1. Microformats The Next(Small)Thing on the Semantic Web? Center for E-Business Technology Seoul National University Seoul, Korea Rohit Khare IEEE Internet Computing, 2006 Presented by Nam, Kwang Hyun Intelligent Database Systems Lab School of Computer Science & Engineering Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea

2. Copyright  2008 by CEBT Contents  Microformats  XHTML  The Lowercase Semantic Web  Unlocking XHTML’s Power  The h* Effect  Thinking about Linking  Microstandards?  Random Mutations Context-Aware Personalization - 2

3. Copyright  2008 by CEBT Microformats (1/6)  Microformats A set of simple, open data formats built upon existing and widely adopted standards A way of adding simple markup to human-readable data items such as events, contact details or locations, on web pages, so that the information in them can be extracted by software and indexed, searched for, saved, cross-referenced or combined. Intend to solve simpler problems first by adapting to current behaviors and usage patterns – E.g. XHTML, blogging Enable the publishing of higher substantial information on the Web, providing the fastest and simplest way to support feeds and APIs for website. Context-Aware Personalization - 3

4. Copyright  2008 by CEBT Microformats (2/6)  Microformats are: A way of thinking about data Design principles for formats Adapted to current behaviors and usage patterns Highly correlated with semantic XHTML A set of simple open data format standards that many are actively developing and implementing for more/better structured blogging and web microcontent publishing in general. All the above. Context-Aware Personalization - 4

5. Copyright  2008 by CEBT Microformats (3/6)  Microformats are not: A new language Infinitely extensible and open-ended An attempt to get everyone to change their behavior and rewrite their tools A whole new approach that throws away what already works today A panacea for all taxonomies, ontologies, and other such abstractions Defining the whole world, or even just boiling the ocean Any of the above Context-Aware Personalization - 5

6. Copyright  2008 by CEBT Microformats (4/6)  The microformats principles solve a specific problem start as simple as possible design for humans first, machines second reuse building blocks from widely adopted standards modularity / embeddability enable and encourage decentralized development, content, services Context-Aware Personalization - 6

7. Copyright  2008 by CEBT Microformats (5/6)  XHTML and HTML standards allow for semantics to be embedded and encoded within the attributes of markup tags.  Microformats take advantage of these standards by indicating the presence of metadata using the following attributes Class Rel Rev (in one case, otherwise deprecated in microformats) Context-Aware Personalization - 7

8. Copyright  2008 by CEBT Microformats (6/6) Context-Aware Personalization - 8 Joe Doe The Example Company 604-555-1234 http://example.com/ Joe Doe The Example Company 604-555-1234 http://example.com/ Joe Doe The Example Company 604-555-1234 http://example.com/ Joe Doe The Example Company 604-555-1234 http://example.com/ With hCard microformat markup

9. Copyright  2008 by CEBT XHTML  XHTML (Extensible Hypertext Markup Language) A markup language that has the same depth of expression as HTML, but also conforms to XML syntax Because they need to be well-formed, true XHTML documents allow for automated processing to be performed using standard XML tools It can be thought of as the intersection of HTML and XML in many respects, since it is a reformulation of HTML in XML. Context-Aware Personalization - 9

10. Copyright  2008 by CEBT The Lowercase Semantic Web  Suppose you wanted to publicize an upcoming lecture  vCalendar A widely acclaimed international standard that thoroughly addresses such calendaring and scheduling concerns Context-Aware Personalization - 10 BEGIN:VCALENDAR BEGIN:VEVENT SUMMARY:Microformats: What the Hell Are They \ and Why Should I Care? DTSTART:20050926T000000Z LOCATION:Balder Room … END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR

11. Copyright  2008 by CEBT The Lowercase Semantic Web  RDF Calendar A better alternative for use with the Semantic Web – Today’s machines prefer angle brackets to colon-delimited header-value pairs. Context-Aware Personalization - 11 … PUBLISH … 2005-09-26T00:00:00Z …

12. Copyright  2008 by CEBT The Lowercase Semantic Web  Both of these alternatives must be stored as external resources hyperlinked into the original Web page from HTML anchor text Context-Aware Personalization - 12 Microformats: What the Hell Are They and Why Should I Care? Ryan King will explain why microformats are important and how you can mark up specific kinds of content in ways that make it easier for the right people to find your stuff. September 25th, 2005, 5-6PM in the Balder Room

