[Web4lib] Freebase appears to be live in its alpha state, no invitation necessary

[Lars Aronsson]

D.H. Mattison wrote:

> Freebase (http://www.freebase.com/signin) [...] During the time 
> I registered, activated my account, and started putting in some 
> information, the site appears to have opened itself up to the 
> whole Internet.

I'm hearing all this buzz about Freebase and I've seen they have 
dumped in information from Wikipedia and MusicBrainz.  It's all 
the traditional hype about "semantic web" and "the future will be 
wonderful" and "I can find a child-friendly dentist nearby" (can 
you really?), so the flying cars can't be far away now.

In my mind, Wikipedia and MusicBrainz are wonderful, but I don't 
really understand what Freebase is for.

I'd like to hear what kind of information *you* have found useful 
to input into Freebase.  And what practical problems have you run 
into?  Is there no vandalism, no spam, no copyright infringements, 
no authority/trustworthyness problems, no privacy or harassment 
problems?

And didn't the hype around Google Base die away rather quickly? 
Wasn't that supposed to be the same thing?  Or what's different? 
Today Google Base looks like an advertising platform for used 
cars.  Was that the intention?  Will the same happen to Freebase?


-- 
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se