Learning - semanticweb.com

OKF Launches School of Data

Angela Guess — Wed, 23 May 2012 16:30:11 +0000

Laura Newman of the Open Knowledge Foundation reports, “Earlier this year, we announced plans to launch the School of Data. Thanks to the generous support of Open Society Foundations and the Shuttleworth Foundation, we’re now ready to go! We’re holding a kick-off sprint next week, and we invite you to get involved. The School of Data is led by the Open Knowledge Foundation (OKFN) and Peer 2 Peer University (P2PU). The School will provide online training for data ‘wrangling’ skills – the ability to find, retrieve, clean, manipulate, analyze, and represent different types of data.” continued…

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Web Developers Can Now Easily “Play” with RDFa

Eric Franzon — Thu, 10 May 2012 13:10:19 +0000

Yesterday, we announced RDFa.info, a new site devoted to helping developers add RDFa (Resource Description Framework-in-attributes) to HTML.

Building on that work, the team behind RDFa.info is announcing today the release of “PLAY,” a live RDFa editor and visualization tool. This release marks a significant step in providing tools for web developers that are easy to use, even for those unaccustomed to working with RDFa.

“Play” is an effort that serves several purposes. It is an authoring environment and markup debugger for RDFa that also serves as a teaching and education tool for Web Developers. As Alex Milowski, one of the core RDFa.info team, said, “It can be used for purposes of experimentation, documentation (e.g. crafting an example that produces certain triples), and testing. If you want to know what markup will produce what kind of properties (triples), this tool is going to be great for understanding how you should be structuring your own data.”

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Global Accessibility Awareness Day is Today – but where’s the Sem Tech?

Eric Franzon — Wed, 09 May 2012 12:30:22 +0000

Today, May 9, 2012 is Global Accessibility Awareness Day (#GAAD). What started with a simple blog-post by Los Angeles Web Developer, Joe Devon, has grown to include events around the world designed to increase awareness about web accessibility issues. To read more about the day and these various activities, see the official GAAD Website and Facebook page.

According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “Today, about 50 million Americans, or 1 in 5 people, are living with at least one disability, and most Americans will experience a disability some time during the course of their lives.” In other parts of the world, this number may be significantly higher.

In the interest of full disclosure, Joe Devon is a personal friend of mine, and I must admit that if he were not, I likely wouldn’t have seen his blog post or explored the issues of accessibility as deeply as I have in recent weeks. But I have been exploring, and I’ve been surprised at what I’ve found. In my opinion, Semantic Technology and Assistive Technology are a natural fit for one another, but there seems to be very little discussion or work around the intersection of the two. I have looked, but have not found much collaboration between the two communities. I have also found few individuals who possess much knowledge about both Semantic Tech and Assistive Tech. Of course, if I’ve missed something, please let me know in the comments!

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New Paper: RDF & Layering Data

Angela Guess — Mon, 07 May 2012 18:00:22 +0000

Leigh Dodds has posted a paper regarding layered data and RDF. Dodds introduces the paper thus: “Two years ago I wrote a short paper about ‘layering’ data but for various reasons never got round to putting it online. The paper tried to capture some of my thinking at the time about the opportunities and approaches for publishing and aggregating data on the web. I’ve finally got around to uploading it and you can read it here. I’ve made a couple of minor tweaks in a few places but I think it stands up well, even given the recent pace of change around data publishing and re-use. I still think the abstraction that it describes is not only useful but necessary to take us forward on the next wave of data publishing.” continued…

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Semantic Web Lessons from Cambridge Semantics

Angela Guess — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 17:00:15 +0000

As part of their Semantic University, