Flickr has announced a new addition to the API — Machine Tags:
# Wait, aren’t machine tags just RDF?
No, machine tags are not RDF; they could play RDF on television, though.
See also :
weblog.scifihifi.com/2005/08/05/meta-tags-the-poor-mans-rdf
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# Huh, what is RDF ?
RDF Describes Flickr. That’s really all you need to know about RDF.
Of course it’s not quite there, using fixed namespace prefixes instead of URIs, but it’s close enough.
Now, where’s that list of canonical namespace prefixes?
“Like tags, in general, we expect (hope?) that the community will develop its own standards by consensus over time.”
those who want to share can handshake. those unaware of a namespace will eventually find collision, naturally.
The list you seek will very probably grow, organically, and look alot like a longtail. No committees, no egos, just sharing.
MTs being exposed via the API of course allow you generate RDF with any namespace you like. (I think that’s why they did it that way… they don’t want to play that game and rather let us take care of that. They just provide a home for storage and relatively simple retrieval.)