{"id":20,"date":"2006-12-16T02:40:19","date_gmt":"2006-12-16T10:40:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mozillalabs.com\/2006\/12\/introducing-operator\/"},"modified":"2006-12-16T02:40:19","modified_gmt":"2006-12-16T10:40:19","slug":"introducing-operator","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/labs\/2006\/12\/introducing-operator\/","title":{"rendered":"Introducing Operator"},"content":{"rendered":"

Introducing Operator, a Microformat Detection Extension for Firefox 2<\/strong><\/p>\n

Today Mozilla Labs<\/a> is releasing Operator<\/a>, a microformat detection extension developed by Michael Kaply<\/a> at IBM. Operator<\/a> demonstrates the usefulness of semantic information on the Web, in real world scenarios.<\/p>\n

\"Operator\"<\/p>\n

Here are some examples of things you can do with this release of Operator<\/a>, and with the Web as it exists today.<\/p>\n

Yahoo! Local <\/strong>\"Plusoperator\" Your Address Book<\/p>\n

<\/strong>With Operator you can send the phone number of your favorite pizza place from Yahoo! Local<\/a> to your address book, without having to type anything. Click through for the full image:<\/p>\n

\"Yahoolocal+Addressbook\"<\/a>
\n
\nUpcoming.org <\/strong>\"Plusoperator\" Calendar<\/strong> \"Plusoperator\" Maps<\/strong><\/p>\n

If you view an event at Upcoming.org<\/a> you can easily add the event to your calendar to see if you are free, or map the location of the event to see where it will take place.<\/p>\n

\"Upcoming+Calendar+Map\"<\/a>
\n
\nBlog Post Tag <\/strong>\"Plusoperator\" Flickr<\/strong><\/p>\n

Let’s say you are viewing Fred’s post<\/a> about the Mozilla lanyards given out at the Firefox Summit<\/a>, and you decide you want to view more photos of the Firefox Summit. With Operator, you can easily navigate from Fred’s post to the “Firefox Summit” tag on Flickr<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"Summit1\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Summit2\"<\/a>
\n
\nFlickr <\/strong>\"Plusoperator\" Maps<\/strong><\/p>\n

Now let’s say you want to know where the above picture<\/a> was taken. Because the photograph is geotagged<\/a>, you can use Operator to quickly push its’ coordinates to Google maps.<\/p>\n

\"Summit3\"<\/a><\/p>\n

This works for any<\/a> of the millions of geotagged pictures on Flickr.<\/p>\n

\"Flickr+Maps2\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Operator requires information on the Web to be encoded using microformats, and since this method for semantically encoding information is relatively new, not all sites are using microformats yet. However, Operator works great with any blog that uses rel-tag<\/a>, and the sites Yahoo! Local<\/a>, Flickr<\/a>, and Upcoming.org<\/a>, all of which contain millions of pieces of information expressed using microformats. As more sites begin to semantically encode data with microformats, Operator will automatically work with them as well.<\/p>\n

If you are not familiar with microformats, Alex Faaborg has been posting about microformats throughout the week. These posts serve as a good introduction:<\/p>\n