Published October 25, 2011 | 
This video describes how to use the FOAF Semantic Web vocabulary and what a Semantic Web Vocabulary is. This is a continuation of other Semantic Web videos that I’ve shared as tutorial or how-to videos. More videos about the semantic web are available here:
http://futurewavedesigns.com/drupal7/training-videos-semantic-web
Visit this link to get your free profile published and linked with others:
http://futurewavedesigns.com/drupal7/get-free-profile-and-grow-your-network
FOAF — Friend of a Friend
FOAF is a Semantic Web Vocabulary used to describe people, their activities and their relationships to one another. It is becoming very popular for people who discover that others are doing this, to setup and publish on the web, their own FOAF profile. This vocabulary has served as the base from which other vocabularies have been extended. These other vocabularies will extend some of the terms used here as sub-Classes or sub-properties. I’ll explain that with examples, very soon.
So what is a vocabulary in this context?
For the Semantic Web, We deal with controlled vocabularies, which define terms and how they relate to each other. We have a hierarchy of Classes which each have properties. This is where you get the triples which relate the classes to the values of these properties. As an example:
A Person “has name” “Bruce Whealton”
This is a triple. Person is a class (I’ll demonostrate how to correctly write that with FOAF in a moment) and “has name” is the predicate with “Bruce Whealton” being the value. This would give this image if we were to present it as a graph:
We use a vocabulary to describe concepts that relate to a specific domain, or an area of knowledge… or simply to a set of concepts. Different fields and professions have vocabularies, such as the medical profession, or the legal profession, or online chat communities. We have terms that have relationships to one another. Through these relationships we find meaning. This is how we find meaning on the semantic web, through controlled vocabularies; And this is how we form Semantic Web databases, aka “triple stores,” because the data or information is stored in the form of triples.
FOAF concepts are prefixed with the letters foaf. Some examples are foaf:Person, which describes a person in the real world. foaf:name is a property of foaf:Person. Thus we get the triple foaf:Person foaf:name “Bruce Whealton”
which is a triple. It represents knowledge or information. It is an assertion that is stated explicitly. That will contrast with inferred knowledge which computers can discover or be programmed to display using “reasoners.” Much more can be represented with this vocabulary, FOAF. The full specification of FOAF is here. Much more can be represented with this vocabulary. We can represent our business or place of employment, where we went to school, our online chat ids, where we have accounts online, such as with facebook.com or linkedin.com, our websites and weblogs and more. One of the most important things we want to represent, is who we know.
foaf:knows
Using this property, we crawlers can discover foaf profiles by crawling from one profile to the next. Each profile will have links to the people that one knows, alone with links to web pages that describe those people, if possible, we link to the file containing the foaf profile of the person we know. Web crawlers, particularly, Semantic Web Crawlers, follow those links… You build your network through links within your foaf profile and the links to you in other profiles. Your foaf profile is stored in a file, typically, in RDF format, which was described earlier in my posts here, i.e. foaf.rdf
Image via Wikipedia
The FOAF logo is shown below.This blog is published by Bruce Whealton, more information about Bruce Whealton is here… Bruce Whealton is the owner of Future Wave Designs, a North Carolina Company providing Web Design and Web Development. Visit:
NC Web Design:Future Wave Designs
Published October 23, 2011 | What does all this mean? Well, FOAF is an acronym for Friend of a Friend. It is a Semantic Web vocabulary for describing people, their activities and their relationships to one another. This allows you to describe yourself online and makes it easier to network with others, and grow your network.
Web crawlers, that build indexes for the search engines, can start at one FOAF profile and using the links that are in the form of foaf:knows, which describe who you know, a search engine crawler can move from one profile to the next following these links. It may become obvious that this is a great way to network yourself, your business, your organization, your books, publications and more.
Kasabi is a linked data marketplace. In my blog article “Introduction to the Semantic Web” I spoke about a giant global database. That is what the Semantic Web is all about, and linked data is one more way to describe some of the goals of the Semantic Web. Using standard formats for representing information, in web pages and in “triple stores,” which are “Open” databases, we are able to link data, aka knowledge, information, from one website, or database to another. Information can be shared and combined… Information can be discovered. In additional, we can make a smarter web by helping Search engines and similar tools of the Semantic Web to perform more accurate searches because now there is more information that they can use. This information is exposed in a standardized way that lets anyone across the web to discover the data, use the information, share the information, and link to it in various other ways.
This is the Semantic Web Dream of a Giant Global Graph. In the previous post mentioned above on my blog article “Introduction to the Semantic Web” I presented the information in the form of a graph. You have a triple represented by a subject predicate object. Bruce knows Elee. This can be graphed with ellipses for the subject and object and an arrow that represents knows and points from Bruce to Elee.
Kasabi is one tool that makes it easy to publish your data, the information or knowledge that you have… the assertions that you can make and that can add to the collected knowledge held on the web.
