Comments on: Google Base and Great War Soldiers http://www.investigations.4-lom.com/2007/12/27/google-base-and-great-war-soldiers/ Failing better at understanding the past Tue, 06 Jan 2009 11:24:46 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.7 hourly 1 By: Gavin Robinson http://www.investigations.4-lom.com/2007/12/27/google-base-and-great-war-soldiers/comment-page-1/#comment-12046 Gavin Robinson Fri, 28 Dec 2007 10:54:11 +0000 http://www.investigations.4-lom.com/2007/12/27/google-base-and-great-war-soldiers/#comment-12046 Thanks for pointing that out. I'd somehow never heard of microformats but it looks like a brilliant idea - even easier than embedding XML. For people who have already published details of soldiers on their websites this is likely to be a better solution than trying to sync up with Google Base. On the other hand Google Base would be best for people who haven't already published their data on the web and don't know how to. It should be possible to define a Google Base type and a microformat which map to each other and contain all the necessary details of soldiers. Then someone could write a scraper which pulls it all together and allows searches across Google Base, microformatted websites, and possibly the big sites (CWGC, TNA) even if they don't have any metadata. I know that someone is already working on a Python script which scrapes the CWGC database and allows searches by regiment and service number, which the site's own search engine won't do. Thanks for pointing that out. I’d somehow never heard of microformats but it looks like a brilliant idea - even easier than embedding XML. For people who have already published details of soldiers on their websites this is likely to be a better solution than trying to sync up with Google Base. On the other hand Google Base would be best for people who haven’t already published their data on the web and don’t know how to. It should be possible to define a Google Base type and a microformat which map to each other and contain all the necessary details of soldiers. Then someone could write a scraper which pulls it all together and allows searches across Google Base, microformatted websites, and possibly the big sites (CWGC, TNA) even if they don’t have any metadata. I know that someone is already working on a Python script which scrapes the CWGC database and allows searches by regiment and service number, which the site’s own search engine won’t do.

]]> By: Ben Brumfield http://www.investigations.4-lom.com/2007/12/27/google-base-and-great-war-soldiers/comment-page-1/#comment-12001 Ben Brumfield Fri, 28 Dec 2007 00:38:22 +0000 http://www.investigations.4-lom.com/2007/12/27/google-base-and-great-war-soldiers/#comment-12001 <i>just embed Google Base metadata in a webpage</i> This sounds reminiscent of microformats. Have you looked to see if any connectors between the two exist? just embed Google Base metadata in a webpage

This sounds reminiscent of microformats. Have you looked to see if any connectors between the two exist?

]]> By: Gavin Robinson http://www.investigations.4-lom.com/2007/12/27/google-base-and-great-war-soldiers/comment-page-1/#comment-11987 Gavin Robinson Thu, 27 Dec 2007 19:44:20 +0000 http://www.investigations.4-lom.com/2007/12/27/google-base-and-great-war-soldiers/#comment-11987 Another thing I forgot to mention: I don't think you can nest attribute tags, which would be quite a useful thing to do. For example, the peculiarities of the British Army numbering system in this period mean that a service number needs to be associated with a regiment (or sometimes even a battalion) to make any sense. Even if Base isn't quite up to pulling in complete datasets from big sites like CWGC and TNA, it could still be valuable for people who have compiled a database of men who served in a battalion and want to make it available to other people on the web but who don't have the technical skills or the money to host it themselves. I might try some small scale experiments and see where it goes (although I have lots of other things to finish first). Another alternative is <a href="http://www.freebase.com/" rel="nofollow">Freebase</a>, but that seems to be the other extreme: absolutely anyone can edit your data. Another thing I forgot to mention: I don’t think you can nest attribute tags, which would be quite a useful thing to do. For example, the peculiarities of the British Army numbering system in this period mean that a service number needs to be associated with a regiment (or sometimes even a battalion) to make any sense.

Even if Base isn’t quite up to pulling in complete datasets from big sites like CWGC and TNA, it could still be valuable for people who have compiled a database of men who served in a battalion and want to make it available to other people on the web but who don’t have the technical skills or the money to host it themselves. I might try some small scale experiments and see where it goes (although I have lots of other things to finish first).

Another alternative is Freebase, but that seems to be the other extreme: absolutely anyone can edit your data.

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