Introducing key concepts and use cases for Fluidinfo.

1. Fluidinfo
in a
Nutshell
http://www.flickr.com/photos/max78/104677840/

2. Fluidinfo is an openly
writeable hosted service for
storing, sharing, searching
and annotating data.
While this is accurate, it’s not the whole story...

3. Fluidinfo aims:
• Simple & easy
• Openly writeable
• Intuitively searchable
• No pre-defined schema
• Maintain ownership & control
So what motivates us..?

4. Key Concepts
• Objects - represent things*
• Tags - define objects’ attributes
• Namespaces - organise tags
• Permissions - control access
* Not in the object oriented sense of “object”.

5. Objects are
tagged with
information
http://ntoll.org/images/93.jpg

6. Namespaces/tags
ntoll/rating
terrycojones/books/review
amazon.com/book/title
amazon.com/book/author
amazon.com/book/isbn
esteve/books/cover
timoreilly/has_read
Tags must be defined before being attached to objects. Every user, application or client starts
with their own top-level namespace. Every namespace and tag is itself represented by an
object (facilitating meta-tagging).

7. Namespaces/tags
ntoll/rating
terrycojones/books/review
amazon.com/book/title
Trusted amazon.com/book/author
domain amazon.com/book/isbn
esteve/books/cover
Good timoreilly/has_read
reputation
Namespaces link domains to data and create trust. Users whose username is a domain name
must own the domain in question (so only Amazon could use the namespace amazon.com).

8. Namespaces/tags
Seems like
a nice guy
ntoll/rating
terrycojones/books/review
Dodgy amazon.com/book/title
geezer amazon.com/book/author
amazon.com/book/isbn
Who the esteve/books/cover
hell..? timoreilly/has_read
Domains on data allow you to make a judgement on reliability.

9. Objects (in Fluidinfo)
represent things
Every object has a unique ID
about = An id =
“book: Dune” object “e127475b-eb93-48e1-a24f-dde6825b9ed8”
The unique “about” tag is optional and used to
identify what the object represents
A conceptual view of an object. Remember the “about” tag is special, optional and unique.

10. r=
ove
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“87 om/b
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about = An id =
“book:Dune” object “e127475b-eb93-48e1-a24f-
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r=
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Different users tag data to the object. Their data is given a context by being attached to the
same object identified by the about tag value.

11. r=
ove
/c
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ntoll/
Numbers ev
e/
b
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rating
am e
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n.c
om
874 /bo
=
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517 /isbn
5
6 = Images
about = An id =
“book:Dune” object “e127475b-eb93-48e1-a24f-
= am
az
v iew on
/re s”
r=
timoreill
s .co
ok rm m
er tho
/bo wo “D /bo
nes and un ok
1973/08
erb s/au
ojo ve s e” s/t
t”
itle
ryc I lo
y/has_re
k H ok
ter “ =
ran /bo
/19
“F om
n.c
ad =
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Text Date/Time
am
The values can be of a primitive (searchable) type: numbers, text, booleans etc... OR an
opaque type: images, audio, video or any other sort of data.

12. primitive = JSON
Simple

13. image/png
Really simple.

14. r=
ove
/c
ks
oo
ntoll/
b
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ev
st
rating
am e
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n.c
“87 om/b
- 41 o
=
8-7 oks/i
517 sbn
5
- 6” =
about = An id =
“book:Dune” object “e127475b-eb93-48e1-a24f-
= am
az
v iew on
/re s”
r=
timoreill
s .co
ok rm m
er tho
/bo wo “D /bo
nes and un ok
1973/08
erb s/au
ojo ve s e” s/t
t”
itle
ryc I lo
y/has_re
k H ok
ter “ =
ran /bo
/19
“F om
n.c
ad =
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What about data control/privacy..? Permissions are usually applied to the “thing” of interest.
But we want to make Fluidinfo openly writeable. So we do something different...

15. r=
ove
/c
ks
oo
ntoll/
b
e/
ev
st
rating
am e
azo
n.c
“87 om/b
- 41 o
=
8-7 oks/i
517 sbn
5
- 6” =
about = An id =
“book:Dune” object “e127475b-eb93-48e1-a24f-
= am
az
v iew on
/re s”
r=
timoreill
s .co
ok rm m
er tho
/bo wo “D /bo
nes and un ok
1973/08
erb s/au
ojo ve s e” s/t
t”
itle
ryc I lo
y/has_re
k H ok
ter “ =
ran /bo
/19
“F om
n.c
ad =
azo
am
...we move the location of the permissions.

16. Permissions apply to
namespaces, tags and
values. Users retain
control of their data.
Fluidinfo stays writeable.
Anyone can tag any sort of data to any object. However, users define who can read, create
and change their namespaces, tags and data.

17. Fluidinfo is the
database with the heart
of a wiki
Nivi
http://venturehacks.com/
Sort of... :-) A wiki is openly writable just like Fluidinfo.

18. As Wikipedia is to traditional
encyclopaedias so Fluidinfo is
to traditional databases.
But a wiki doesn’t have permissions to facilitate privacy and ownership, a query language like
a database, nor does it provide an instant API for data.

19. An instant API for data..? A simple way to share and re-use data..?

20. A RESTful API
https://fluiddb.fluidinfo.com/objects/OBJECT_ID/NAMESPACE(s)/TAG
HTTP ‘GET’ returns the value,
HTTP ‘PUT’ adds/updates it etc...
Full API: http://api.fluidinfo.com/
Fluidinfo has an simple and consistent API for application developers. End users create an
account on Fluidindo but use applications to access, update, search and annotate Fluidinfo.

