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I’ve been doing some research on Web 3.0 and semantic search. There are a lot of exciting and groundbreaking new technologies emerging that could reinvent the Internet. It will become increasingly important for web marketers and digital strategists to stay on top of these advances—there are numerous communications and marketing applications.

One of these new technologies is the Friend of a Friend project, or FOAF. FOAF is an XML-based method for organization and cataloging the relationships between people’s profiles. By understanding the relationships between people, data, and relationships, FOAF attempts to build a uniform method for sharing the types of information users store on social networking websites like Facebook and LinkedIn. In fact, a great example of FOAF-like technologies is the “People You May Know” feature on Facebook.

The real promise of FOAF is to create a new data model that will suggest connections between people and—more interestingly—people and information.

Just imagine the value this type of data and intelligence could have to marketers and advertisers. Online ad targeting hasn’t evolved much in the last five years. Protocols like FOAF may be the catalyst to take online advertising to the next level. Imagine being able to target a campaign based on psychographics. Understanding how your target market operates on the web is one thing that FOAF can help to define.

Clearly there are issues with the technologies. Not only has adoption been slow and held back by the confusion and inherent geekiness that’s held back the growth of the semantic web. There are also many issues about security and data protection. Regardless, these technologies are on the move and it won’t be long until the possibilities seen with FOAF (and similar protocols like XFN and SIOC) are realized.

Anyone can create a FOAF profile. You can use a this wizard to create the file and upload it to your website.

There’s an interesting presentation from Mule Design on how a designer’s approach and strategy for copy can make or break a digital interface.

For a lot of projects, copy and wording are considered “icing” or an element of the design process that gets fitted in later—often with little or no involvement from designers. While many user interface experts believe that digital interfaces cannot support copious amounts of copy (the concept that users scan rather than read), the trend in UI design is more copy, not less. Wikipedia and Facebook are both great examples of how text can be used as the core of the user experience.

The presentation also discusses new communication and expression trends that are evolving as aspects of Web 2.0 – the concept that “We aren’t writing, we are speaking in text.”

The presentation, Copy as Interface, is embedded below.

Nexus is neat Facebook application that lets you visualize connections between all of your friends. It’s a fascinating way to examine how your friends fall into clusters and interrelate. My clusters clearly correlate with phases of my life stretching all the way back to elementary school. Cool stuff.

It’s also interesting to see which friends are the “focal” contacts who link across different groups and people. It’s too bad this tool isn’t available for LinkedIn or a different business site. It would be incredibly useful to see how business contacts and groups connect with each other.

Nexus is a product of Ludios Networks.

Cool visualization — shows how all the interstate highways are connected.

A couple of weeks ago I posted about CNN’s use of the Perceptive Pixel’s magic wall. The Wall has created quite a buzz among interaction design geeks and there’s been quite a bit of coverage since.

Tuesday’s edition of the Washington Post has a nice article about the wall, calling it the “gee-whizziest TV-news gizmo since the animated weather map”.

Some more good links:

• All things CNN
• Gawker Readers Don’t Get It
• NY Times Calls Super Tuesday Night of the Touchscreens

CNN’s election coverage is boasting some cool new technologies—specifically the new “Magic Wall”, an interactive Touch-screen provided on Jeff Han’s Perceptive Pixel multi-touch technology. According to this article from Broadcast Engineering, Perceptive Pixel developers created customized software for use during the election coverage.

CNN reporters have been using the Magic Wall to toggle between screen views and zoom-in on data sets. During the Iowa coverage, they also had a slick “delegate-sorting” interface. Last night, one reporter used the multi-touch resizing to show some campaign picture. Overall…very cool stuff and, like any design geek, I can’t wait to get my hands on one those (although I hear they go for a cool $100,000.00).

As they cool as the screens are, watching a reporter interact with them feels broken – there’s an unevenness watching them work with the device that doesn’t translate well to TV coverage. The screens also create some challenging body positioning issues. Reporters have to face away from the camera to interact with screens, creating some choppy communications. This is similar to some of the problems people have when presenting projected PowerPoint presentations.

All in all, it’s great to see nifty new technologies like multi-touch interfaces being put to practical use, but there are some clear kinks that need to be worked out…

Google’s new charting API is one of the cooler technologies we stats geeks have seen in quite awhile. I had heard that they were going to release some sort of live charting application, but what they’ve quietly announce with make it really easy for anyone to integrate gorgeous charts into their webpages or applications.

Sparklines can be easily integrated — just set lfi as your chart type.

The sparkline comparison shows Tom Brady’s TD passes per season. His average for the 2007 season has been 3.2; if he maintains that average he’ll finish with 54 TD passes, setting the new NFL record. Will he do it? Well…that’s 9 more TDs needed in two games. The sparklines clearly indicate that his late season production tends to slip!

Tom Brady TD Production by Season
Season	TDs by Game	Game Average and Season Total
2007		Average through 15 weeks=3.2 TD/Game | Est. Total: 54 TDs
2006		Average TD/Game=1.5 | Total: 24 TDs
2005		Average TD/Game=1.6 | Total: 26 TDs
2004		Average TD/Game=1.8 | Total: 28 TDs
2003		Average TD/Game=1.8 | Total: 28 TDs

Some useful links regarding the Google Chart API:

• Developer’s Guide
• Quick reference from Ajaxian
• Google Code Blog
• 24 Ways – Tracking Christmas Cheer with Google Charts

Also check out this interface for creating charts…

Are you like me and never know what day it is? Does the fact that a week is seven weeks long get lost on you? If you need a helpful pocket calendar that doesn’t have a power switch then you should download the 2008 Thumb calendar.

Last year I downloaded the calendar, printed it out and taped it inside the front cover of my notebook so I wouldn’t have to fumble through my handheld to find a date. Arranged quarterly, the design is nifty and a neat take on a calendar UI. The designer, Adam Sporka, also has some cool takes on subway maps.

If you need something a little larger than a business card, you can download David Seah’s Compact Calendar.

The Compact Calendar follows the “Candy Bar Theory” of calendar design where the whole year is displayed as a continuous stream of dates, which supposedly improves your ability to visualize a time period (as opposed to seeing time ranges in chunky month intervals).

The compact calendar can be downloaded as a PDF or as an MS Excel file that can be used for customizing project plans. Neat tool.