Fluidinfo is an openly writeable hosted service that allows anyone to store, share, search and annotate data by tagging objects. Objects can represent anything and tags attach data to objects. Namespaces provide organization and context. Emergent behavior and conventions can develop from bottom-up tagging. Queries can extract data across sources by leveraging commonly tagged objects. Publishers could think of themselves as API providers to unlock value from their content. Fluidinfo provides a platform for open, typed data without strict ontologies where a network of annotations can develop.

1. Fluidinfo: Publishing in an
Openly Writeable World.
Introduction: Given by Nicholas Tollervey (@ntoll) at Pearson’s “From Book to Tablet: How
Data is changing publishing” event. 2011/04/13 London.

2. Fluidinfo is an openly
writeable hosted service for
storing, sharing, searching
and annotating data.
While this is accurate, it’s not the whole story... How does it work..?

3. Objects are
tagged with
information
http://ntoll.org/images/93.jpg
In Fluidinfo, objects represent things (anything). Tags attach/associate data to objects. Tags
are organised with Namespaces (creating meaning, context and *trust*).

4. https://twitter.com/#!/novaspivack/status/4999653280
This is a good example of the sort of thing that Fluidinfo does. But we don’t just do tweets!
Objects can represent anything. Anyone can tag any object with information.

5. Namespaces/tags
ntoll/rating
terrycojones/rating
amazon.com/book/title
amazon.com/book/author
amazon.com/book/isbn
esteve/books/cover
timoreilly/has_read
Tags & namespaces must be defined before they are used. They provide stricture for the
data. Every user starts with their own empty top-level namespace for them to use. (My top
level namespace is “ntoll”).

6. Namespaces/tags
ntoll/rating
terrycojones/rating
amazon.com/book/title
Trusted amazon.com/book/author
domain amazon.com/book/isbn
esteve/books/cover
Good timoreilly/has_read
reputation
Namespaces link domains and users to data thus creating trust. Users whose username is a
domain name must own the domain in question (so only Amazon can use the namespace
amazon.com).

7. Namespaces/tags
Emerging
ntoll/rating behaviour
terrycojones/rating
amazon.com/book/title
amazon.com/book/author
amazon.com/book/isbn
esteve/books/cover
timoreilly/has_read
Emergence/evolution trumps ontology or imposed taxonomy! Namespaces and tags allow
users to build a schema from the bottom up. We’re seeing conventions (such as the “rating”
tag) emerge.

8. Permissions apply to
namespaces, tags and
values. Users retain
control of their data.
Fluidinfo stays writeable.
Anyone can tag any sort of data to any object. However, users define who can read, create &
change their namespaces, tags & data. The permission system is also a part of the
mechanism for creating trust: you know only I (ntoll) can use tags in the “ntoll” namespace.

9. A concrete example: Let’s look at an object in Fluidinfo that represents a book - we’ve been
working with O’Reilly media and have their catalogue in Fluidinfo.

10. Red = Objects, Blue = Namespaces, Grey = Tags.
Lots of tags on an openly writeable object. Context adds value.

11. Most tags have an associated value (in this example we’re looking at the value of oreilly.com/
summary - the blurb on the back of the book). But notice ntoll/owns - actually it doesn’t
have a value. By virtue of its existence it’s communicating something interesting!

12. • An object for everything
• Openly writeable
• No pre-defined schema
• Maintain ownership & control
Summary so far...

13. Fluidinfo is the
database with the heart
of a wiki
Nivi
http://venturehacks.com/
This is a common reaction and it’s sort of right... :-) A wiki is openly writable just like
Fluidinfo...

14. As Wikipedia is to traditional
encyclopaedias so Fluidinfo is
to traditional databases.
But a wiki doesn’t have permissions to facilitate privacy and ownership, a query language like
a database, nor does it provide an instant API for access to your data.

15. An instant API for data..? A simple way to share and re-use data..? A more finely grained way
to share content (contrast with the monolithic set of documents that is the WWW). Also, with
an openly writeable API publishing is a bi-directional activity.

16. An API is what smart
web companies build so that
other innovative companies and
developers can build tools and
services on top of their
underlying databases and
services.
Hugh McGuire
http://librivox.org/
http://radar.oreilly.com/2010/09/beyond-ebooks-publisher-as-api.html
Why have an API..? Hugh nails it.

