I’m signed up to the forum, so will post there, and maybe someone will feel inspired to knock up an example.

Look forward to meeting up when you’re back home.

You need to get the /common/topic/article id using mql and then you can access the blob store using the ‘raw’ or ‘blurb’ service. See http://www.freebase.com/view/freebase/metaweb_api_service

This certainly should be a help topic on Freebase. I’m out of the office for a few weeks, so please post to the developers mailing list if you have any questions.

Freebase is keeping me pretty busy these days but next time I pass through Edinburgh it would be good to meet up.

I’ve just started playing around with mjt, and would really appreciate some examples pitched at the same level, in particular something that showed a total newbie how to handle the topic Description field. I know that Descriptions are held separately, in the ‘blob store’, but haven’t come across any simple example of how to access that.

On a separate tack, I read your ‘About Will’ bit with much interest. I live in Edinburgh (and indeed lectured at the Uni, in Ecological Science). I’m also committed to “using tehnology for the benefit of society”, and have been heavily involved in developing nice, easily-accessible software for environmental modelling for just that purpose – see http://www.simulistics.com – a cool startup! I’m very interested in Web 2.0 approaches applied to environmental modelling – see http://www.itfutures.ed.ac.uk/robert_muetzelfeldt_synopsis.shtml and linked presentation for a taster. I’m much taken with the potential of Freebase for science, but feel that it’s not quite there yet. Do get in touch if any of this interests you.