[microformats-discuss] The adoption of syndication feeds -> microformats

[David Janes -- BlogMatrix]

Consider all the microformat data already out there on the web -- for 
example, all the events in 'evdb'. Add to the mix the XML/RDF data sets 
available -- for example, lists of airports, FOAF files and so forth. 
And finally, the various tools that have been made to manipulate and 
query XML (in general), RDF (in particular) and semantic-web data (more so).

Now consider the following queries:
- where could I fly to visit a friend and see the San Diego Chargers 
play on a weekend that I have free
- if I did fly there, what's the names of my friend's family and pets
- (your variant query here)

To pull these different threads together as concrete demonstration of 
the power of the upper/lower case semantic web would be, like, the coup 
of the decade. But who among us could rise to such a challange...? :-)

Regards, etc...
David
http://www.blogmatrix.com

Danny Ayers wrote:
> A little while back in an exchange with Tantek he said something along
> the lines of "it doesn't really matter what kind of store you have in
> the backend", in the sense that microformats could equally be
> produced/consumed by SQL DBs, XML DBs or RDF DBs. True enough, he was
> emphasizing the role microformats can play in exposing a standard
> interface. But in the RDF case this can go further - a shared data
> model can be exposed to the Web as well.
> 
> In some respects microformats and RDF are orthogonal, one being about
> syntax the other about model. But they're both pointing in the same
> general direction, improving the Web through explicit data. When
> techniques like these are used to put unambiguous machine-readable
> data on the Web, the lower-case and upper-case semantic webs are one
> and the same.