Mashed Up Playlist

THE MASHED UP PLAYLIST part II
David Peterson @davidseth #w3c
http://www.flickr.com/photos/soyignatius/

David Peterson@davidseth

Challenge
Create a snapshot of an artist

Problem
<xml> <track> <title>Purple Rain</title> <artistName>Prince</artistName> </track></xml>

Into

It’s all about story telling

Shared Understanding
Can’t tell a story if the other person doesn’t get what we mean
Or even speak the same language
Imagine
explain what a kiwi was
or what a sheep was

The story matters
... but ...
You never really have all the information you need, whether big or small

You Just don’t Always Know
Someone else knows more than you
How to find it?

One Exception

Semantic Web
Core idea
you never really know the entire picture
This is a good thing
Freedom

Open World
Closed World
http://www.flickr.com/photos/almasryalyoum_e/

Finding a Solution
Which APIs to use
Which APIs can we use
How can we combine data from multiple sources
How can we automate it

The Curse of too much
There are over 50 APIs listed on programmableweb.com
Too many to look into
Each has its own API methods and return data formats
JSON, XML, RSS, RDF !!!

Take your Pick
APIs everywhere
BBC Music
Discogs
Last.fm
MusicBrainz
Yahoo Music
Flickr
Youtube
The Hype Machine

Finding the key
One common feature was the usage of a MusicBrainz ID
Last.fm
Discogs
Freebase
Wikipedia/Dbpedia
BBC

Eureka!
Great, now all I had to do was use the MusicBrainz API to look up the ID and I was done. Easy...
:(
The search API sucked. It returned too many fuzzy results
crap

Back to the future
This is where the Semantic Web enters the picture
All that stuff about story telling
Shared understanding
URIs (web links)

SPARQL
Think of it as Google with a WHERE clause

SELECT ?artist WHERE {
?artist foaf:name"Prince"@en .
?artist a <http://dbpedia.org/ontology/MusicalArtist>.
}

SELECT ?artist ?bio ?url?album WHERE {
?artist foaf:name"Prince"@en .
?artist a <http://dbpedia.org/ontology/MusicalArtist> .
?artist dbpedia2:abstract ?bio .
?artist foaf:page?url.
OPTIONAL {
?album <http://dbpedia.org/ontology/artist> ?artist .
?album rdfs:label"Purple Rain"@en .
}
}
LIMIT 1

Pinpoint results
This returns ONE result
“exactly” what we are looking for (or nothing!)

{170d193a-845c-479f-980e-bef15710653e}
http://www.flickr.com/photos/riseofphoenix/

{070d193a-845c-479f-980e-bef15710653e}
http://www.flickr.com/photos/angeldew/

Raw Data
Not too pretty to look at
But computers LOVE this stuff

So, what do we get
Disambiguation
MusicBrainz ID
Discography
Related Artists
Official homepage
Bio
Credit card details (in Semantic Web 2.0)

The Rosetta Stone
MusicBrainz ID is our key to the wild web of APIs
Wikipedia URL is the key to Semantic Web
One happy family
http://www.flickr.com/photos/vportals/

[insert LOD graph]

Take a look
[browser]

Hindsight is 20/20
... or lessons learned

Drupal Sucks
Drupal performance, what performance?
Out of the box it’s been beaten with an ugly stick

Don’t use Drupal
To get the best performance out of Drupal, don’t use Drupal

Pressflow
Key patches and enhancements
Releases mirror official Drupal releases
Big players are using it
Drupal.org
ABC
Music labels
Newspapers

Start your Engines
MySQL base install is ... lacking
MyISAM == slow
Use PerconaXtraDB
... or ... InnoDB

Reduce your footprint
APC
PHP app is compiled & cached in memory

Search
Drupal’s built in search can be a dawg
Solr
Much faster search
Offers faceting
Can become a platform in its own right.

A Fresh Coat of Paint
Varnish
Last but certainly not least
Up to 10 million hits per hour

What’s Next?
Project Mercury
Drupal 7
RDFa
Views 3
FOAF+SSL
open social networking
everything under your control