Is Freebase Apps and Acre a productized version of Exhibit with a javascript
development environment behind it?
Seems like there's a huge overlap with http://xwiki.org in terms of having
the database-backed, version-controlled collaborative development
environment for active documents,  and a software-as-service deployment of
an open source platform ( http://xwiki.com ). Although this video is old and
talks about Xwiki 1.0 (2.0 is nearing release) it's still a very good intro
to Xwiki: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xs3LuzwqemM

Wish I still lived in SF... I'd love to attend the FreeBaseHackDay. Any
chance it can be filmed and uploaded to a video site like youtube or Blip.tv
?

Here's a message I sent regarding this topic to Xwiki devs list:

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Niels Mayer <[email protected]>
Date: Sun, Jul 5, 2009 at 10:52 PM
Subject: Re: [xwiki-devs] what's the best way to "scrape" an HTML document
with Xwiki
To: [...]
Cc: XWiki Developers <[email protected]>

[deleted]

Regarding Pascal's comment  about the "heretic" notion of
server-side-javascript: Please note
http://freebaseapps.com/   example app: http://fmdb.freebaseapps.com/
"Introducing Acre: Freebase’s integrated app development and hosting
environment"

This all sounds very familiar, like Xwiki.org/Xwiki.com, combined with a
product version of Exhibit <http://simile-widgets.org/exhibit/>. Which is
exactly what I was alluding to here (
http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/msg09547.html ) as a very
powerful development&delivery environment, and perhaps signalling a
direction-shift in web-development:

http://freebaseapps.com has lots of similarities to what Xwiki has provided
for years:

>
>    - A Browser-based JavaScript IDEincluding syntax highlighting, file
>    organzation and more
>    - Open Code for Open Dataall Acre files are stored in Freebase and code
>    sharing is encouraged in a variety of ways
>
> Here's the part that looks exactly like Exhibit -- right down to the syntax
(exhibit uses ex:if=, acre uses acre:if=). In fact, Acre source code, with
their templating language, ends up looking suspiciously close to my
Exhibit+Xwiki (Velocity) code, except they can't access all the rich Java
functionality with their template language like you can in Xwiki.

[image: an Acre script] <http://freebaseapps.com/wiki/index>

Here's where the "heresy" starts. Xwiki uses Java on the server-side.
Freebaseapps uses JavaScript:

>
>    - Server-side JavaScriptuse the same language on the server that you
>    use in the client
>
> This is basically a product version of Exhibit:

>
>    - Template Languagea built-in, simple yet powerful XHTML template
>    language
>
> There's been a good amount of Exhibit/Freebase semantic-web work in the
Simile project. Again, looks like a productization of MIT semantic web work:

>
>    - Built-in support for FreebaseMQL query integration, plus helper
>    methods included for all Freebase APIs
>
> And finally an application hosting solution. Similar to Xwiki SAS...

> Hosted on freebaseapps.comno servers to maintain!
>

FYI, I  found out about this here (also relevant to the topic of
web-scraping in JavaScript)

> Freebase Hack Day II: Return of Hack Day
>
> You're invited to attend the Freebase Hack Day and Unconference on July
> 11th in San Francisco. This event is a great opportunity to learn about what
> Freebase is, find out about our developer platform, and chat to Freebase
> staff and experts. Some examples of what will be happening on the day:
>
>    - We'll be launching Acre 1.0 just a few days before Hack Day. Jason
>    Douglas will be showing off the features of our hosted app development
>    platform <http://freebaseapps.com/>, including the ability to share and
>    clone apps, connect to other APIs with our keystore and OAuth, and build
>    queries and templated web pages based on Freebase data more easily than 
> ever
>    before. Acre's come a long way since our last Hack Day, so don't miss this.
>    (Read more about Acre.<http://blog.freebase.com/category/developer/acre/>
>    )
>    - The MQL Boot Camp will be run this year by Bryan Culbertson. Learn
>    how to query against Freebase's structured data about almost 6 million
>    topics, and see the new features of our query editor, including
>    tab-completion for syntax and schema. (Read more about 
> MQL<http://blog.freebase.com/category/developers/mql/> and
>    the query editor <http://blog.freebase.com/2009/04/22/query-editor-20/>
>    ).
>    - Learn how to use Freebase to enhance your website with structured
>    data, like the Wall Street 
> Journal<http://blog.freebase.com/2009/06/25/freebase-data-now-on-wsj-com/>,
>    or build entire apps and websites on Acre, like 
> Tippify<http://tippify.com/>
>    .
>    - Hack on apps like our Games With A 
> Purpose<http://blog.freebase.com/tag/gwap/>,
>    a TV program schedule mashup, and more. If you have a project and you're
>    looking for partners, technical help, or ideas, bring it with you! We're
>    also working on having a handful of projects ready for people to hack on 
> who
>    haven't brought one of their own.)
>    - Find out about how Freebase's part in the Linked Open 
> Data<http://linkeddata.org/> world,
>    and how to use Semantic 
> Web<http://blog.freebase.com/category/semantic-web/> techniques
>    and tools to work with Freebase data.
>
> Niels
http://nielsmayer.co <http://nielsmayer.com>m

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