In the face of the iPad being released this weekend, it is worth considering for a moment successful new types of semantic application that merge rich data, clean, simple user interfaces and the context of daily life.
The formal adoption of PATCH as an HTTP verb is a useful trigger for discussing its potential applicability to managing distributed knowledge representation in RDF graphs.
A fascinating new application allows users to find and visualize the relationships between two or more concepts about which information is known in an RDF dataset. The rich client interface allows browsing, filtering and direct manipulation to dig further into the relationships that were highlighted.
While doing preparation for some upcoming talks, I noticed that the FOAF specification had been updated to version 0.97 in January. It had been quite some time since there had been activity on this vocabulary so it is good to see some love shown to it.