Whwhwhwh is an experimental IRC bot based on Paul Mutton's PircBot code. It can answer questions about things, people, places and (soon) events. It's a thin layer around some simple RESTful RDF web-services.
It partly overlaps in scope with foafbot, by Edd Dumbill, but unlike foafbot, cannot analyse where the data it shows came from. As well as foafbot, related work has been done by Jo Walsh about and Matt Biddulph exploring RDF data-structures in a text-based interface.
Queries all start with a "!" and are case insensitive. You can ask the bot on a channel, or message it. You can ask it:
!help
<libby> !help <whwhwhwhwh> I'm a very experimental RDF-webservice-based bot by libby.miller@bristol.ac.uk, based on the pircbot api. More info at http://swordfish.rdfweb.org/discovery/2003/10/whwhwhwh/ <whwhwhwhwh> try !airport <place>; !iata <iata code> !wn <wordnet term> !pic <name>; !paths <name1>, <name2>, !pathf <name1>, <name2> (for these last two which are queries about codepiction paths, as full a name as possible is best). You can also ask !knows <name>
All airports with 'bristol' in their descripton:
<libby> !airport bristol <whwhwhwhwh> BRS -2.7166666666667 51.383333333333 Bristol, England [Lulsgate], United Kingdom GB <whwhwhwhwh> TRI -82.4 36.483333333333 Tri-Cities (Bristol/Johnson City/Kingsport), TN [Tri-City Regional Airport], USA US
Information about an airport from its IATA code
<libby> !iata AMS <whwhwhwhwh> 4.7833333333333 52.316666666667 Amsterdam
Definitions of wordnet terms:
<libby> !wn fig <whwhwhwhwh> a diagram or picture illustrating textual material; "the area covered can be seen from Figure 2" <libby> !wn fig-2 <whwhwhwhwh> Mediterranean tree widely cultivated for its edible fruitPictures of a person
<libby> !pic libby miller <whwhwhwhwh> Libby Miller http://photos.dajobe.org/albums/rdfers-www2002/aac.sized.jpg <whwhwhwhwh> Libby Miller http://www.picdiary.com/foafmeet/img_2304.jpg
Paths between people via pictures they are codepicted in
<libby> !paths libby miller, frank sinatra <whwhwhwhwh> Libby Miller to Frank Sinatra via Earle Martin, Dan Brickley, Dan Connolly, Tim Berners-Lee, Bill Clinton, John F. Kennedy <whwhwhwhwh> in 7 steps <whwhwhwhwh> Libby Miller to Frank Sinatra via Dan Connolly, Tim Berners-Lee, Bill Clinton, John F. Kennedy <whwhwhwhwh> in 5 steps <whwhwhwhwh> see http://swordfish.rdfweb.org/discovery/2002/02/paths/byname.jsp?name=libby+miller&name2=frank+sinatra
<libby> !pathf libby miller, frank sinatra <whwhwhwhwh> Libby Miller to Frank Sinatra via Earle Martin, Dan Brickley, Dan Connolly, Tim Berners-Lee, Bill Clinton, John F. Kennedy <whwhwhwhwh> http://swordfish.rdfweb.org/photos/2003/01/04/Thumbnails/10.jpg <whwhwhwhwh> http://photos.dajobe.org/albums/rdfers-www2002/aac.thumb.jpg <whwhwhwhwh> http://www.w3.org/2001/08/rdfweb/examples/tagboard-thumb.jpg <whwhwhwhwh> http://rdfweb.org/2002/01/photo/eg1/sm-p4-tim-bill.jpg <whwhwhwhwh> http://rdfweb.org/2002/01/photo/eg1/sm-p5-bill-jfk.jpg <whwhwhwhwh> http://rdfweb.org/2002/01/photo/eg1/sm-p6-jfk-frk.jpg <whwhwhwhwh> Libby Miller to Frank Sinatra via Dan Connolly, Tim Berners-Lee, Bill Clinton, John F. Kennedy <whwhwhwhwh> http://www.w3.org/2001/08/rdfweb/examples/tagboard-thumb.jpg <whwhwhwhwh> http://rdfweb.org/2002/01/photo/eg1/sm-p4-tim-bill.jpg <whwhwhwhwh> http://rdfweb.org/2002/01/photo/eg1/sm-p5-bill-jfk.jpg <whwhwhwhwh> http://rdfweb.org/2002/01/photo/eg1/sm-p6-jfk-frk.jpg <whwhwhwhwh> see http://swordfish.rdfweb.org/discovery/2002/02/paths/byname.jsp?name=libby+miller&name2=frank+sinatra
