Alexandre Passant

From what I read on Twitter, it seems there's a bit of confusion regarding SMOB. Indeed, while SMOB provides a framework for Open and Semantic Microblogging, it does not define a new protocol, but simply uses SPARQL/Update over HTTP to exchange information between hubs (posting / removing notices and following / followers). Hence, this is not something that competes against OMB, the OpenMicroBlogging specification.

Actually, OMB is something we planned to look at for a long time, as briefly discussed when Status.net / OMB was presented in the W3C Social Web XG telco. I've finally took the time to analyse the full spec and checked how it compares with the distributed microblogging implementation of SMOB, and more generally with the vision of Semantic Web / Linked Data (SW/LD) microblogging services.

So here is a proposal for "Semantic OMB" (on Status.net wiki) that describes how the current OMB protocol fits with the previous idea. In particular, it aligns the terminology with existing classes / properties from well-known ontologies, and discusses how some current parts of the spec should be updated. It also discuss how OMB operations can be mapped to SPARQL/Update queries, based on the ones that currently happen in SMOB for cross-hubs synchronisation.

As you can see when browsing it, besides the terminology mappings, most of the things are compliant and there are only a few things that shall be discussed, in order to:

• enable a better "distributed-ness" by keeping profiles owned by their users and not necessarily creating remote accounts;
• making some mandatory elements being optional, as they are contained in the data that is exchange between services thanks to the Linked Data principles.

Thanks to these small updates, it could provide a protocol enabling SW/LD systems to be designed based on the OMB protocol, while having a sufficient abstraction level to comply with OMB systems using other technologies for data modeling and exchange. I'd be more than happy to see such features in an upcoming OMB release, and hopefully see deeper links between OMB and SW/LD efforts, as both aims to achieve the same goal of openness and interoperability. Comments and feedback are welcome on the related thread on the OMB mailing-list.

Edit 10/02/2010: There was a few bugs in that release, please consider downloading the v2.2.1

One more week, one more release, here's SMOB v2.2. This one fixes a few bugs (apparently the #tag tabs where unavailable on the 2.2 due to a bug I introduced in the .js file) and provides the following new features:

• geolocation of microblog messages (see example below), which shows one more benefit of the LOD cloud, as coordinates of posts are provided thanks to the GeoNames integration and OPO;
• ability to delete messages (deletion being then propagated to other hubs using SPARQL/Update) and to automatically purge messages older than X days (mainly to keep the DB lightweight - starred messages are not removed);
• on-demand creation of FOAF profile, in case one wants to try SMOB but does not have one (or does not want to provide it);
• parser for hyerlinks in microblog posts; and
• updated installer, allowing to select if SMOB should be used as a Twitter client (read / write settings).

BTW, as for the previous updates, you have to remove your config file and re-do the install procedure, and it will not remove your existing messages.

Here's a new release of SMOB, the Semantic MicrOBlogging framework. This release includes various new features, the main one being the integration of Twitter messages in SMOB so that you can use your SMOB hub as a Twitter client, where each Tweet is represented in RDFa using SIOC, FOAF, etc.

In addition, the new release provides:

• RSS feed for hub owner's messages;
• Automatic @reply when replying to a Twitter message (including sioc:addressed_to annotation);
• Updated user-interface for #tags mappings, now done using tabs to avoid too much scrolling;
• Ability to directly check @reply messages;
• Starring system using the Review vocabulary.

SMOB v2.1 can be downloaded here. If you used a previous version, you will also need to apply this patch after the update. It may remove some of your following / followers (as there have been some changes in the related RDF data - this should be taken into account by the patch, but who knows ...), in that case you'll add to add them again, sorry for the inconvenience !

Hopefully, a 2.2 release will be out in the next weeks, including geolocation of messages, advanced browsing features and other funky improvements. Feature requests can also be suggested on its dedicated bugtracker.

Gautier (aka lespetitescases) just hacked his SMOB client to make it post on identi.ca as well as on twitter. He's using the new laconica API combined with the same method that SMOB uses at the moment to post on twitter (CURL + HTTP-Auth).

I finally uploaded the slides of the various talks I gave at last ES(W)C in Tenerife:

• "FOAF and SIOC applications", invited talk at Harry Halpin's "Social Networks" tutorial (embeds at the end of that post)
• "MOAT: Meaning Of A Tag", lightning talk at the LOD BOF

Here are the scripts to fix the recent SMOB bug:

• http://apassant.net/home/2008/06/smobfix/bugfix-client.phps
• http://apassant.net/home/2008/06/smobfix/bugfix-server.phps

I remember a quote from Benjamin on #semsol (but I can't find it in the logs - is there a rela

cc-ed on sioc-dev

If some of you are using SMOB publishing / aggregating tools [1],
please consider reading this.
The current prototype used sioc:MicroBlogPost class, while its URI in
SIOC spec is sioc:MicroblogPost.
I fixed it in SVN, but if you update some client or server now, it
won't work with old data.
A patch to replace old URIs to new ones in existing applications will
be available soon.
But if you start developing code or implementing a server now, please
checkout the new

Un de mes tort sur ce blog est sans doute de ne pas publier assez en français. Heureusement certains s'en chargent, et plutôt bien. Voila donc 2 billets au sujet de SMOB, un premier par (l'inévitable ;-) ) Gautier, et un second de Nicolas accompagné d'un excellent screencast.

Any status update posted to Twitter from a SMOB client now features a 'from SMOB' link, a good way for semwebbers to promote it.

A v0.1 release is planned soon, but if you already want to use it, just get the latest svn version.This one also features the firsts steps of RDFa integration in the client homepage, as you can see

As John Breslin already detailed last week, we (Tuukka Hastrup, Uldis Bojars, John and myself) recently work on SMOB, a semantic microblogging architecture, that will be presented at next SFSW workshop,