17. We are a long, long way
from publishers thinking of
themselves as API providers -- as the
Application Programming Interface for the
books they publish. But we've seen countless
times that value grows when data is opened up
(sometimes selectively) to the world. That's
really what the Internet is for; and that is
where book publishing is going.
Eventually.
Hugh McGuire
http://librivox.org/
http://radar.oreilly.com/2010/09/beyond-ebooks-publisher-as-api.html
And in the context of this evening’s topic: “From Book to Tablet: How Data is changing
publishing”: value is in the content (not the medium), content has moved to the Web (but monolithic
HTML). Fluidinfo = a platform making content available in a more controlled & finely grained way.

18. Some more examples: simply by importing data various organisations and cultural artefacts
(e.g. The Bible) now have an API. E.g. Every BoingBoing article has an associated object &
there are boingboing.net/* tags attached to these objects.

19. Fluidinfo’s Query Language
• Equality & Inequality: To find objects based on the numeric values or
exact textual values, e.g., tim/rating > 5, or geo/name = "Llandefalle".
• Textual: To find objects based on text matching their tag values, for
example, sally/opinion matches “fantastic”.
• Presence: Use has to request objects that have a given tag. For example,
has sally/opinion.
• Set contents: The contains operator can be used to select objects with a
matching value in a set of strings. The query mary/product-reviews/keywords
contains "kids" would match the object with a tag called /mary/product-
reviews/keywords and value ["cool", "kids", "adventure" ].
• Exclusion: Exclude objects with the except keyword. For example has
nytimes.com/appeared except has james/seen. The except operator
performs a set difference.
• Logic: Query components can be combined with and and or. For example,
has sara/rating and tim/rating > 5.
• Grouping: Parentheses can be used to group query components. For
example, has sara/rating and (tim/rating > 5 or mike/rating > 7).
Fluidinfo has a simple yet powerful query language (so simple, it fits on this slide) that can be
used to extract data.

20. SELECT self-catering-cottage FROM
WHERE location NEAR pubs SERVING
AND pub HAS rating > 7 IN
It’s currently NOT possible to create queries like this on the web. Data is stored in walled
gardens behind websites. Fluidinfo is different because data is stored in context (i.e. it’s
tagged to a shared object).

21. SELECT self-catering-cottage FROM
L E
WHERE location NEAR pubs SERVING
I B
S S
P O
AND pub HAS rating > 7 IN
I M
Because everyone’s data is stored in the context of shared objects it means it’s possible to
create interesting queries using data (for which you have permission to read) from lots of
different sources.

22. has boingboing.net/mentioned and has
readwriteweb.com/mentioned and has
unionsquareventures.com/portfolio
This query is an example of Fluidinfo’s query language (notice the simplicity). It’s asking:
which USV companies have been mentioned in articles on BoingBoing.net and
ReadWriteWeb..?

23. Objects about:
http://www.twitter.com
http://www.etsy.com
http://www.boxee.tv
http://www.meetup.com
Tada! We found four matches relating to four companies. Fluidinfo is currently the *ONLY*
place where you can make queries like this!

24. {u'boingboing.net/mentioned':
{u'value': [u'http://boingboing.net/2009/11/06/
vampireotherkinenerg.html',
u'http://boingboing.net/2010/01/11/ny-
times-on-urban-ca.html',
u'http://boingboing.net/2010/10/26/ron-
paul-supporter-w.html',
u'http://boingboing.net/2002/06/27/
meetup-meatspace-cam.html',
u'http://boingboing.net/2004/03/17/
wired-rave-awards.html',
u'http://boingboing.net/2006/01/05/net-
pug-nabbed-by-cr.html']},
u'fluiddb/about':
{u'value': u'http://www.meetup.com'},
u'readwriteweb.com/mentioned':
{u'value': [u'http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/
meetup_the_secret_campaign_weapon.php']}}
We can even ask Fluidinfo to return what those articles were... (the values of the */mentioned
tags). Here’s the result for the object about http://www.meetup.com (A Python
representation of the JSON object Fluidinfo sent down the wire).

25. object-centred-social
In conclusion, openly writable objects are tagged with data from lots of different sources.
There’s an easy query language to extract information. Our permission model allows users to
retain ownership & control of their data and is the mechanism for building trust.

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http://www.flickr.com/photos/stewtopia/1413191259/
A really good summary to end with.

28. http://fluidinfo.com/
Please feel free to get in touch with me! ntoll @ the obvious place. Also @ntoll on Twitter.