Abstract

Blogs are an important part of the Web 2.0 landscape. A large percentage of information contained in blogs can be classified as contextual information, putting already existing information into a new context rather than creating isolated new information resources. One of the reasons why it is hard to keep track of and find blog posts is the fact that blogs are typically considered pure content. By looking at blogs from a more context-oriented view, it is possible to deconstruct them into structures which are more contextual than just focused on the content, facilitating flexible reuse of these structures. We present a prototype for deconstructing and repurposing blog information which enables users to browse the Web with blogs as contextual information, shifting the focus of browsing from pure content to contextualized content. The purpose of this session to give participants a new perspective of blogs and to demonstrate the prospect of contextualized browsing of Web resources.

What is Web 2.0?

• The Web as a Platform
• Harnessing Collective Intelligence
• Being Data-Centered
• Using Web-Based Applications
• Using Light-Weight Programming Models
• Using Cross-Device Applications
• Providing Rich User Experiences

Web 2.0 Applications

• Web 2.0 applications very often leverage the network effect
  • by bringing together previously unconnected things, new value is created
  • the value thus often lies in the connections, and not in the connected things
• Formalize and exploit existing structures
  • many Web 2.0 applications thrive on representing existing structures
  • few Web 2.0 applications are design tools for creating works starting from scratch
  • Flickr, LinkedIn, Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Wikipedia, del.icio.us, blogs, …
• One universal observation about Web 2.0: context over content
  • context formalization, aggregation, and analysis is the hidden core of Web 2.0 applications
  • the step to a common context concept has not yet been made

Problems of Current Web 2.0 Applications

• Everybody wants users visiting his site
  • ads still are the only proven business model
  • ads only work when people look at them
• The Web 2.0 landscape is fragmented and hard to manage
  • too many applications for managing all the facets of life
  • instead of building blocks, Web 2.0 applications offer solutions
• Facebook was the first to realized that integration is important
  • other platforms are more open because they are less restrictive
  • Facebook allows developers to access Facebook data — on Facebook
  • Facebook as a lock-in integration platform is a one-way street
• True integration would open the data model, not the application platform

Context is King

• Web 2.0 applications should be specialized network handlers
  • instead of trying to manage everything, only manage the connections
  • the real value lies in bringing things together, not in things
• Context should be a first-level Web citizen
  • there is not even a well-defined standard for bookmarks (stone-age context)
  • XLink (standardized by the W3C) is ill-designed and a complete failure
• Context is anything that annotates a URI-identified resource
  • a bookmark for a Web page (maybe with a comment)
  • a connection between two Web pages (product ↔ review)
  • associating an image with a place (flickr URI ↔ geo URI)

Fight Facebook!

Blog Post

Blog Posts and Link Objects

• Blogs have a number of recurring features
  • they are a sequentially ordered series of blog posts
  • a blog has an owner and a permanent URI
  • posts have a date and content
  • posts very often have a number of URIs as part of their content
• Blog posts can be regarded as links (blog links or blinks)
  • the complete blog (the collection of all posts) is the blog linkbase
  • each post is a link with a predefined structure
  • post date, post URIs, post content (HTML snippet), …
  • advanced blinks could classify referenced URIs (support, criticism, similarity, blog, …)

