Projects/Microfacts

= MicroFacts =

'''This project is now ACTIVE. New project page on main site at: http://www.okfn.org/microfacts/'''

Purpose
A web application to allow people to string together 'factlets' into narratives organized by theme, time and space.

Created: 2005-11-16

 * Official incubator page: 2007-03-27
 * Project refinement and investigation of existing technologies: 2006
 * Further discussion leading to 'microfacts' name: 2005-11-16
 * First proposal: 2005-02-08

Project Members

 * RufusPollock (rgrp)
 * JoWalsh (zool)

Participate

 * Mailing list: http://list.okfn.org/listinfo/okfn-discuss
 * Project url: n/a

Scope of Work
The project would involve:


 * Creating a domain model which supported:
 * 'factlets' or 'microfacts': small descriptions tagged with small amounts of additional metadata such as:
 * theme (category)
 * temporal aspect (date/time etc)
 * location
 * narratives: ordered collections of microfacts
 * Visualization support for viewing narratives by:
 * time (timelines)
 * location (space)

Notes:


 * microfacts should intentionally be kept small and should link to larger articles elsewhere for more data

Example 1: Displaying the stalingrad campaign in the second world war

Example 2: Europe in the age of discovery (magellan, columbus etc etc)

Background
The project developed out of an original post on narrative construction: http://www.rufuspollock.org/archives/26 and matured out of discussion between RufusPollock and JoWalsh from autumn 2005 to spring 2007.

Existing Work

 * Ajax timeline: http://simile.mit.edu/timeline/
 * geonames and placeopedia: for geotagging of locations and wikipedia entries