After 14 months of talking about portable social networks at various events from SXSWi to a small geek dinner, I have finally found the time to build a working example. ufXtract’s portable social network parser is a combination of the ufXtract microformats parser and a spider which follows rel=”me” links.…
ufXtract is a new microformats parser I have built to help explore the real world issues of creating portable social networks. Although I have previously designed a number spiders that can find the most common hCard and XFN structures, this is my first full blown parser. It has been built…
Few weeks ago I watched Tantek Çelik give a demonstration of the Plaxo open social graph which is basically a rel="me" spider. It reminded me how powerful practical demonstrations are at communicating key concepts. So I have built lab.backnetwork with the idea of constructing a number of service based interfaces…
Madgex hosted the first Barcamp Brighton over the weekend, I think it was a really special event. Although I spent most of my time trying to make things run as smoothly as possible, I still sat in on a number of talks and some how managed to join Tantek and…
I have been busy over the last few months helping to organise Brighton’s first ever Barcamp on 8-9 Sept. I am really looking forward to what I am sure is going to be a great event. For those who have not been to a Barcamp before it’s, an un-conference, usually…
It always takes me so long to absorb SXSW. It seems so large, 8 tracks at once over a very full 4 days. As with last year I did gain a lot from the event, although I do think that some of the panels did not work so well. Personally…
This weekend at Barcamp London 2 I did a talk on the more advanced ideas of how microformats can be used in web applications. The talk was based in part on the WebDD session I did, but this time I really tried pushing the concepts of portable social networking and…
During my recent talk at WebDD I discussed using RSS as a means for distributing structured content within microformats. So over the weekend I thought it was time for a practical demonstration. The WebDD backnetwork site allows users to create reviews about the event. What I have done is to…
Had a great time at WebDD, my session “Microformats HTML to API” seemed to go down well. It’s always hard to tell what value people get from a talk when you’re giving it, but I had lots of people asking me questions for the rest of the day, which is…
I have an busy few weeks ahead; amongst other things I am speaking at the WebDD conference. I have picked the title “Microformats – HTML to API” for the session. I am going to start the talk with some real-world examples, exploring how you can add microformats to your sites…