13. Copyright  2008 by CEBT The Lowercase Semantic Web  Cascading Stylesheets (CSS) Simpler, more flexible, and more accessible than relying on such relics of the ‘browser wars’ as  We could use an external stylesheet to define each string’s look and feel  The payoff for choosing the class names that they eliminate the need for linking to an external representation in the first place  The inline style information is as sufficient as the other formats for encoding the same information Context-Aware Personalization - 13 Microformats: What the Hell Are They and Why Should I Care? … <abbr class=“dtstart” title= “20050926T050000-0700”>September 25th, 2005, 5 …

14. Copyright  2008 by CEBT Unlocking XHTML’s Power  When XML was new, CSS was scarce, and the browser wars raged, HTML was often cast as a hopeless muddle.  HTML grew up and became a proper XML application, XHTML, offering all the rigor and modularization that an information architect could ask for.  Technologically, XHTML class attributes do add a critical degree of freedom, insofar as they can accommodate multiple values in space-separated lists.  Socially, The key insight that the microformats community is taking advantage of is ‘appealing to authority’ Stealing selector names outright from well-established standards rather than reinventing the wheel Context-Aware Personalization - 14

15. Copyright  2008 by CEBT The h* Effect  The h* effect underscores the philosophy of “reduce, reuse, and recycle” Shorthand for several design principles that contrast strongly with existing standards bodies and processes  Reduce The microformats community and process – Serves to focus attention on a specific problem “How can we point to licensing terms for blog posts?” – Favors the simplest solutions Context-Aware Personalization - 15

16. Copyright  2008 by CEBT The h* Effect  Reuse Work from experience and favor examples of current practice The key point of departure with the Semantic Web community – “design for humans first, machines second”  Recycle Encourage modularity and the ability to embed Valid XHTML can be reused in blog posts, RSS feeds, and anywhere else you can access the web Context-Aware Personalization - 16

17. Copyright  2008 by CEBT Thinking about Linking  The most successful microformat of all is “Tagging”  ‘Web 2.0’ enthusiasm for tags can be traced to the del.icio.us shared bookmarking service. Users started choosing tags that weren’t just keywords but also labeled groups and roles By surfacing, or displaying, items to which other users have applied the same tag By suggesting additional tags for a given item, tags power an exciting bottom-up process for collaboratively organizing information  Flickr.com tagged photographs in the same way. Context-Aware Personalization - 17

18. Copyright  2008 by CEBT Thinking about Linking  Microformat adoption rate Blog posters adopted the relTag microformat extremely rapidly Context-Aware Personalization - 18 By adding rel="tag" to a hyperlink, a page indicates that the destination of that hyperlink is an author-designated "tag" By adding rel="tag" to a hyperlink, a page indicates that the destination of that hyperlink is an author-designated "tag"

19. Copyright  2008 by CEBT Thinking about Linking  XHTML Friends Network (XFN) A simple way to represent human relationships using hyperlinks It took the approach of adding link relationships to existing blogrolls Context-Aware Personalization - 19 A list of blogs that reads as a list of recommendations by the blogger of other blogs A list of blogs that reads as a list of recommendations by the blogger of other blogs

20. Copyright  2008 by CEBT Microstandards?  Standards on which microformats build XHTML depends on XML The compound microformats for semistructured data reuse the simpler elemental microformats Context-Aware Personalization - 20

21. Copyright  2008 by CEBT Random Mutations  Structured blogging embeds plain XML within tags Then uses additional Dynamic HTML techniques to present it to end users via browsers.  Advantage Complete decentralization for creating new vocabularies, with an additional level of schema constraints for enumerated values and other basic data types  Disadvantage The semistructured information is invisible to ordinary browsers and screen readers for the disables It creates less incentive for modularization and sharing of common vocabularies Context-Aware Personalization - 21

22. Copyright  2008 by CEBT Random Mutations  The structured blogging forces all the structured information on a Web page into a single ‘ghetto’ An island of XML within the larger HTML document  However, microformats can be added to more complex HTML structures Table layouts for agenda grids Formatted presentation of bibliographic records Context-Aware Personalization - 22