This is the first post from my WordPress for iPhone app. It took two versions and help from the tech support team at 3essentials.com. Thanks to their team who went beyond the norm to make it work: Patrick, Josh, Damon and Sam (hope I got you all).

Here’s to trusting auto-correct.

– Tim

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I had a unique opportunity to attend a presentation put on by The New York Semantic Web Meetup called Content, Identifiers and Freebase from Metaweb about ways to use Freebase. I’ll use organizer Marco Newmann’s words to describe Freebase:

“Freebase is a community managed database for knowledge about the world. Information in Freebase is organized as a web of facts, which can be systematically retrieved.”

So get this: Someone else stores and maintains the data, and you get to use it. This is a great resource for building applications or as a repository to supplement content projects.

As I had covered back in June, I am itching to build something using these resources, and last night may have given me a little more inspiration. For help I’ll look to pick up Jaime Taylor’s new book “Programming the Semantic Web“. Jaime Taylor presented a mix of high-level application ideas along with some code samples to show how it works, both the ease and flexibility of accessing data. Robert Cook, the co-founder of Metaweb Technologies, covered aspects about how we can use the Freebase database, including usage allowances (100k queries/day), the Creative Commons licensing requirements, and how we can upload and maintain Freebase data

I can already think of a great semantic search application that can be built with already available data — so if you are that client I spoke to last week — call me fast this is a home run, or I’m building it myself!

Like I said: It makes you want to start building. Great presentation.

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Sometimes you are just caught off-guard and where you will find genius. Today it was a at Macy’s Santaland(r) (I had to add the R since it seems so silly). We decided that we would take our little one to visit the “real” Santa, according the “Miracle on 34th Street.”

I was ready for standing in line for a couple of hours, but it was like a Christmas Miracle, and we were out in about 30 minutes. But there’s a secret, I’m not sure exactly, but there are more that one Santas in Santaland.

How? It’s not like a mall where Santa sits in the middle, the kigs line up, and we can all walk past. Here they bring the families through an enchanted forest type of setting that ends in a room filled with Christmas trees and helpers, we’ll call them elves, lead each family to a different cubby area hidden behind the trees. The family in front of us was taken off to the left, and then we were taken off to the right where we waited behind a family that was a good distance in front of us in line.

Anyway, the baby cried when she saw Santa, so the whole family ended up in the photo in order to maintain the peace, but I had to say that I had a pretty big smile after seeing how they handled the crowds with the multi-Santa solution. I have to look for places to put a similar plan in place.

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