Freebase Buzz
Ray Sims,
Sims Learning Connections,
Apr 06, 2007
For background on just what this is, you need to look up and read about JSON (the official pages aren't very useful, so here's more). For those who didn't follow the links (heh), JSON is basically a way of transporting data from one website to another by using the tag hack to get around browser security rules. It's also the major data format behind AJAX and other Web 2.0 tricks (alas the HTTPDRequestObject that's in all the guides does not get around browser security rules). My late lamented referrer system of a few years ago used this method. Anyhow, it's really simple. Strings go in quotes, lists in square brackets, and associative arrays (hashes) in curly braces. The colon is used for naming. OK fine. Freebase is a user-generated database that supports questions and answers in this format. Think of it as sort of a structured Wikipedia. Could it work? Ah, well, there's the fly in the ointment: "Semantic MediaWiki is totally open source, Metaweb, the system Freebase runs on, seems not to be." I think this is just the leading edge of something - maybe the end of XML.
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