Image via Wikipedia
Related articles
- The Semantic Web Media Summit (theconferencecircuit.com)
This blog is published by Bruce Whealton, more information about Bruce Whealton is here… Bruce Whealton is the owner of Future Wave Designs, a North Carolina Company providing Web Design and Web Development. Visit:
NC Web Design:Future Wave Designs
Published October 15, 2011 | This video continues an introduction to the Semantic Web. The idea of how data is stored in the Semantic Web framework was compared to the relational database model. The concept of ‘open-data’ was introduced. In an open-data model, the data is exposed as part of a global database, in a standardized way so that it can be combined with other data (information) and shared. The traditional relational database model embedded the meaning and the relationships in the software that runs on the server. You would have to know how the database was structured on any particular domain or website before you could use that data or information/knowledge. There was no standard way of encoding the meaning or the structure of the database. This meant that you had islands or silos of data or information and one website could not ask or use data that was on another website — unless a particular website happened to publish a way to interface with that database. Obviously no one is going to learn about how each of the millions of websites that have relational database back-ends are exposing their data.
The solution is to have a standard way of representing knowledge, data or information. This is the Resource Descriptive Framework (RDF). RDF allows for expressing explicit knowledge or explicit statements — later we will learn about how to infer more knowledge beyond what is explicitly stated. The RDF represents knowledge, information or assertions in the form of triples — Subject Predicate Object. This might be thought of in the same way as subject verb object, but that doesn’t fit in all instances. I might say “Bruce knows Jean.” That is a triple and it represents an explicit statement. Subject is Bruce, predicate is knows and object is Jean. I might also say “Person1 hasFirstName Bruce” and “Person1 hasLastName Whealton.” This is a way of expressing using two triples, two facts about me. I have a first name of Bruce and in the next statement, I state that I have a last name of Whealton.
This can also be represented in a graph format using ellipses and arrows.
Image via Wikipedia
This blog is published by Bruce Whealton, more information about Bruce Whealton is here… Bruce Whealton is the owner of Future Wave Designs, a North Carolina Company providing Web Design and Web Development. Visit:
NC Web Design:Future Wave Designs
Published October 15, 2011 | 
Image by dullhunk via Flickr
The Semantic Web Introduction. This video introduces the concept of the Semantic Web or Web 3.0. The video discusses the concept of Semantics, which deals with meaning, and compares that to Syntax, which is about structure in any form of communication. As an example, syntax would represent the grammar of written and oral communication. The Semantics represent the meaning of the communication. In the world of computers, or more specifically, the world wide web, semantics will deal with ways of communicating the meaning of what is contained on a web page in a way that computers can understand or use that information.
The Semantic Web is not just about representing meaning in web pages but also other ways in which meaning can be communicated across the web in a standard fashion or manner. This is enabled by syntax and standards. In later videos we will look at new standards for representing data as part of a giant global database or graph. This will involve RDF — the Resource Descriptive Framework and the notion of triples as a standard way to represent knowledge on the Semantic Web.
Related articles
- Semantic Web | David Kuhta (davidkuhta.com)
- Semantic web: a folio (scienceintelligence.wordpress.com)
- The Semantic web for dummies (scienceintelligence.wordpress.com)
This blog is published by Bruce Whealton, more information about Bruce Whealton is here… Bruce Whealton is the owner of Future Wave Designs, a North Carolina Company providing Web Design and Web Development. Visit:
NC Web Design:Future Wave Designs
Published October 14, 2011 | This was a how-to video that was inspired by a need to explain to a client how to work with and edit files on her website. I had developed the website using Adobe Dreamweaver (see other posts for more information about Adobe Dreamweaver). The client had Adobe Dreamweaver and so she needed to download the files I had created so that she could work with them on her computer.
This post deals with setting up FileZilla FTP program for uploading and downloading files. That is to say, uploading files from your computer to the remote server where your website is hosted, and downloading from your remote server to your local computer.
This blog is published by Bruce Whealton, more information about Bruce Whealton is here… Bruce Whealton is the owner of Future Wave Designs, a North Carolina Company providing Web Design and Web Development. Visit:
NC Web Design:Future Wave Designs
Published October 8, 2011 | This first video demonstrates how to get the administrative area of the WordPress Blogging software.
This is another one of my training videos designed or created to help my clients with the tasks related to the software I’ve created for them.
This is the first of a series of tutorials on WordPress. It is hoped that this will make it possible for clients to utilize the software that I am setting up for them on their websites. Future Wave Designs has clients both locally and across the nation for whom Bruce Whealton, the owner, provides Web Design and Web development Services.
Related articles
- WordPress 101 Video Training Part 1: The Dashboard (freelanceswitch.com)
This blog is published by Bruce Whealton, more information about Bruce Whealton is here… Bruce Whealton is the owner of Future Wave Designs, a North Carolina Company providing Web Design and Web Development. Visit:
NC Web Design:Future Wave Designs
Published October 8, 2011 | This video deals with defining a website in Dreamweaver. When defining websites, as opposed to creating a document in a wordprocessor, you deal with multiple files that come together to define what you see on the web page. These files include the html (officially it’s been popular to use a varient of HTML known as XHTML 1.1 — extensible HTML), images, style sheets (CSS — Cascading Style Sheets) that define the look and feel of the site, javascript for interacting with the user and for browser based effects. In addition, many websites have code that runs on the server.
