We set out in this series discussing how the Semantic Web relies upon markup languages that tag Web content so it is easier for machines to interpret. This can be accomplished in a number of ways including tagging content as structured data or linked data. The last article in this series provided an introduction to marking up your content as structured data using microformats.

Microformats are one of the standard markup formats used to create structured data. Like any markup language, they consist of tags and attributes that are used to “mark up” your Web content so that a search engine can recognize the content as structured data.

I was originally going to continue this series with an article about creating structured data using RDFa, but realized that there are so many great resources out there on microformats that I would hate to leave the topic without mentioning them.

Following is a list of tools and other resources that can help you mark up your content as structured data to prepare it for the Semantic Web.

Microformats templates

In the last article on using microformats to create structured data, I mentioned some tools that can help you generate your own structured content using microformats. Here are links to those and some additional templates:

• hCard Creator
• hCalendar Creator
• hReview Creator
• hResume Creator
• XFN Creator

Continue reading »

WPtouch Pro plug-in: Better than creating your own app

The other day my partner Christopher S. Rollyson asked, Why haven't we optimized Socialmedia.biz for mobile users?

Truth be told, we have so many balls in the air that I hadn't heard of WP-Touch or WPtouch Pro -- WordPress plug-ins that make your site really nice-looking on a handheld device. With use of smartphones exploding, this is now a must-have in today's marketplace. Morgan Stanley analyst Mary Meeker predicts that within the next five years “more users will connect to the Internet over mobile devices than desktop PCs.”

So let's get geeky for a minute here and do mobile visitors to your site a huge favor. Because you definitely don't want your site to appear like the BEFORE image at the top of this post.

A couple of months ago, we paid to have Appmakr create an app for Socialmedia.biz. You can download the Socialmedia.biz app to your iPhone -- just search and install "Socialmedia.biz" in the App Store. Since we're an editorial site, the app doesn't do anything beyond nicely displaying headlines and text summaries sucked in via RSS feeds. Behold:

Now, the big drawback here is that very few people are likely to install an app just to read a single website. What you really want is for your site to be mobile-enabled across a wide range of devices -- with no download required on the user's part. Here's how to do that.

WPtouch Pro: Buy a license for up to 5 sites

I quickly discovered that WPtouch Pro from Canada-based BraveNewCode was my answer. If you run a business, nonprofit or personal site using WordPress and you haven't mobile-enabled your website or blog, you really need to spend the few bucks and 5 minutes it takes to make it happen.

Here's what you need to do:

1. Go to the BraveNewCode site and buy a license. Need it for just one site? $39 Canadian ($38.16 US). Need it for two to five sites? $69 CAN ($67.52 US). It was $10 cheaper when I bought the 5-pack about two months ago.

2. Download and install the plug-in the same way you install all your WordPress plug-ins. Activate it.

For most online publishers, that's it! Now go to your favorite browser on your mobile device -- say, Safari or Firefox -- and you'll see your website reincarnated and mobile-ready. Your latest blog posts will look something like this:

Your site will be mobile-ready for 90% of the marketplace

What devices does this support? iPhone, iPod touch, Android, Palm Pre/Pixi and BlackBerry Storm. Or, as the BraveNewCode folks put it: "Over 90% (and growing!) of the mobile-web surfing world will see your incredible mobile website with WPtouch."

One coding caveat: If you use WP Super Cache, you'll need to go to your plug-in's settings and click the checkbox to enable "Mobile device support." If you use W3 Total Cache, you may see some caching issue. Originally none of our posts from the past 10 days were appearing, but now it's working fine.

Another bonus: WPtouch Pro will display not just your most recent blog posts. Users can call up other pages or sections of your site, and they can email friends with a link to the post, tweet it out, add a social bookmark, add and read comments and scale images (although in my experience I haven't been able to enlarge the text, though it's sufficiently readable).

If you'd like to see a video of how this all works, take a look at the YouTube video WPtouch WordPress Plugin Demo for the Lifestream Blog. My understanding is that the free version of WPtouch is still available but is no longer supported, and you won't get the free updates that come with the paid 2.0 version.

How to grab screenshots off your iPhone

By the way, some of you may be wondering: How do you take a screenshot on the iPhone without using a special screenshot app? Simple. Apple changed this process during the summer, so here's how it now works:

1. Call up the page you want to capture.

2. Simultaneously hold down the "Home" button at middle bottom of the iPhone's front AND the "Sleep" button on top right of the iPhone. Press them for just a second or two. The iPhone screen will flash white for a moment as the image is added to the phone's Photos.