21. Simply by importing data various organisations and cultural artefacts (The Bible) now have an
API.

22. Fluidinfo’s Query Language
• Equality & Inequality: To find objects based on the numeric values or
exact textual values, e.g., tim/rating > 5, or geo/name = "Llandefalle".
• Textual: To find objects based on text matching their tag values, for
example, sally/opinion matches “fantastic”.
• Presence: Use has to request objects that have a given tag. For example,
has sally/opinion.
• Set contents: The contains operator can be used to select objects with a
matching value in a set of strings. The query mary/product-reviews/keywords
contains "kids" would match the object with a tag called /mary/product-
reviews/keywords and value ["cool", "kids", "adventure" ].
• Exclusion: Exclude objects with the except keyword. For example has
nytimes.com/appeared except has james/seen. The except operator
performs a set difference.
• Logic: Query components can be combined with and and or. For example,
has sara/rating and tim/rating > 5.
• Grouping: Parentheses can be used to group query components. For
example, has sara/rating and (tim/rating > 5 or mike/rating > 7).
Fluidinfo has a simple yet powerful query language (so simple, it fits on this slide) that can be
used to extract data.

23. has boingboing.net/authors/markfrauenfelder
and boingboing.net/year=2010
A BoingBoing.net example. All the articles Mark wrote in 2010.

24. >>> headers, body = fluidinfo.call('GET', '/values',
tags=['boingboing.net/title', 'boingboing.net/created_on',
'boingboing.net/categories'], query="has boingboing.net/
authors/markfrauenfelder and boingboing.net/year=2010")
Using a Python based client library (notice how I specify which tag values to return)

25. https://fluiddb.fluidinfo.com/values?query=has+boingboing.net
%2Fauthors%2Fmarkfrauenfelder+and+boingboing.net%2Fyear
%3D2010&tag=boingboing.net%2Ftitle&tag=boingboing.net
%2Fcreated_on&tag=boingboing.net%2Fcategories
The client library makes a call to this URL...

26. {
"results": {
"id": {
"f2976562-eba6-47e4-94a1-b36ffe9a2ab1": {
"boingboing.net/created_on": {
"value": "2010-10-14 13:14:14"
},
"boingboing.net/categories": {
"value": [
"science",
"technology",
"art and design",
"design"
]
},
"boingboing.net/title": {
"value": "TED releases iPad app today"
}
},
// etc... for lots of results
}
}
}
You get a JSON dictionary back.

27. SELECT self-catering-cottage FROM
WHERE location NEAR pubs SERVING
AND pub HAS rating > 7 IN
Another example... It’s currently NOT possible to create queries like this on the web. Data is
stored in walled gardens behind websites. Fluidinfo is different because data is stored in
context (i.e. it’s tagged to a shared object).

28. SELECT self-catering-cottage FROM
L E
WHERE location NEAR pubs SERVING
I B
S S
P O
AND pub HAS rating > 7 IN
I M
Because everyone’s data is stored in the context of shared objects it means it’s possible to
create interesting queries using data (for which you have permission to read) from lots of
different sources.

29. has boingboing.net/mentioned and has
readwriteweb.com/mentioned and has
unionsquareventures.com/portfolio
Which USV companies have been mentioned in articles on BoingBoing.net and
ReadWriteWeb..?

30. objects about:
http://www.twitter.com
http://www.etsy.com
http://www.boxee.tv
http://www.meetup.com
Objects whose about value is a domain have all been annotated with USV, BoingBoing and
RWW information. We found four matches relating to four companies.

31. {u'boingboing.net/mentioned':
{u'value': [u'http://boingboing.net/2009/11/06/
vampireotherkinenerg.html',
u'http://boingboing.net/2010/01/11/ny-
times-on-urban-ca.html',
u'http://boingboing.net/2010/10/26/ron-
paul-supporter-w.html',
u'http://boingboing.net/2002/06/27/
meetup-meatspace-cam.html',
u'http://boingboing.net/2004/03/17/
wired-rave-awards.html',
u'http://boingboing.net/2006/01/05/net-
pug-nabbed-by-cr.html']},
u'fluiddb/about':
{u'value': u'http://www.meetup.com'},
u'readwriteweb.com/mentioned':
{u'value': [u'http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/
meetup_the_secret_campaign_weapon.php']}}
And we can ask Fluidinfo to return what those articles were... (the values of the mentioned
tags). Here’s the result for the object about http://www.meetup.com

32. Tags attached to the “about:esteve” object.
{“tagPaths”: [
" “twitter.com/username”,
" “twitter.com/fullname”,
" “tunkrank.com/score”,
" “ntoll/met”,
" “terrycojones/met”,
" “python.org/member”,
" “ub.edu/alumni”,
" “ub.edu/bsc”,
" “uoc.edu/msc”,
" ... etc ...
]}
It’s also possible to find information by interrogating an interesting object for all the tags
that are attached to it (that you are allowed to read).

33. object-centred-social
In conclusion, openly writable objects are tagged with data from lots of different sources.

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A network of annotated data arises.

35. i
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Esther Dyson nivi
http://edventure.com/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/stewtopia/1413191259/
A really good summary.

36. http://fluidinfo.com/