This is a chance for a relaxed chat and Q&A about the future of HTML and related Web standards. Please note this is not a sponsored event so you’ll have to buy your own lunch. We only supply the Web standards goodness.

For numbers, just say if you want to come: http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/6577146

JavaScript: The events that get left behind & Pro-bunfighting – with Frances Berriman and Jake Archibald from the BBC.

Following a JavaScript theme, their presentation is split into two sections: Jake will cover “The events that get left behind” – talking about the horrors of keyboard events, how to work around them and a look at their future; Frances will cover “Pro bun-fighting” – talking about how they manage working on a large scale JavaScript project with a small team, including process, testing and group hugs.

Follow this link for the date, location and to book tickets:

http://lwsbbcglow.eventbrite.com/

Aims of the site

• To be a focal point for all of London Web Standards (LWS) online activities
• To take the discussion online
• To promote London Web Standards
• To promote web standards
• To be a focal point that collects all London Web Standards related materials (video, blog posts, photos, events, presentations and speaker bios), linked from the site

Content

Check out the current website (this is it) for an idea of the information we currently have. We’re going to be adding to this. We thought about drawing you an IA diagram, but then realised you’re one of the talented designer/IA or UXD professionals who come to LWS. So here’s the content we need somewhere in the site:

• The exisiting LWS logo (we like the design and were hoping to complement it with a new site design)
• Aim paragraph for LWS (still being written)
• Links (and/or content) to services that LWS uses: Flickr, Vimeo, Twitter, LWS Yahoo Group
• Eventbrite booking page (yep, right there within the London Web Standards site)
• Blog posts, including embedded videos and slides, as well as links to video, slides, comments, pictures and tweets from events
• A prominent place for sponsor logos
• Public calendar of upcoming events (fed from Google Calendar)
• Information about the venue
• Contact information, LWS and organisers twitter names, email address, web form
• Promote up coming speakers – a bios page with relevant links to their work

Our technical bits and UI requirements

• Our site is based on WordPress so whatever you produce will be applied to a theme
• We need your designs to be accessible, for example – think of colour blind users (of course it’s not limited to this).

What do you get out of it?

Kudos? Satisfaction that you’ve made the site look less boring? A high value item in your portfolio for a cutting edge community group website.

You’ll get a link of the type “Site designed by X” at the bottom of every page and a link back to your personal site. Plus, between competition close and Monday 5 April, every entry will be displayed in a voting section of the current site with a link back to your website.

What we need from you

We need the graphic and UI design from you. Initially we’d like 3 templates:

1. The homepage
2. A blog page
3. A generic template page

We can work around what you produce (creating the Eventbrite and calendar pages), but if you want to design more templates please feel free.

We’d prefer graphic design files in any format openable in one of the Adobe Creative Suite applications (things like Fireworks and Photoshop). For speed, you can send through a .JPEG, .GIF or .PNG file in the first instance, but we’ll need access to a layered (.PSD or Fireworks .PNG) version of the designs when converting your designs into a working theme. We’ll also accept code-based designs (if you prefer to design in the browser) and other supporting documents (things like IA and design justifications). However, we must make it clear we’re looking for graphic and UI design, not fully formed code (we can do that). If we have trouble opening your work we’ll get back to you.

What, where and when to submit

Entries can be submitted via email attachment to competition@londonwebstandards.org. We can receive messages of up to 25Mb in size. We don’t mind you putting them in a compressed file (such as a Zip), in fact it’s probably easier that way.

You will get confirmation of your submission within 24 hours. If you’d like to arrange another way to give us your work, get in touch with us at organisers@londonwebstandards.org, but please give plenty of time before the deadline.

The competition will start on Monday 15 February, it will be announced at the meetup and you’ll be able to submit entries until Monday 15 March 2010, entries will need to be received on or before 12 midnight. (Update: The deadline has been extended to Wednesday 31 March 2010.)

Deciding the winner

The winner will be announced on Tuesday 6 April 2010. They will be decided in an open public vote. Each entry is guaranteed to be displayed (along with a link back to your site) on the LWS site between competition close and when the winner is announced.

The LWS Organisers reserve the right to update this information as clarifications become necessary. If there are any major changes that will significantly affect your entry we will email the LWS email list with an update. If you’d like to sign up for these emails please register with our Yahoo Group. It’s also worthwhile periodically checking back here if you can. If you have any general questions please put them in the comments below.

Postcode Data, Jeff Van Campen

Earnest Marples have had their postcode data service closed by legal action from Royal Mail. Whatever the morality, this is having an affect on sites such as Jobcentre ProPlus and The Straight Choice. Jeff encourages the group to sign a petition to the Prime Minister to make this data free to not-for-profit organisations.

He also takes issue with the postal service charging for information in the first place as, at around £4000, it effectively puts a tax on innovation, pricing smaller developers out. Royal Mail’s copyright doesn’t appear to be in any danger of expiring since it’s protected by Crown Copyright. See more at Jeff’s blog.