3. Navigate over to Photos or Camera Roll on the phone and email or text (MMS) the picture to yourself. It comes as a .png or .jpg attachment. (Or, go wild and use it as your wallpaper.)

Does all this make sense? Have you mobile-enabled your blog or website?

Continue reading »

"Thanksgiving at Golden Lake" by mathewingram on Flickr (CC-BY)

Happy Thanksgiving from your friends at Socialmedia.biz.

Icaptured a few nice photos of Arianna Huffington, founder and editor of the Huffington Post, last night at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco, where she gave an hourlong talk in conversation with Raj Patel, answered audience questions and then signed copies of her new book, Third World America.

The Huffington Post has had a remarkable trajectory over the past five years. The New York-based online publication started with five staffers and now has 190, and it is on its way to surpassing the New York Times and CNN to become the largest independent news site in the world.

A few snippets from her talk:

• The Huffington Post sees itself not as a liberal publication but as a wide-ranging online newspaper that celebrates any break from groupthink. Those sexy photos in the right sidebar? A way to lure some people toward more serious articles. "We are deliberately and unapologetically high-brow and low-brow. ... You don't have to click on them!"

• Submit nominations for "The Greatest Person of the Day" to arianna@huffingtonpost.com

• Many high-ranking conservatives oppose the war in Afghanistan, yet the traditional media only mention liberals as opposing it.

• We need to get beyond calcified right and left labels to confront the deep-rooted problems confronting us as a society. Her book doesn't only describe the urgent issues facing America but offers solutions on how to get past the politics of fear.

• "Bipartisanship is not splitting the difference down the middle, it's meeting in the places you converge."

• I didn't realize the Huffington Post chartered 200 buses to take 10,000 people to the Rally to Restore Sanity. One guy even came up from Washington, DC, to be on the bus to DC. "People wanted to be together for the journey not just the rally. To be in it together to get out of the dark times."

By the way, I met Arianna at BlogHer back in 2006 and again at Personal Democracy Forum -- here are some past photos (she still looks great!).

A podcast of her talk will likely be available early next week on the Commonwealth Club site.

Here's my final report from the seventh annual Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco -- among the nation's premier tech conferences.

Despite not having top-tier glass, I managed to capture some impressive images of some of Silicon Valley's tech leaders: Here's a Flickr set of 71 images.

A few snippets from Wednesday's session (I was networking, taking photos and multitasking):

• "Companies that extract the most signal from the stream ultimately offer the most value," said Jeff Weiner, CEO of LinkedIn, which -- like Web 2.0 Summit -- is 7 years old. Unlike Web 2.0 Summit, LinkedIn has 85 million members and it's growing rapidly in light of the just-ended recession. LinkedIn's biggest penetration is in the Netherlands.

• Cyriac Roeding of shopkick ("Rewards simply for walking into stores") laid out a stirring vision of retail commerce based on geo-location -- "not GPS," he underscored. Rather than having merchants thank you when they swipe your card and you're leaving the store, in a few years location-based shopping will flip the model on its head: They'll welcome you as you enter the store and guide you to products tailored to your needs.

Maybe.

• Valuations (often a dicey -- dare I say nutty? -- proposition):

Facebook: $40.8 billion (Mashable story)
Zynga (maker of FarmVille and other social games): $5.5 billion
Twitter: $3.4 billion
LinkedIn: $2 billion

• Inspiring talk by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Tuesday: "It’s not a zero sum game." Companies like Facebook should, and are, enabling other businesses. Also, the problem with the fanciful map shown throughout the conference is that "the unknown territory is way too small," he said. Dead on.

• I agree with Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce: The theme of this year's Web 2.0 Summit was a bit misstated. "We have to abandon the points of control metaphor — no one controls the cloud.”

• FCC chairman Julius Genakowski (photo below) said that while some of the ideas Google and Verizon proposed in their statement of principles on Net Neutrality reflect progress made by players in the space, he would have "preferred that they not do exactly what they did, when they did." That, combined with a wrong-headed court decision, has resulted in no enforceable government policy on Net Neutrality so far.

• There are 124 million active domains on the Internet, says Toni Schneider, CEO of Automattic, maker of WordPress.

