Its time Google Base made their intentions clear
Richard MacManus has a great piece on Google Base.
What’s especially exciting to me are ‘people profiles’. The question is: “will this data be available in FOAF or XFN/hCard?” And will it be available at all?
There’s a problem with Google Base that needs to get resolved - immediately. We’ve been waiting patiently while Google expands the service - but we still don’t know whether or not all this data is for Google’s exclusive use - or whether this structured data will be available publicly or not.
I now have had several conversations with various Googlers and heard of others who have been told the same story. Sergey Brin also made some public statements on it. They all claim that YES - the data will be made available - publicly.
We wanna know once and for all - “Will all this data Google Base is collecting be available to ‘the rest of us’ - or is it going into a private, walled garden, proprietary data silo?
I don’t understand why this is so hard to answer?
Until their intentions are made known and this issue is resolved - I’ll consider Google Base as the enemy and a precursor to all things evil from Google.
Once the data is made available to all, then its everyone to their own - may the best value added functionality, great ideas and innovative entreprenuerial attitude win! But until then - I just don’t see any other approach then be wary and wait.
NOTE: Once we figure out if Google is the enemy or not - we can THEN get onto evangelizing them as to the benefits of open standards. Their schemas are simplistic at bst and there’s so much MORE we can all do together! That’s what StructuredBlogging.org is all about!
I was thinking the same thing recently about whether Microsoft will support microformats, ever since the Live Clipboard demo and recent update announcements. It would be great if Live Contacts were available as microformats? Equally will the various Microsoft email clients support hcalendar etc.
I was thinking the same thing recently about whether Microsoft will support microformats, ever since the Live Clipboard demo and recent update announcements. It would be great if Live Contacts were available as microformats? Equally will the various Microsoft email clients support hcalendar etc.
I was thinking the same thing recently about whether Microsoft will support microformats, ever since the Live Clipboard demo and recent update announcements. It would be great if Live Contacts were available as microformats? Equally will the various Microsoft email clients support hcalendar etc.
And I wonder whether they will start scraping public MicroContent (e.g. TypePad’s FOAF network, RSS Aggregators’ public subscription lists, etc.) before or after providing an API?
And I wonder whether they will start scraping public MicroContent (e.g. TypePad’s FOAF network, RSS Aggregators’ public subscription lists, etc.) before or after providing an API?
And I wonder whether they will start scraping public MicroContent (e.g. TypePad’s FOAF network, RSS Aggregators’ public subscription lists, etc.) before or after providing an API?
I was just talking with Opinity about this. Why not have ROOT Vaults or Opinity or a third party Non-profit host a database full of foaf files? Why are we talking about leaving the open profile movement to Google?
Open profiles are useless unless services enable them. StructuredBlogging is a good, albeit slow, start. Outputthis looks interesting, needs more info to get people using it. Seems like early days with not enough inertia behind the idea.
I want to create open profiles for marketing purposes, the ultimate in opt-in marketing. There is a lot of money to be made there and the value to consumer is clear. Why are you spending time working on events calendars and reviews? That doesn’t seem to be a good primary priority IMHO.
I have yet to see any interesting uses of the GoogleBase people information. Part of it is because nobody has created a decent FOAF-type file browser. Somebody go do that, in Perl, Python, Java and RoR. After all, linking to xml files from the sidebar of your blog is useless unless you can do something with the information.
People spent $500 million on online dating last year. I cringe thinking about singles putting their profiles up at GoogleBase, there needs to be clear use and conduct TOS, of which there are obviously none at the moment.
I was just talking with Opinity about this. Why not have ROOT Vaults or Opinity or a third party Non-profit host a database full of foaf files? Why are we talking about leaving the open profile movement to Google?
Open profiles are useless unless services enable them. StructuredBlogging is a good, albeit slow, start. Outputthis looks interesting, needs more info to get people using it. Seems like early days with not enough inertia behind the idea.
I want to create open profiles for marketing purposes, the ultimate in opt-in marketing. There is a lot of money to be made there and the value to consumer is clear. Why are you spending time working on events calendars and reviews? That doesn’t seem to be a good primary priority IMHO.
I have yet to see any interesting uses of the GoogleBase people information. Part of it is because nobody has created a decent FOAF-type file browser. Somebody go do that, in Perl, Python, Java and RoR. After all, linking to xml files from the sidebar of your blog is useless unless you can do something with the information.
People spent $500 million on online dating last year. I cringe thinking about singles putting their profiles up at GoogleBase, there needs to be clear use and conduct TOS, of which there are obviously none at the moment.
I was just talking with Opinity about this. Why not have ROOT Vaults or Opinity or a third party Non-profit host a database full of foaf files? Why are we talking about leaving the open profile movement to Google?
Open profiles are useless unless services enable them. StructuredBlogging is a good, albeit slow, start. Outputthis looks interesting, needs more info to get people using it. Seems like early days with not enough inertia behind the idea.
I want to create open profiles for marketing purposes, the ultimate in opt-in marketing. There is a lot of money to be made there and the value to consumer is clear. Why are you spending time working on events calendars and reviews? That doesn’t seem to be a good primary priority IMHO.
I have yet to see any interesting uses of the GoogleBase people information. Part of it is because nobody has created a decent FOAF-type file browser. Somebody go do that, in Perl, Python, Java and RoR. After all, linking to xml files from the sidebar of your blog is useless unless you can do something with the information.
People spent $500 million on online dating last year. I cringe thinking about singles putting their profiles up at GoogleBase, there needs to be clear use and conduct TOS, of which there are obviously none at the moment.