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The Freebase Blog

A blog for data geeks, application developers and interested civilians

The evolving filter viewOctober 10

We’ve done a fairly major overhaul to the navigation and functionality of the filter/table page. The new navigation should make it easier to view the data, pushing the content higher on the page and moving some secondary functions behind a less imposing set of buttons and options.

Some added features include:

• options to let you quickly filter or sort a results set by any property
• the ability to save a view to any domain you administer
• displaying more results per page
• a cleaner, lighter design that gets out of the way of the data

A couple of useful features are a little harder to find in the new design and are worth pointing out. These features are nifty but perhaps not the most commonly used by all users of the page.

The first tip is how to access the schema from here. This is done by clicking on the linked type name and selecting the ‘type schema’ link that appears.

A3.31 Release NotesOctober 10

This release was generally focused on performance improvements and changes to the filter/table view page. There are quite a few fixes and enhancements (with many more in the works for the coming weeks), so read on…

Highlights

• New Filter/Table & Gallery View UI - we’ve done a fairly major overhaul to the navigation and functionality of the filter/table page. The new navigation should make it easier to view the data, pushing the content higher on the page and moving some secondary functions behind a less imposing set of buttons and options. For more see this blog post.
• Faster pages - We’ve switched templating engines (we now use Mako) on the Freebase client so most of the pages on the site should render more quickly.
• Your Types on your homepage - your homepage now provides access to types in your draft domain via a handy tab in the upper left part of the page.
• Your Favorite topics - the user profile now has a place to input your favorite Freebase topics. Don’t see the topic you’re looking for in Freebase? Add it. Express yourself!

Key Issue Type Summary CLI-4649 Improvement Changes to “Topic About You” should also look at CVTs CLI-4931 Improvement performance improvements - replace Genshi? CLI-5270 Improvement User profile - favorite topics CLI-5339 Improvement Use 301 redirects to point all non-canonical UR

Microsoft’s Political Streams uses Freebase dataOctober 9

Have you seen the new Political Streams website from Microsoft Live Labs? It tracks the most talked-about news and blog stories in the political arena, and when you click through to people or places like Sarah Palin or Saudi Arabia, the information is sourced from Freebase.

(Via CNet.)

Announcing the Freebase Hack Day, November 8th 2008October 9

Mark it in your calendar right now: on November 8th, Freebase will be hosting a Hack Day here at our offices in San Francisco.

If you’ve been to any of our recent user group meetings, you’ve probably heard about our forthcoming application development platform, Acre. Our Hack Day is a chance to learn about Acre in detail and start building apps and mashups built on Freebase’s structured data. Freebase staff and developers will be on hand to help you out, answer questions, and even collaborate on your project.

If you’re not a programmer, but are interested in open data or have data you’d like to share with Freebase, we’ll be able to help you with that too. We can hold your hand through the process of building schema, loading data, and creating a user domain to help build community around your area of interest.

At the same time as all this hacking, we’ll have rooms set aside for unconference-style discussions and workshops. Whatever your field of interest — from visualisations to iPhone apps to social change — you can claim a room, a whiteboard, and a projector for a half hour slot to discuss it with like-minded people.

Freebase community members regularly awe us with their broad range of interests and depth of expertise. While this event is largely unstructured and will provide s

Space missions on FreebaseOctober 8

As part of this week’s data mob, some of us have been filling out dates and times on Freebase’s collection of space missions.

Take a look at this timeline of results. The colours indicate the space programme responsible for the missions; for instance, all of China’s Shenzhou missions appear in dark brown, and if you scroll back to the 60s and 70s you can see the USSR and USA duking it out in the space race.

There are still a bunch of space missions that don’t have dates set, so if you have a moment you can help fill them in. Then you can see the fruits of your labours showing up in Parallax’s timelines.