I don’t mean to be stand-offish. I like being social and connecting with friends, really I do. But I’m suspicious of Friendster; even though the kind friends who’ve invited me to drink the Kool-aid aren’t, I believe, trying to pick me up for a date, I’ve felt as though the enterprise tilted in that direction. And I honestly don’t need dating to think about right now.
But to show that I don’t think that I’m an island entire unto myself, I gave in to Marc’s bloggical suasion, and decided finally to follow up on the directions Dorothea gave me back in April and construct a Friend-of-a-Friend file. I poked around and came up with very few people whom I know who’ve gone FOAF, so I exaggerated a little on who was a friend. If you keep a FOAF file, please make it visible or accessible (I stole the icons from Marc’s page). Somehow I feel a little more comfortable participating in an open social network than in a proprietary net — especially given the personae of FOAF advocates.
Anyway, now I’m accessible via the FOAF explorer, the Add-a-Friend page, and my own little RDF file.
Posted by AKMA at July 22, 2003 02:56 PM | TrackBackI have a FOAF file which was created using Leigh Dodds FOAF-a-Matic at http://www.ldodds.com/foaf/foaf-a-matic . As I was entering the information on the forms a question about adding “friends” came to mind, namely, how presumptuous is it to add names to one’s FOAF file from one’s blog roll? I think this raises a new issue of Web etiquette. Should one always ask permission of another before including him or her in his FOAF file? . I’ve not found a satisfactory answer in any of the FOAF literature I’ve found on the Web so far. Perhaps someone more knowledgeable than I can clarify or deliberate on this.
Posted by: Stan at July 22, 2003 06:43 PMThese very issues will hopefully get solved ona new social network we're working on - code-named FOAFster. Give us about a week or so :-)
Posted by: Marc Canter at July 22, 2003 07:38 PMIn the meantime, Stan, I’ll add you. If you don’t mind.
Posted by: AKMA at July 22, 2003 10:31 PMOne reason we use foaf:knows rather than foaf:friend (or foaf:knowsWell) is to make this side of things easier. Like most socially-tinged words, 'knows' is hard to define with mathematical precision, but it does at least avoid much of the awkwardness associated with claiming someone counts as your 'friend'.
I'm glad you made this comment here, Dan -- I think it's important that people realize that there's a reason for the use of a neutral verb before people start differentiating between 'acquainted with' and 'good friends with' in these online and fully accessible FOAF networks.
Note the new asterisks whenever we reference favoriteNumber, except for that new line right before the return.
Posted by: Tristram at January 13, 2004 12:32 PMWhen Batman went home at the end of a night spent fighting crime, he put on a suit and tie and became Bruce Wayne. When Clark Kent saw a news story getting too hot, a phone booth hid his change into Superman. When you're programming, all the variables you juggle around are doing similar tricks as they present one face to you and a totally different one to the machine.
Posted by: Geoffrey at January 13, 2004 12:32 PMEarlier I mentioned that variables can live in two different places. We're going to examine these two places one at a time, and we're going to start on the more familiar ground, which is called the Stack. Understanding the stack helps us understand the way programs run, and also helps us understand scope a little better.
Posted by: Thomasina at January 13, 2004 12:33 PM