Spectrum), and how beginning programmers often cargo cult as a way of learning. Cargo cult programming is often stigmatised, but it can be seen as a kind of folk process, like folk music or folk stories, and it’s a good way to get started.

He then gave a bunch of examples of folk programming in action, from an MIT study of children passing around little games on Dreamcast modules, to Yahoo Pipes and Second Life. He identifies five things necessary for a real folk programming environment:

• Create your own code.
• View, clone, and modify someone else’s code.
• Free, always-on, ubiquitous hosting.
• Huge array of diverse data sources.
• Code creates new data for use by others.

I then took over and slightly reframed his list for the open source world:

• Free and Open Source licenses
• Easy cloning forking
• Hosted development environments
• Huge array of data

I looked at some examples including github, Amazon EC2, and Google App Engine, and looked at them to see whether they provided folk programming environments for open source development. What I found is that each provides some elements, but none provides all of them.

When Jason and his team were starting work on our hosted app development platform, Acre, we got Yoz in to give a lunchtime talk about Folk Programming, and used a lot of his ideas in developing our platform. Jason walks us through how Acre has BSD licensing, one-click cloning, and interacts with Freebase’s huge store of open data.

Some of the demos he shows include “data games” for Freebase contributors to more quickly add data to Freebase itself, which started off with a single app called Typewriter and quickly evolved into a cluster of apps and eventually a library and toolkit to allow people to quickly build more. (Some were built at our recent Hack Day, for example, including one to easily find CC-licensed images to attach to Freebase topics.)

Another set of apps he showed were clustered around the concept of lists in Freebase, starting with an app to create lists of anything and then showing a recommendation website and an app for TV fans all based on the same underlying data.

Jason closed by talking about some of the challenges we’d faced and future directions for folk computing in the open source world. Challenges included version control and collaboration (because there is a time when you’re no longer experimenting and need to work together on things rather than fork), and the state of in-browser development tools like syntax-highlighting code editors and Firebug-style console debugging for server-side apps.

Questions from the audience included “Have you seen people writing large apps in folk programming environments, in the thousands or tens of thousands of lines range?” to which the answer is “yes” — LambdaMOO and SecondLife being enormous, and some of the Freebase apps being in that linecount range already despite only having properly launched about two weeks ago.

“How do you handle security?” was the second question, which Jason answered at length. Some of the parts of the Acre security model included sandboxing on the server; having each app on its own subdomain to prevent cookie hacks; and everything being sanitised by default to protect against cross-site scripting attacks.

• On Tuesday, Jamie, Colin, and Toby will be running a tutorial, Learn to use Semantic Technologies using Open Source Tools
• On Wednesday at 8pm, there will be a BoF (Birds of a Feather) session for anyone interested in Open Data and the Semantic Web.
• On Friday morning, Yoz Grahame from Linden Lab, Jason Douglas, and I will be presenting Forking Encouraged: Folk Programming, Open Source, and Social Software Development which is partly about Freebase’s Acre platform.

We’ve also got new Freebase schwag (buttons and stickers) so if you’d like some, or just want to say hi, please find us at the conference!

A reminder of the details:

Date: Saturday, July 11, 2009 from 10:00 AM – 6:00 PM (PT)

Location:
Metaweb Technologies
631 Howard St, 4th floor
San Francisco, CA 94105

There are just a handful of places left for anyone who hasn’t registered yet. If you have friends or colleagues who’d like to come, you should remind them to sign up ASAP! Conversely, if you think you can’t make it, please let us know and we’ll cancel your registration and open the slot up for someone else.

Other points to note:

If you are blogging, tweeting, or posting photos of the event, please use the tag “fbhd09″ and/or “freebase”

We’ll be providing coffee and some pastries in the morning, for all you slow starters. I prefer to sleep in myself, but be assured that if you show up on the dot of 10am we will feed you and caffeinate you.

Lunch is provided as well; vegetarian options will be available.

The format/schedule will be:

• 10am Welcome/introduction, and an overview of Freebase’s developer platform in the main lunchroom area
• 11am-1pm Unconference and open hack space
• 1pm Lunch
• 2pm-5pm Unconference and open hack space
• 5pm Lightning talks and wrap-up in the main lunchroom area

Regarding the Unconference: we will have three meeting rooms available, each of which can hold up to 20 people (if you squeeze them in tight), and each of which has a whiteboard and projector. There will be a board where you write up your suggested sessions for the Unconference. Anyone is welcome to use the Unconference space to demo projects, hold discussions, or teach and learn about Freebase-related topics. Tom Morris has created a shared google doc listing unconference session ideas if you’d like to propose a session or offer to run one.

The open hack space will consist of groups of tables where anyone is welcome to gather and hack on Freebase-related projects. We know of a handful of planned projects already, and will be putting up signs so you can find where people are working on them, but please feel free to bring your own projects to work on as well!

The lightning talks at the end of the day are an opportunity for you to demo what you’ve been hacking on, or present ideas/directions for further work that came up during the course of the day. Anyone is welcome to present a lightning talk. You’ll have 5 minutes, no more, to show us what you’ve got. Signups for lightning talks will be open throughout the afternoon.

