This is the first of several posts I'll be making about Google Base -- and in particular, the RSS/Atom "bulk upload" format which extends those XML formats with addition information that allows Google Base population.
We're working on a project to demonstrate structured data for "sales lead". In terms of standard "exisiting" structured element, this has a contact person, company, phone number and address. In addition, we extend it with Product Name, Percentage Closed, Close Date and so forth. The title of the entry represents the Opportunity and the body is for other comments.
You can see an example of this here. If you're interested in what the blogmatrix.cfg for this looks like, I've attached a sample snippet.
We haven't done anything particular clever yet. In particular, we'll be adding the ability to query against Percentage Closed using tags, items past the close date, and maybe a few other things for the demo.
What's really neat is that we can export this into our RSS feed also, using the Google Base definitions (a mix of predefined type and some we've made up on the spot). You can view the feed (for this one entry!) here or here's the important part (reformatted for readibility):
<rss version="2.0">
<channel>
...
<item>
<title>
The potential to sell 10000 shiny pennies
</title>
<link>
http://home01.semantic.blogmatrix.com/:entry:home01-2006-07-13-0008/
</link>
<g:product_type>
Penny
</g:product_type>
<gc:sales_status type="string">
Still looking for a sucker
</gc:sales_status>
<gc:percent_closed type="int">
0
</gc:percent_closed>
<gc:person hcard:type="fn" type="string">
Johnny Q. Public
</gc:person>
<gc:organization hcard:type="org" type="string">
Bank of Canada
</gc:organization>
<gc:job_position hcard:type="title" type="string">
Secretary to the Undersecretary
</gc:job_position>
<g:location>
1 Bank Street
Ottawa, Ontario
Canada
</g:location>
<gc:phone_work type="string">
605-666-6666
</gc:phone_work>
</item>
</channel>
</rss>
More to follow...