Blog Post Structure

Blog Post as Link

<blink xlink:type="extended" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" xlink:title="Sorry Pluto...">
 <permalink xlink:type="locator" xlink:title="Sorry Pluto..." xlink:label="permalink" xlink:href="http://docordie.blogspot.com/2006/08/sorry-pluto-and-some-thoughts-about.html"/>
 <author xlink:type="locator" xlink:title="Bob Glushko" xlink:label="author" xlink:href="http://www.ischool.berkeley.edu/˜glushko/"/>
 <blog xlink:type="locator" xlink:title="Doc Or Die" xlink:label="blog" xlink:href="http://docordie.blogspot.com/"/>
 <feed xlink:type="locator" xlink:title="’Doc Or Die’ Atom Feed" xlink:label="feed" xlink:href="http://docordie.blogspot.com/atom.xml"/>
 <posturi xlink:type="locator" xlink:label="site" xlink:href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Astronomical_Union"/>
 <posturi xlink:type="locator" xlink:label="site" xlink:href="http://www.modbee.com/local/story/12638580p-13341408c.html"/>
 <posturi xlink:type="locator" xlink:label="site" xlink:href="http://www.freenewmexican.com/news/48332.html"/>
 <posturi xlink:type="locator" xlink:label="site" xlink:href="http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/living/15365590.htm"/>
 <post xlink:type="resource" xlink:label="post" xlink:title="Sorry Pluto..." type="text/html">
  <h2 xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">Sorry Pluto...</h2>
  <!-- complete HTML snippet of blog post -->
 </post>
 <timestamp xlink:type="resource" xlink:label="timestamp" type="xs:date">2006-08-27</timestamp>
 <arc xlink:type="arc" xlink:from="permalink" xlink:to="timestamp" xlink:title="Post Time"/>
 <arc xlink:type="arc" xlink:from="site" xlink:to="post" xlink:title="Blog Post"/>
 <arc xlink:type="arc" xlink:from="permalink" xlink:to="author" xlink:title="Post Author"/>
 <arc xlink:type="arc" xlink:from="permalink" xlink:to="blog" xlink:title="Blog Home"/>
 <arc xlink:type="arc" xlink:from="blog" xlink:to="author" xlink:title="Blog Author"/>
 <arc xlink:type="arc" xlink:from="blog" xlink:to="feed" xlink:title="Blog Feed"/>
 <arc xlink:type="arc" xlink:from="author" xlink:to="blog" xlink:title="Authored Blogs"/>
</blink>

Context Publishing as Add-On

• No need for all blogs to manage their posts as blinks
  • blinks are just the way to formalize context across applications
• An added opportunity to make blog data available and usable and useful
  • instead of searching for blog posts, you just find them!
  • request/response interaction with the context provider (e.g., the blog search engine)
• Context must first be formalized before it can be reused
  • individual blogs provide little context (only the blog's posts)
  • blog hosting sites provide a lot of context (all hosted blogs)
  • blog search engine provide complete context (all crawled blogs)

Crawling Blogs

Using Aggregators

Native Blinks

Link Infrastructure

• Linkbase is an XML database storing XML-based link documents
  • storage and access is efficient and scalable
  • queries can be based on arbitrary structural criteria
• Client-side implementation in a Firefox extension
  • for each request, a request to the linkbase is sent
  • the linkbase replies with the set of links for that URI (currently no ranking)
  • the links are transformed into XUL code
  • the XUL code is rendered and displays the links in a sidebar

Integrated Links (XLink Mockup)

H. Weinreich, H. Obendorf, and W. Lamersdorf. The Look of the Link — Concepts for the User Interface of Extended Hyperlinks, In: Proceedings of HT'01, August 2001

External Links (BlogRovr)

Image links

• Images can also have links associated with them
  • annotations to an image as a whole
  • annotations to a geometric region of the image (currently only rectangles)
• Image links are just another application of the same concepts
  • the client also sends linkbase requests for all images embedded in an HTML page
  • image links are transformed to SVG code and displayed as an overlay
• Popular image annotation applications could be opened
  • Flickr supports the concept of annotating part of an image
  • this annotation is stored in Flickr and can only be viewed in Flickr
  • Flickr could provide comprehensive image publishing: image & context

Conclusions

• Declarative Web 2.0 is a goal and not a concrete technology
• Identification of frequently used concepts is hard
  • some easy targets, many hard targets
  • even for the easy targets, exact semantics may be hard to define
  • if there is not incentive to become declarative, only a few will do it
• Web architecture is more fashionable than it used to be
  • naive SOA had enough time to prove its disadvantages
  • granularity of services will increase
  • the need for composable services will increase
  • technologies providing easy and robust integration are required

Future Plans

• Atomify the Concepts
  • Atom is the next big thing: a unified format for syndication and publishing
  • linkbases are accessed using the Atom Publishing Protocol (APP)
  • links are published using Atom feeds
  • linkbase handling and management could be viewed as context syndication
• And Now for Something Completely Different …
  • linking puts things into a logical context
  • location puts things into a spatial context
  • location is used in many applications, but not as a Web-level concept
  • the location-aware Web is one facet of the declarative Web
  • add location to the Web architecture in URIs, HTTP, and HTML