Who says they know a person:
<libby> !knows dan brickley <whwhwhwhwh> Sean B. Palmer, Brian Kelly, Hugo Haas, Philipp Hoschka, Simon Batistoni, Earle Martin, Saul Albert, Graham Klyne, G. Klyne, Nick Gibbins, William Loughborough, Edd Dumbill, Kendall Grant Clark, Dave Beckett, Libby Miller, ???? ?????????, ????????????, Amy van der Hiel, Nadia Heninger, <whwhwhwhwh> Jim Ley Ian Davis, Daniel Krech, Alberto Reggiori, @semantics weblog, Liz Turner, Martin L Poulter, Matthew May, Michael Mealling, Max Froumentin, knows Dan Brickley (30 found) <whwhwhwhwh> Margaret Hart, Carl Garland, knows Dan Brickley (3 found) <whwhwhwhwh> Graham Klyne, G. Klyne, Pastor N. Pizzor, Leigh Dodds, Aaron Swartz, Morten Frederiksen, Martin L. Poulter, knows Dan Brickley (8 found) <whwhwhwhwh> Karl Dubost, knows Dan Brickley (2 found)
Country phone codes - see daml schema. I used a slightly altered one, which can be searched by the name of the country.
<libby> !phone netherlands <whwhwhwh> 31 NETHERLANDS <whwhwhwh> 599 NETHERLANDS ANTILLES
Chump search - has this url been chumped in the IRC channel #rdfig before? (added 2003-11-01)
<libby> !chump http://www.w3.org/2001/11/13-RDF-Query-Rules/ <whwhwhwh> http://rdfig.xmlhack.com/2002-02-28/2002-02-28.html
London Open Guides data, perl.com article by kate Pugh (added 2003-11-01; doesn't work with locales with spaces for some reason)
<libby> !london hampstead <whwhwhwh> Acapulco, NW3 6ND; Cucina; Finchley Road Station; O2 Centre, NW3 6LU; Taro, NW3 6DT; <whwhwhwh> Vitaorganic, NW3 6ND;
!foaf:nick, !foaf:weblog etc
FOAF properties of
Person and Agent, e.g. mbox_sha1sum, weblog, nick, interest, plan. It
works best when the result is not a bnode. foaf:mbox is disabled -
the plan is to allow access to mbox only when the person says that
they know you, and only via private message. (added
2003-11-05)
<libby> !foaf:weblog edd dumbill <whwhwhwh> Edd Dumbill http://usefulinc.com/edd/blog <whwhwhwh> behind the times by Edd Dumbill http://usefulinc.com/edd/blog <whwhwhwh> Edd Dumbill http://usefulinc.com/edd/blog/ <libby> !foaf:nick dan brickley <whwhwhwh> Dan Brickley danbri <whwhwhwh> Dan Brickley BANDRI
Timezone converters, timezone lookups, events data, nick to info, e.g. foaffile. Phone codes, country codes, thesauri. Local data sources: email addresses from addressbook, personal calendar (maybe not on irc but a local service?). When there are lots and lots of services providing RDF information in this way, the interesting bit will be how to pick the right one.
I want to use whwhwhwh as a framework for investigating web services and query, and so I want to work on making the use of services less hardcoded and more flexible. I've started to do this, but only done a bit...
Edd Dumbill's foafbot; Jo Walsh's mudlondon; Matt Biddulph's photo annotating bot. Whwhwhwh is built on PircBot, a very easy to use IRC bot API by Paul Mutton, and uses Tinkling a small Java RDF API I've been working on (it's downloadable but pre-alpha currently). The whwhwhwh code is available.
notes zool: http://mutemap.openmute.org/mutebot/mutemap.py
libby.miller@bristol.ac.uk, 2003-10-26