A handful of new Freebase interest groups have been added lately:

• Will’s created the MJT developers interest group for those developing apps using the MJT toolkit to develop Freebase apps in Javascript.
• Chris is looking for people interested in music modelling.
• Sebastian is trying to hook up with other German freebasers.
• And vuaidanso has set up a group for Investigating Globalism.

Remember, if you join any of those groups, to subscribe to the RSS feed for discussions.

I’m just pottering around filling out my new Historic Period type, and looking up the dynasties of Ancient Egypt. For each dynasty, I can note its start and end dates, which other dynasties preceded and succeeded it, and what important events occurred or people lived in the period.

The fun comes when you get to filling in the important people. Take Nefertiti for example. Spouse: Amenhotep I. Employment history: Consort. But who’s her employer? I put down Amenhotep, but I’m not quite sure that’s right. If Nefertiti, as consort, was employed by the pharaoh of the time, then is Prince Philip employed by Queen Elizabeth II?

I love it when Freebase gets mushy around the edges.

Do you have any idea how little it takes to turn Freebase into a social networking application?

A few weeks ago I created a type called Freebase Interest Group and now I’m pleased to be able to announce that it’s been promoted into the public namespace as /freebase/freebase_interest_group

What’s an interest group?

It’s a group of people who have an interest in a subject, a project, or any other common area. You can create one simply by clicking on “Add a new Freebase interest group” on the type page. Currently there are groups for Australian Freebasers, Women of Freebase, Perl people on Freebase, and Users interested in argument modelling. The first three of those are ones I set up as part of the demo, but you should feel free to create anything that you want.

What does an interest group do?

It depends on the group. It might just be a way to find like-minded freebasers, or it might be Command HQ for a freebase project. Let’s say you wanted to rally all the trainspotters on freebase and get them to fill out data about trains: setting up a Trainspotters interest group would be one way to go about it. You’d convince other trainspotters to join the group, fill out the topic’s article with your plan of action, note any types or topics of interest, and discuss the ongoing work.

How do I keep up with my interest groups?

You can subscribe to the RSS feed for the discussion on any interest group. While looking at the topic page for a given interest group, you should see the orange RSS logo in your browser. Just subscribe to “Discussions about (your interest group)” and any discussions will show up in your usual feed reader.

Alternatively, you can “watch” discussions, and they’ll show up on your Freebase homepage.