For this reason, it is important to define a site with a particular structure.
For a portfolio of our work visit: http://futurewavedesigns.com/drupal7/porfolio-projects
Related articles
This blog is published by Bruce Whealton, more information about Bruce Whealton is here… Bruce Whealton is the owner of Future Wave Designs, a North Carolina Company providing Web Design and Web Development. Visit:
NC Web Design:Future Wave Designs
Published October 6, 2011 | This is a two part set of videos that explain how to enter content into a Drupal based website. This video focuses on custom content that was created for a specific purpose. Individual fields specify the type of content that is to be entered in the field. This can include a title, a body field, and various other fields that are specifically defined to meet the need of the content being posted.
Related articles
- Drupal Tutorial (mademan.com)
- Drupal Web Design Agency Reaches Out to Public Organizations Through Online Web Presence (your-story.org)
- How YOU (yes, you!) can help make Drupal.org awesome (drupal.org)
This blog is published by Bruce Whealton, more information about Bruce Whealton is here… Bruce Whealton is the owner of Future Wave Designs, a North Carolina Company providing Web Design and Web Development. Visit:
NC Web Design:Future Wave Designs
Published March 27, 2011 | Do It Yourself Websites or
Choosing to hire a web designer/web developer?
These days there are many options for creating and publishing websites. Web hosting providers and other companies will offer template based sites that anyone can create without writing any code at all. I almost would wish that creating websites was that simple. I would not have to spend so many hours ongoing to learn the many, many skills required. Of course, that would be boring. In addition, to get out a decent website, often, in some situations it is necessary to have a team of people working together. One person told me he didn’t want to get into this field because there was too much to learn – he was talking about the ongoing learning required.
This team oriented approach to web design comes from the fact that there are so many different skills and tasks that go into creating and publishing a website. That is why persons like myself have to continually be learning, not just to master the wide range of skills required but to keep up with changes in technology.
So, if a small to medium sized company wants a website, they could buy a template or an account with a company that has a site builder web-based tool and try the do-it-yourself approach. In considering whether or not to hire a web design and development company there are various things to consider, some of which you may not have considered and other things you may not have known or for which you may not have understood their importance. Here is a summary list of just a few things to consider.
Will your site show up in search engines? How does this Search Engine Optimization work?
How will you know if people are actually coming to your website and if it is working?
Is the site easy to use? Can people find what they need or desire?
Can your site benefit from interactive elements, or website widgets?
What options exist for the user interface components? This is how people interact with your website.
What is Web 2.0 and/or Web 2.0 websites?
Can your business and your website benefit from new cutting-edge or evolving technologies in computing and on the web? Who will update your website to keep up with these technology trends?
Is your website going to conform to Web coding standards; will it pass validation tests?
There are never simple or exact answers to these things but these are things to consider. If you asked different web professions to answer these questions, you would find many different answers and quite likely other questions to consider.
This blog is published by Bruce Whealton, more information about Bruce Whealton is here… Bruce Whealton is the owner of Future Wave Designs, a North Carolina Company providing Web Design and Web Development. Visit:
NC Web Design:Future Wave Designs
Published March 14, 2011 | As a Web Designer/Web Developer, I want to be sure that my client never gets hidden ongoing maintenance fees. I like to say that these are one time fees. Unfortunately, these days things change on the web. New security patches are created to deal with security issues and these updates need to be made by the Web Designer/Developer. So, this fee needs to be included. It could be listed as a small quarterly fee. There is also the web hosting fee. These days, web hosting is rather cheap, though. So, there is almost no reason why anyone cannot have their own domain name and website. Unlimited web hosting is typically available for under $10 per month. Domain registration is usually under $10 per year.
The next issue is to ask the client how often he or she foresees the site changing – weekly, monthly, quarterly? Will the client be in a position to make those changes himself or herself? Or do they need to hire my company for that service?
Blogging is so important and something that I always try to “sell” to my clients. The search engines love blogs and other “fresh” content. This is exactly the kind of thing for which blogs are best suited. Of course, a client needs to consider what exactly they will be blogging. This can be a hard sell for some clients. They just don’t know what they would want to share on a weekly basis or several times per week. In many cases, it isn’t very practical or feasible for the Web Designer/Developer to come up with stories for the client about his or her business. Yet, it is undeniable that it is bad for Search Engine Optimization, that is Search Engine ranking, for the site to have content that is new and updated frequently.
This can be integrated into a standalone blog or the blogging features of a Content Management System. That will be the topic for my next blog post.
This blog is published by Bruce Whealton, more information about Bruce Whealton is here… Bruce Whealton is the owner of Future Wave Designs, a North Carolina Company providing Web Design and Web Development. Visit:
NC Web Design:Future Wave Designs