Geospatial Semantic Web Blog

Microformats is data format standards for embedding semantic information in XHTML documents. Dmitry Baranovskiy created a tranformer application that can output Microformatted semantic information into formats that are suitable for mashup (JSON and XML).

The application is open source, and is hosted on Google Code.

Here is the XML and JSON outputs of my Biosketch page.

The implementation is surprisingly simple but powerful. It relies on XSTL to transform Microformatted content from an XHTML file into JSON or XML. If you want use the application as a web service, follow the instructions here.

Mozilla Firefox 3 may support Microformats, RWW reports. This news was spreading because Mozilla designer Alex Faaborg wrote an interesting blog on why browsers should support semantic markups. In his blog, Alex writes,

Much in the same way that operating systems currently associate particular file types with specific applications, future Web browsers are likely going to associate semantically marked up data you encounter on the Web with specific applications, either on your system or online.

Alex envisions the future Firefox browser as an information broker (or an aggregator) for the Web. It will automatically detect, extract and collect different semantic information on the Web and populates users’ favorite applications with this information. RWW has a nice diagram that illustrates Firefox as an information broker.
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Brian Suda prototyped an XSLT transformation service for transforming documents with Microformat Geo markups to GeoRSS and Google KML representation. The XSLT files used by the service are available for download.

Microformat Geo is a simple format for marking up geographical latitude and longitude information within XHTML, XML and RSS. Its representation originates from the vCard standard (RFC2426).

I think this service is interesting for the following reasons:

1. As Microformat gaining traction in the Web community, we need this kind of services to bridge the representation between Microformat geo and others (e.g. GeoRSS, KML and W3C Geo).
2. It demonstrates the feasibility to use existing technology such as XSLT to enable information sharing and integration on the Web. Mapping and integration at the syntax level should be the first step, and mapping between ontologies and semantics should be the second step.
3. It’s a strong evidence that shows the realization of the Semantic Web doesn’t dependent on a single ontology. Multiple ontologies, even competing ones, can live in harmony and used by different applications simultaneously. I can imagine using services like this will enable Google Earth to display data expressed in GeoRSS, which is embraced by Yahoo!, and Yahoo! Maps to display data expressed in KML, which is the proprietary format of Google Earth.

Spotted in a message posted by Danny Ayers to the mailing list of W3C Geospatial Incubator Group.

In the past, I talked about the use of microformats to geocode locations on the Web. Microformats is a new approach that attempts to introduce meaningful markups in the existing HTML pages. In particular, it exploits the use of HTML attribute values.

Norman Walsh has a post that discusses different ways to encode the latitude and longitude information of the Eiffel Tower using microformat.

There is also an interesting comment from Elliotte Rusty Harold that shows how the same information can be encoded in a more optimal representation.

Just be warned. The described approach only works if the end user application (e.g., a browser) knows how to ignore the non-standard HTML tags. Otherwise, it may create problems during the page rendering process.