Short version: If the Web knows I like a TV show, why can’t my TV be more useful?
So I have just joined a Facebook group, “Spaced Appreciation Society“:
Basic Info
Type: Common Interest - Pets & Animals
Description: If you’ve ever watched (and therefore loved) the TV series Spaced, then come and pay homage to the great Simon Pegg and Jess Stevenson. “You f’ing plum”
Contact Details
Website: http://www.spaced-out.org.uk/
Location: Meteor Street
That URL is (as with many of these groups) from a site whose primary topic is the thing the group’s about. In this case, about a TV show. It’s even in the public page for that group:
<tr><td class=”label”>Website:</td>
<td class=”data”><div class=”datawrap”><a href=”http://www.spaced-out.org.uk/” onmousedown=”return wait_for_load(this, event, function() { UntrustedLink.bootstrap($(this), "", event) });” target=”_blank” rel=”nofollow”>http://www.spaced-out.org.uk/</a></div></td></tr>
If I search Google (Yahoo BOSS might be wiser, they have APIs) with:
link:http://www.spaced-out.org.uk/ site:wikipedia.org
It finds me:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaced
Although “link:http://www.spaced-out.org.uk/ site:dbpedia.org” doesn’t find anything, some URL rewriting gets me to:
http://dbpedia.org/page/Spaced
“Spaced is a British television situation comedy written by and starring Simon Pegg and Jessica Stevenson, and directed by Edgar Wright. It is noted for its rapid-fire editing, frequent dropping of pop-culture references, and occasional displays of surrealism. Two series of seven episodes were broadcast in 1999 and 2001 on Channel 4.”
dbpedia-owl:author
* dbpedia:Jessica_Hynes
* dbpedia:Simon_Peggdbpedia-owl:completionDate
* 2001-04-13 (xsd:date)dbpedia-owl:director
* dbpedia:Edgar_Wrightdbpedia-owl:episodenumber
* 14dbpedia-owl:executiveproducer
* dbpedia:Humphrey_Barclaydbpedia-owl:genre
* dbpedia:Situation_comedydbpedia-owl:language
* dbpedia:English_languagedbpedia-owl:network
* dbpedia:Channel_4dbpedia-owl:producer
* dbpedia:Gareth_Edwards
* dbpedia:Nira_Parkdbpedia-owl:releaseDate
* 1999-09-24 (xsd:date)dbpedia-owl:runtime
* 24dbpedia-owl:starring
* dbpedia:Jessica_Hynes
* dbpedia:Simon_Pegg
There are also links from here to Cyc (but an incorrect match) and to Freebase (to http://www.freebase.com/view/en/spaced).
Unfortunately, the Wikipedia “external links” section, with the URL for http://www.spaced-out.org.uk/ (marked “offical, fan-operated site” is not part of the DBpedia RDF export. I guess as it is not in an infobox. Extracting these external-link URLs at least for the TV, Actor and Movie related sections of Wikipedia might be worthwhile. And DBpedia would be useful for identifying the relevant subset to re-extract.
This idea of using such URLs as keys into Wikipedia/dbpedia data would also work with Identi.ca groups and others. In fact the matching might be easier in Identi.ca - I’m not sure how the Facebook APIs expose this stuff.
Anyway, if a show is about to be broadcast that includes eg. an interview with dbpedia:Jessica_Hynes or dbpedia:Simon_Pegg I’d like to hear about it.
So… is there any way I can use BBC’s /programmes to get upcoming information about who will be on the radio or telly, in a way that could be matched against dbpedia URIs?
Edit: I should’ve mentioned that Facebook in particular also has a more explicit “is a fan of” construct, with Products, Celebs, TV shows and Stores as types of thing you can be a fan of. Furthermore these show up on your public page, eg. here’s mine. I’m certainly interested in using that data, but also in a model that uses general groups, since it is applicable to other sites that allow a group to indicate itself with a topical URL.