MySoreHead

Freefolio is out as a demo (hat tip Stephen Downes) and its an eportfolio platform using WordPressMU and Structured Blogging. The fact that it uses structured blogging has really got me interested in what they're doing. Well done to them for giving this a go. Refer to my post just a few days about structured blogging.

According to this they are going to release freefolio as open source so I look forward to seeing how they implement the structured blogging templates, as it sounds like it parses XML on the fly. So I had a little bit of a sniff around.

They have 6 different types of posts: Record, Training/Couse, Learning Event, Showcase, Case Study and SWOT. I choose the SWOT template and filled in some dummy text and the following meta data was insert into the page along.

       <!-- the following is structured blog data for machine readers. -->

       <subnode alternate-for-id="sbentry_1" xmlns:data-view="http://www.w3.org/2003/g/data-view#" data-view:transformation="http://structuredblogging.org/subnode-to-rdf-interpreter.xsl" xmlns="http://www.structuredblogging.org/xmlns#subnode">

       	    <xml-structured-blog-entry xmlns="http://www.structuredblogging.org/xmlns">

       		    <generator id="wpsb-1" type="x-wpsb-post" version="1"/><showcase type="showcase/swot"><description>description text</description><strengths>strengths text</strengths><weaknesses>Weaknesses</weaknesses><opportunities>Opportunities</opportunities><threats>Threats</threats><tags>tag1, tag3</tags></showcase>

       	    </xml-structured-blog-entry>

       </subnode>

So they've invented (I think) a showcase/swot format, and I guess they're the only ones that use it.

So I looked through the site but I couldn't find any reference to why they are using Structured Blogging or how they hope to use it for. There was no mention about what services/application will read the freefolio data, except that Amazon may be able to access the reviews. What are the benefits in using freefolio and how does it differ from a regular WordPress, except that it has less themes? There doesn't seem to be an aggregation using the different types, not even like Vox does, maybe that's down the track. There is a only a single site-wide feed off all blog posts, not site wide categories or site-wide tags.

Also the stylesheet (http://www.w3.org/2000/06/dc-extract/dc-extract.xsl) doesn't appear to exist anymore, so is structured blogging (the PubSub version anyway) dead? Is anyone else using these microformats? If they aren't where is the discussion their development and an invitation for others to contribute? Maybe they need to host the styleshee, or does that defeat the purpose?

Update: I write these posts slowly and there is now a post about structured blogging and freefolio here. The post suggest how XML can be used to track learning progress or develop an organisational knowledge bank. But is structured XML data any better than tags? And is the hassle of using those templates worth the hassle and how many templates do we need to fit all our eportfolio needs.