Make A Jackson

Google Groups Art

WWW-Google-Groups-0.08

WWW-Google-Groups-0.09

FOAF and GROUPS

FOAF and Groups

Right. So, in the never ending struggle that is RDF, foaf:group is another property that's a "work in progress". Here are some notes:

In the spec, foaf:Group is a container of foaf:Agents (of which foaf:Person is a subclass). It's ideal for representing groups of anything, from companies to mailing lists to knitting clubs.

Bill Kearney tried to poke at it in July, and had some issues.

My particular issue is you can make a "group" FOAF file, in which the group describes all it's members, but there's no easy way for a "person" FOAF file to say that it's a member of a group.

Partly that's by design: "The current design names the relationship as pointing from the group, to the member."

So, if I wanted to represent group membership in a "Person" FOAF file, here's how I think I have to do it with the vocab of today:

...
<foaf:Person rdf:nodeID="me">
   <foaf:blah>...</foaf:blah>
</foaf:Person>
<foaf:Group rdf:nodeID="spelunkers">
   <rdfs:seeAlso rdf:resource="http://example.com/groupfile.rdf"
/>
   <foaf:member rdf:nodeID="me" />
</foaf:Group>
...

Now, that seems a bit complicated. I can parse it and fish around for the right way of looking at things, but wouldn't something like this make more sense:

...
<foaf:Person rdf:nodeID="me">
   <foaf:blah>...</foaf:blah>
   <foaf:memberOf
rdf:resource="http://example.com/groupfile.rdf#spelunkers" />
</foaf:Person>
...

So foaf:memberOf would have a domain of foaf:Person (foaf:Agent?) and a range of rdf:resource that points to the "authoritative" group file that has all the other info in it (join dates, membership classes, etc.).

(side rant: Here's where a really sticky part of FOAF which confuses the hell out of some, and others ignore. Where do I go to talk about this / suggest things? The Issue Tracker? The wiki? The IRC channel? The mailing list? The project web site? The weblog? Too many tools!)

So, what am I forgetting? Does this make sense? And if it doesn't make sense, how would you go about representing that a foaf:Person is a part of a group without the group FOAF file?[esigler.2nw.net/blog]

Google Groups 2

Yahoo! Groups

groups.yahoo.com
track this site | 4 links

Charging for Groups

We discovered an intersting thing at 1UP.com - companies are willing to pay to get into the social networking space.

Whenever they hear about lots of people congragating - their ears perk up.

So Tony Perkins - and his AlwaysOn Network has decided to monetize that - and charge for Groups in it's Zaibatsu social network. The first one was announced yesterday - with Audi.

Here's the details:

We are pleased to announce that Audi of America is the first AlwaysOn Media Partner to launch its own Keiretsu on the AO network. AlwaysOn is the first media site to offer its partners a community building service that combines both blogging and social networking capabilities.

All AO members can join the Audi of America Keiretsu for FREE. It’s easy, so check it out!

http://audiamerica.alwayson-network.com

AO members who join the Audi of America’s Keiretsu will enjoy future special offers and privileges exclusive to members.

“Our new group social network and blog site on AlwaysOn provides Audi the unique opportunity to identify smart executives and entrepreneurs in the global Silicon Valley arena and gain their feedback and create a dialogue on technology trends in our industry,” said Jim McGough, Director of Audi America.

“Our new AO Keiretsu also allows Audi enthusiasts within the AlwaysOn
community to find and interact with each other. This kind of community building tool offers Audi an opportunity to target a market of smart executives in a way that has never been possible before.,” said Mr. McGough.

In the next couple of weeks, AlwaysOn is planning to roll-out additional Keiretsus on behalf of many of our other Media Partners including Sun Microsystems, KPMG, Quova, Porter Novelli and SupportSoft.

Commercial brands interested in launching their own AlwaysOn Keiretsu and learning more about our Media Partner Program should contact my partner Mike Sly at sly@alwayson-network.com.

AlwaysOn also offers related non-profits and trade associations the Keiretsu service for at no charge. To see if your group qualifies for the AO Keiretsu program, contact Brennan Igoe at brennan@alwayson-network.com.

As always, we look forward to any feedback on our new Keiretsu offering or any other service we provide. If you would like to make your comments public to other Ao members, check out my new post at:

http://www.alwayson-network.com/comments.php?id=6012_0_2_0_C

Best/tp

Tony Perkins
Founder/Editor
www.alwayson-network.com

Next one up - Sun.

Groups Want Jackson Gag Order Lifted (AP)