What a tangled web we weave...
Metadata provides computer-readable information about web pages. For example, Matt created both this page and the page about solar power from space. This relationship can be represented in metadata. When you view this page, your web browser could show you a list of other pages made by Matt.
For an example of a metadata browser, see Dashboard.
The most popular type of metadata in use is RSS. If you run a web site, you can merge RSS feeds into a headline list of related stories. Slashdot offers a RSS feed of its stories, and allows you to choose from a list of RSS feeds from other sites to display on its page. If you browse with Mozilla, you can view RSS feeds in your web browser after installing the Sage extension.
Another popular type of metadata is FoaF. You can browse FoaF files with FoaF Explorer. You can browse a photo album which combines FoaF data from multiple sources to find relationships between images.
If you are so inclined, you can take a look at
CWM, which is a general-purpose data processor
for the semantic web
. CWM is the best introduction to programming with RDF that I have found.
RSS is an RDF language for describing a set of news stories. An RSS file usually contains links to about 10 stories, along with information about who wrote the stories, the name of the creator, the title, and a short description.
FoaF is an RDF language for describing relationships between people and internet resources. FoaF gives you the language to explain to a computer that a person knows another person and that they can be reached at a certain email address. You can also use it to explain that a web page is about one person, but that another person actually created it.
RSS and FoaF are part of a larger set of vocabularies available for creating metadata. Wronkiewicz.net also uses WGS84 for geographical positioning and Dublin Core for page indexing information. The combination of several vocabularies allows a more complete description of internet resources and more capable tools to view them.
RDF is the standard format for web metadata. RDF files contain any number of descriptions about various
things. Each description follows the form (subject) (predicate) (object). For example, (I) (own) (a cat).
Lots of things can be described this way. (Matt) (wrote) (this page). That one is actually in one of the
Wronkiewicz.net RDF files. Each of the descriptions are called triples. The cat triple is a little harder
to write, because no one has gotten around to explaining to the computers what the concepts own
and
cat
mean. Explaining cats to a computer is left as an excercise for the reader.
Download these files or reference the URLs.