• Twitter co-founder Evan Williams: "We aspire to be a platform company, but I don't think we've really done that yet."

Continue reading »

Google CEO Eric Schmidt

Now in its seventh year, Web 2.0 Summit -- running Monday to Wednesday in San Francisco this week -- remains an exceptional experience for members of the tech community.

Over the years, Web 2.0 Summit has consistently pulled in the biggest names in the tech industry, and this year is no different, with Google CEO Eric Schmidt, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, Twitter co-founder Evan Williams, FCC chairman Julius Genachowski and investment banker Frank Quattrone among those on tap.

"We have in our hands the power of the Internet," co-founder Tim O'Reilly said in his opening remarks, extolling the growing ubiquity and capabilities of our mobile devices. Assaying the larger landscape, he added: "We're entering a period of conflict, or intense competition on the Web."

Here's my Web 2.0 Summit photo set (so far).

Day 1 highlights

Loved Day 1. A few high points:

• Google's Eric Schmidt, a regular at the summit, engaged in a fascinating discussion with hosts Tim O'Reilly and John Battelle about privacy in the digital age. When O'Reilly suggested that the use of face recognition technology is "inevitable," Schmidt countered, "Trust me, that is not a no-brainer. ... This debate will get worse, it'll get harder, as technology progresses." He said that one could no longer assume that "engineers' political views" could pass muster in some cultures when rolling out a global service. For example, Google staffers assumed that blurring people's faces and license plates in Google Street View would appease privacy advocates, but in some countries that still didn't go far enough. Germans demanded that entire houses be blurred out if the residents requested, and political leaders in certain nations still think that's not good enough.

• Eric Schmidt on Net Neutrality and Google's joint statement with Verizon in support of different levels of Internet service, which has garnered Google widespread criticism: He said that the statement of principle was done in deference to the carriers' history of 30 years under government regular for their land lines and their aversion to any regulation in the mobile space. "

"We generally prefer that competition to produce the outcome" over government regulation, he said. A laudable premise -- except when discussing predatory business tactics by the telecom industry.

• More Eric Schmidt: "Google Earth has changed my appreciation of the world." Paired with Google Maps, it becomes "a transformative experience."

• Schmidt also took a shot at Hollywood's reluctance to embrace "smart television" -- a fusion of traditional TV programming with Web content. Television studios and networks fear that their business model will be jeopardized if television is opened to the wealth of available (and mostly free) Web content. But Google thinks people will watch "even more TV" when given additional content choices.

• Schmidt on the fact that people now upload 35 hours of video to YouTube every minute: "It's a truly amazing and disturbing statistic," he said.

• Mark Pincus, CEO of Zynga, the company behind FarmVille, unveiled a new vision for his company: to “dog activate” the world. Mark's a brilliant guy -- we appeared on a panel together two years ago -- and the newly minted billionaire (at least on paper) envisioned the day when we'll instantly know when our friends are playing social games. (A dog appears in Zynga’s logo.)

• More Mark Pincus: "If I have Pandora, I have a music dialtone." That is, instant 24/7 access to a celestial jukebox.

Author Steven Berlin Johnson on ebooks

• "The link and the url are losing market share," said Steven Berlin Johnson, who has written a serious number of serious books (many of which are on my bookshelf). "There is no standardized way to link to a page in an electronic book." But books should at least have a "shadow page" on the Web that lets people link to them and talk about them. When we use apps that aren't Web-enabled, thus cutting off the conversation flow, we should point out those flaws, he said.

• Ben Huh, founder of the I Can Has Cheezburger empire: "Hollywood hasn't yet caught on yet to Internet culture."

• More Ben Huh: "Cats are always at the center of Internet culture. ... We do it for the LOLs."

• Yusuf Mehdi of Microsoft: "At any given time there are 100 versions of Bing" on the Web to give the company feedback on how the search engine could be enhanced.

