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.

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.

I’m in the early stages of planning a Melbourne Freebase meetup/gathering/hack/play/etc session, to be held at Horse Bazaar in the CBD, probably on October 9th. More details to follow, but if you happen to be in Melbourne and are interested in attending, drop me a line at skud@infotrope.net (or comment here).

Just a few quick links to other blogs you should be reading if you’re interested in Freebase.

• First up, The Freebase Blog is the official company blog. That’s where you’ll find Metaweb staff posting about various Freebase topics, from user group meetings to data modelling and FAQs.
• Freebasics is a blog by one of the Metaweb guys, Rob (I presume Robert Cook but I’m not certain), and is also a general news/views/ideas blog. Unfortunately it hasn’t been updated lately.
• Perl Goddess is a blog by synedra aka Kirsten Jones, a super-smart woman who I had the privilege of meeting while I was in the Bay Area last month. She’s just started working for Applied Minds on Freebase-related stuff, and has been blogging about it. I’m also hoping to get her to write some articles for freebasing and turn it into a bit of a group blog.

And finally, you can see who else is talking about Freebase at Freebase blogs and coverage, a help topic in the system itself.

I just set up an IRC channel to discuss Freebase. It’s #freebase on irc.freenode.net.

When I joined the channel I found manveru there and he said he’d seem me round. Most specificially, he alerted me to this:

Yay me!