After Hack Day’s over, some of us will be heading out to a nearby Chinese restaurant for dinner. This is entirely unofficial and not part of Hack Day itself, but you’re welcome to join us. There’ll be a signup sheet on the day.

I think that’s everything. Please, if you have any questions, don’t hesitate to get in touch.

See you Saturday!

We have a lot planned for Hack Day! For instance:

Releases

Our product team are working like mad to get a bunch of developer tools updated and released for Hack Day. They include:

• Acre version 1.0 and an updated developer hub and app directory.
• Freebase Suggest 2.0 — an improved version of our Freebase-powered suggest/autocomplete jQuery widget
• Mjt 0.9 — I hear rumours that there’s a major update to Mjt in the wings
• freebase-python — significant updates to our library for Python developers to talk to Freebase

Experimental

We have a few experimental projects we’ll be presenting, too.

One is MQL Extensions, which allow you to extend MQL to mash up against other services. We demoed this at the Palo Alto Semantic Web gathering a while back, showing a mashup between Freebase, Twitter, and last.fm done entirely within a MQL query.

The next is our improved reconciliation service and (highly experimental) spreadsheet loader. Though this won’t be ready for general use by Hack Day, we are hoping to be able to demo it.

Unconference talks

Our unconference format means that anyone and everyone is welcome to grab a room, a whiteboard, and a projector and talk about any Freebase-related subject that interests them. Last year we had talks on everything from schema for music and recordings, to geodata, to using the Freebase data dumps.

If you’ve got a subject you’d like to talk about, this will be a great chance. Some of the talks I’ve heard mentioned in advance include:

• MQL Boot Camp — a crash course in querying Freebase’s structured data
• How Will helped the Wall Street Journal embed Freebase data on their movie reviews pages
• Data games: how to make contributing to Freebase easy and fun
• Freebase and the Semantic Web: linked open data, Common Tag, and more.

Projects

Last year, we found a lot of people were interested in hacking on/with Freebase but didn’t have any particular project in mind. This year, we’re providing a little more structure. Brian Karlak is helping to organise projects in advance. He writes:

Do you have something you’ve been itching to see implemented in Freebase? Perhaps it’s an Acre app that shows off your favorite domain in an entirely new light, or a semantic mashup that opens up a world of new possibilities. Maybe you have a cool data set that you’ve been waiting to load. There are all sorts of possibilities — Games With A Purpose, Social Apps — you name it!

If you have a project that you’d like to work on, please let us know about it! Go over to the 2009 Hack Day Project Base and enter a brief description of your idea, along with a rough breakdown of what needs to be done to bring it to fruition. We’ll help you get prepped up beforehand, and on Freebase Hack Day, we’ll give you an opportunity to pitch your idea to the attendees and find people to help you hack on it.

BTW, the best projects are ones that:

1) have a clear short-term goal (eg working prototype, data load) that has a reasonable chance of being completed in a day
2) require a cross section of skills (data wizard, l33t c0ding skillz in Python or JavaScript, web artiste, etc)
3) have clear places where 2-3 people could help out

So, if you have an idea — let us know about it! To help us make sure that you have everything you need, we’re asking that you send in your submissions by Tuesday, 7/7.

Tell your friends

Please help us spread the word about Hack Day. If you know a venue where we should publicise it, let us know! You can also blog about it, tweet, or just drop an email to any friends or colleagues you think might be interested.

Plans are coming together. We’re starting to organise some projects to hack on and hunt down people to run sessions in the unconference. If you’ve got a project or a subject area you’d like covered, let us know! So far, some of the exciting topics that will be part of Hack Day include:

• We’ll be launching Acre 1.0 just a few days before Hack Day. Jason Douglas will be showing off the features of our hosted app development platform, including the ability to share and clone apps, connect to other APIs with our keystore and OAuth, and build queries and templated web pages based on Freebase data more easily than ever before. Acre’s come a long way since our last Hack Day, so don’t miss this. (Read more about Acre.)
• The MQL Boot Camp will be run this year by Bryan Culbertson. Learn how to query against Freebase’s structured data about almost 6 million topics, and see the new features of our query editor, including tab-completion for syntax and schema. (Read more about MQL and the query editor).
• Learn how to use Freebase to enhance your website with structured data, like the Wall Street Journal, or build entire apps and websites on Acre, like Tippify.
• Hack on apps like our Games With A Purpose, a TV program schedule mashup, and more. If you have a project and you’re looking for partners, technical help, or ideas, bring it with you! We’re also working on having a handful of projects ready for people to hack on who haven’t brought one of their own.)
• Find out about how Freebase’s part in the Linked Open Data world, and how to use Semantic Web techniques and tools to work with Freebase data.

Same as last time, we’ll have three meeting rooms available for presentations, discussions, and other unconference programming, while our main lunch room area and lounge will be available for general hacking and chat. Come prepared to talk about what interests you, share your ideas, and collaborate!

This event is completely free, but places are limited.

Coffee, lunch, and snacks will be provided, including vegetarian options. Unfortunately we can’t offer childcare or kids’ activities at this time, but parents of babies are welcome to bring them.

Please help us spread the word. Link to this blog post, or to http://freebasehackday.eventbrite.com/, tweet about the event, or just tell your friends and colleagues. It’s going to be a great event!