Location Based Games, Ben Dodson

Ben’s been playing with GPS based gaming on the iPhone. Two major apps in this area were released recently for the UK, Gowalla and Foursquare. They’re both available on Android and iPhone. Because they’re location based he’s been going out to parts of the capital that he wouldn’t normally. Games that cause exercise! He’s also been working with the developers at Gowalla and made an iPhone web app that uses UIUIKit. This is an HTML and CSS framework that allows you to easily build custom web apps. Using this was simple and it took Ben half an hour to make a web app. His app also takes advantage of the geolocation data support in Safari mobile on the iPhone using HTML5.

Some background

Some think that the web is simply the internet plus links. In fact, it’s the internet plus HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol). It’s an important distinction and something that gets forgotten. For example, discussions on accessibility often focus on documents. HTTP and URIs (Uniform Resource Identifiers) don’t get mentioned, they are the other side of the web that gets ignored. Where HTML has been through many revisions, HTTP is still at version 1.1, this standard has stood the test of time.

The web is the Internet, HTTP and HTML (to a lesser extent)

Everything that’s good about the web is linking. People need and want to share content, therefore they need handles, or links, to use. In Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), Google PageRank holds HTTP and the URI as more important than the HTML of the page. By definition, a page of HTML is not a web page until it’s linked to something else.

Crucially, we need to get from a web of documents to a web of things. Linked Data allows for this further level of abstraction. Where humans can make meaning out of the content of a web page, the web needs to progress to a stage where machines can understand it.

Now for the talk

Some types of Linked Data:

• RDF. This was described more than ten years ago. It’s very easy as it’s just data. It works in an Object > Predicate > Object fashion for example: <sky> <has colour> <blue>. This information forms a graph.
• FOAF (Friend of a Friend). When it was first described, people focused on this because it was the only spec that had traction.
• REST (Representational State Transfer). This explains proper use of HTTP. Separation of resources and representations of it. For example, browsers such as Safari and Firefox have a list of preferences such as your preferred language or context (e.g. mobile). When you request a document from a URI you are getting a representation of the resource that matches your headers. The browser and server work together to understand what version of the document you want. Your browser searches for the correct MIME types that suit these preferences. The copy of the document you see is only a representation that best matches your requirements. So, sometimes if the server can’t find a version that fits, it could return a “406 not acceptable” error. This concept is important when combating the ghettoisation of mobile content. The device you use and your language are all important, the same URI could serve to any context. This is important if you don’t want to split your “Google Juice”, as Michael puts it. AKA, your Google PageRank.

Linked Data = Links + HTTP + RDF

Between the development of FOAF and about 2006, there have been lots of new ideas for Linked Data, but all have been too complex. By extension, people thought the semantic web was too complex. Linked Data still uses RDF, but the difference is that now it’s about things not documents. Example, the Eastenders website may have a file that you’ll be able to ask for in several flavours. Linked Data is about giving information that you can’t get “down the wires”.

Using Linked Data you can describe the relationship between different aspects of the same resource. E.g. you can describe the relationship between a website and its creator. Moustaki.org was created by Yves, but not the other way around. You can use Linked Data to make claims about documents and about things.

What’s the difference between Linked Data and Microformats?

Linked Data provides another level of abstraction. Instead of relating two documents (e.g. with a REL statement), you relate two things. Also, with Linked Data there are lots of ways to publish these relationships:

• Hashes. Resources are defined relatively to a document. If you’re concerned about the number of GET requests, this is a good option because you don’t need a 303 error page.
• Slashes. A very popular option, but also the hardest to convey information. Michael and Yves show an example of content negotiation where often with this system two GET requests are needed. On the plus side, the server doesn’t care about anything after the hash.
• RDFa. The cheapest to set up.

Find out more about hashes versus slashes.

What’s the point of Linked Data?

Seperate individuals may host different content about the same thing. The English band The Fall, was used as an example of the power of this abstraction. Linked Data can be used to aggregate information specifically about this band. Linked Data is a web scale database. The OWL:sameAs statement is a prime example of this kind of functionality.

But how do we handle conflicts? As with any web browsing, you must keep track of where you get any data from. Also anyone can make a claim on a URI. Your weighting could be based on PageRank. Spam is also a problem and OWL:sameAs can go wrong with the language eg, there are two bands called ‘U2′ (one Japanese, one Irish). There are sixteen bands called ‘Arora’ etc.

What are the pitfalls, how is it being used and developed?

FRBR (Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records) is still being developed, lots of work is being done on its different classes. But music ontology is still an area that needs development. There is an need to make a distinction between composer, performances, signal etc.

A recent example of the problems of this web database came when researchers at the BFI discovered the history of a famous actor who had acted in a porn film. They added this to his record. Despite it being true, the actor didn’t want this to be known and the BFI were deemed to be in the wrong.

Search engines are already using Linked Data. For example, Google is publishing content from Bestbuy. Also, social media is already using Linked Data in their activity feeds. RDF is mostly populated by social data. US porn websites are obliged to use RDF. To find out more about the whereabouts of RDF, go to: http://pingthesemanticweb.com/