Ulla Engeström

Happy New Year 2006!

Thinglink blog

Over the last two months Casper Labuschagne helped me try out a Drupal site for Thinglink.org. As my nonexistent Drupal skills showed no signs of improving, I ended up still mostly posting about thinglinks on Hobbyprincess. As a quick fix, I now decided to set up a TypePad blog for thinglink.org and move the discussion there. As soon as I get the domain parking fixed with Pairnic, the address of the blog will be thinglink.org.

Microformats for Thinglinks?

I had an interesting discussion about Thinglinks with Joi Ito. He suggested using microformats, a set of open data format standards, for structuring microcontent about things.

Microformats are essentially about describing the relationships between resources on the web and adding structure to web documents. For example, in a blog post one can use a simple XFN type 'rel' attribute on a "a href" tag to indicate some additional metadata on an object. Something like this:

How would microformats work with thinglinks? Some things that come to mind:

1. Microformat link types help to understand the various functions of a thinglink.

2. Could the hCard be used for describing a Thing?

hCard properties:
fn, n (family-name, given-name, additional-name, honorific-prefix, honorific-suffix, nickname), sort-string
url, email (type), tel (type)
adr (post-office-box, extended-address, street-address, locality, region, postal-code, country-name, type), label
geo (latitude, longitude), tz
photo, logo, sound, bday
title, role, org (organization-name, organization-unit)
category, note
class, key, mailer, uid, rev

Really quick example of an hCard for things:
- name of a thing
- maker (desinger, producer, etc.)
- address (where it can be found)
- geo (latitude, longitude)
- photo, logo, sound, date of manufacture
- physical properties (size, material, etc.)
- thinglink
- category, note
- class, key words, rev

3. Microformats could be used for generating HTML documents from a thinglink database.

It would also be practical if one could just fill in some basic information about a thing and have ready-made microformat tags.

4. Could thinglinks be used as as unique ids within microformat tags?
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Some more questions:
- How would you actually put an hCard into a blog post about a thing?
- Who are the principal users of microformats today, and where can I find examples of bloggers using microformats?
- How could craft bloggers benefit from using microformats?

2006: The year of unique IDs?

David Weinberger on unique identifiers.

"When you have a large pile of stuff, you need a way to identify it. The more meaningful the names, the worse they scale. For example, if you want to make a photo of a rabbit findable by anyone across the Web, calling it "rabbit" or even "rabbit_305464" (because there were 305,463 rabbit photos posted before yours) may make it easier for English speakers to find it, but it makes it harder for those in other languages. Plus, while you think it is a photo of a rabbit, someone else may think it's a photo of a pet or dinner. A better solution is to take the semantics out of the identifier so that multiple semantics can be layered on top: "Ah, you mean photo #F345A90875264D3425! The one that Deb Franklin calls 'Rabbit' and that Jean-Paul Lingerie calls 'Lapin.'" (Yes, the alpha characters imply a particular alphabet, which may be a problem.)

We could wait for authorities in each domain to issue the numbers, but we'll make more progress faster if we accept that multiple interest groups within a particular domain are going to issue UIDs."

Towards the end, David also introduces a new potential user group for thinglinks.

Christmas fairs

I recommend:

Ornamo Christmas Fair
Saturday 10.12 from 10:00 to 18:00 and Sunday 11.12. from 12:00 to 18:00.
Design Forum, Erottajankatu 7, Helsinki.

TOKYO Christmas Fair
Saturday and Sunday 10.-11.12 from 10:00 to 18:00
University of Art and Design, Media Centre Lume. Hämeentie 135 C, Helsinki.

Traditional Christmas Fair at Vanha (opposite Stockmann)
14.-23.12.2005
Week days from 11:00 to 20:00
Saturday and Sunday from 11:00 to 18:00.

Logo by Syrup

thinglink logo without colon,
originally uploaded by ullamaaria.

Here is a thinklink logo proposal from Syrup Helsinki. It uses the "Sauna" font designed by Sami Kortemäki from Underware. What do you think, should the logo have a colon or not?

UPDATE:
Comments on the logo on flickr.

Thinking about Metadata and Databases

David Weinberger,
originally uploaded by ullamaaria.

If you are selling a Marimekko fabric on eBay, you want other people to find it easily. To maximize the number of views on your page, you may characterize the item with various attributes such as “fabrics”, “design”, “textiles”, “furnishing”, and “gift items”. These keywords or categories are metadata of the item you are selling: the data that helps finding other data.

If you want to find David Weinberger’s upcoming book “Everything is Miscellaneous” from Amazon, try such keywords as taxonomy, folksonomy, databases, or unique identifiers. For me, David’s Aula Talk gave a lot to think about. Among many other things, it reminded how extremely important (and political!) the discussion about tools and practices for ordering knowledge in the Internet actually is. It is not irrelevant, how are users enabled to search information from the Internet; what kinds of metadata systems for public use are created; in what kinds of databases is information stored; who owns those databases and who gets to use them.

Here are a couple of miscellaneous notes from David’s talk:
- If you want your stuff to be found online, include as much potentially interesting metadata on your item as possible. Postpone the moment of taxonomy.
- In general, there is no prediction of how users are going to tag their stuff. Obviously, user-driven tagging creates a huge mess, but it’s a fruitful mess.
- In designing services, it ‘s good to keep in mind that users are contributors of metadata about objects. Metadata systems are essentially about ordering knowledge.
- Recommendation services like del.icio.us and last.fm enable “semantic friendships” (finding of other people through shared things) as well as finding of new things through other people. In this context, unique identifiers rock.

Going to Les Blogs

Doctor, nobody likes my blog,
originally uploaded by ullamaaria.

On Monday and Tuesday I will be at the Les Blogs conference in Paris.

Saw this caricature in today's Helsingin Sanomat.