Web 2.0 Summit: Then and now

It's interesting to take a look at where Web 2.0 has been over the past seven years -- here's some of our past coverage:

• Web 2.0 Summit photos (2004)

• Web 2.0 Sum­mit: Jason Cala­ca­nis on social news (2006)

• Cov­er­age of Web 2.0 Sum­mit 2006 (2006)

• Web 2.0 photos (2006)

• Web 2.0 Sum­mit 2008 Day 3: Polit­i­cal round­table, Al Gore (2008)

• Day 2 of Web 2.0 Sum­mit 2008: GoodGuide and Face­book (2008)

• Web 2.0 Sum­mit 2008 Day 1: Google.org (2008)

• Web 2.0 Summit photos (2008)

• Web 2.0 Summit: Content & search get social (2009)

• Web 2.0 Summit photos (2009)

Related articles

• Eric Schmidt shows off a Nexus S at the Web 2.0 summit (engadget.com)
• Live Blogging Google CEO Eric Schmidt At Web 2.0 Summit (searchengineland.com)
• FarmVille’s Creator Wants to “Dog Activate” the World (Mashable)

Opening up opportunities for women from JD Lasica on Vimeo.

For years I've admired the efforts of Rachel Sklar to highlight the underrepresentation of women at the upper echelons of the tech and media worlds.

Rachel, editor at large at Mediaite and someone who carries both intellectual heft and personal likability, started a Tumblr blog a few months ago called Change the Ratio. It's an effort to change the ratio of visibility, access and opportunity for women in new media and tech. The website was prompted by a cover story in New York magazine in April 2010 on the New York City tech scene with photos of 53 people, six of whom were women.

Watch, download or embed the video on Vimeo

"When you're talking about the percentage of women being profiled, appearing on panels or pitching VCs, you're starting basically at 80-20," Rachel says. "There are still areas that are challenging, like getting to the table, getting to a meeting and once you're at a meeting, having the people at the table take you seriously."

For example, check out the makeup of WiredBiz: Disruptive by Design. As Rachel tweeted about a recent Wired magazine cover story: "Easier to get breasts on a Wired cover than on stage at a Wired conference? http://bit.ly/aerj9I #sheesh #lame"

Rachel, who was the focal point of a recent TechCrunch Disrupt panel on Women in Tech, is especially interested in helping young women entrepreneurs to overcome the social barriers they're likely to confront. "If you have a crazy idea and think, 'Oh, no one will ever like it.' You know what? Do something about it," she says. "Make something great, and when people turn you down, figure out how to use that."

Her advice to women? "Thicken the skin, and take every rejection as a lesson in a way to figure out how to get around that."

A social microgiving initiative

Rachel has another initiative she's put her energies behind: Charitini, a social microgiving site. Similar to other models, instead of buying her a birthday gift, you donate a similar small amount for charities of her choice: Habitat for Humanity New Orleans, DonorsChoose, Foundation Rwanda or the Bob Woodruff Family Foundation Fund.

"The untapped potential of using social networks for good and for fundraising is really exciting," she says.

Related

• Watchdog of the Underrated Woman (Gelf magazine)

• Can You Judge Wired by its Covers (and Coverage) of Women & Tech? (Poynter.org)

Advice that's good, bad and one suggestion that's almost impossible to achieve

I'm at Streaming Media West this week in Los Angeles covering the event for Ignite Technologies, a content delivery network for distribution of video within the enterprise. For more of Ignite's coverage from Streaming Media West, check out Ignite's blog.

While taking a boat cruise during the Streaming Media West conference in Los Angeles, I asked the invited guests what they would do if they really wanted everyone to watch their video. Some of them had good advice and some had advice that would be rather difficult to achieve. Watch.

Thanks to Microsoft and Kaltura for hosting the cruise.

UPDATE (11/15/10): Results from this post. Read article "Here's what's wrong with social media: Sharing without consumption."

There's gold in your employees' personal social networks

I'm at the Enterprise 2.0 conference in Santa Clara, Calif., this week covering the event for Dice and its companion media division, Dice News.

Human resources is a time- and people- intensive task. Recruiters spend the majority of their time just building relations with prospective employees or people who could refer them to talent. We all know that social media in general has increased our ability to build and maintain relations with people. Prior to Twitter and Facebook, do you remember anyone telling you they had more than 1,000 friends?

If social media has proved to accelerate relationships and knowledge of these relationships, how can that information be put to better use to support all of human resources' needs? Social tools can be used to manage compensation, benefits, acquiring talent, grooming talent, aligning employee success with business success, matching like-minded employees and cultivating innovation within the organization. How can HR people leverage social media to make their job more efficient and easier to do?

Somebody's got to be doing it better, and luckily those people were on a panel discussion "Human Resources Meets Enterprise 2.0 and the Cloud" (#e2conf) at the Enterprise 2.0 Conference in Santa Clara, Calif.:

Continue reading »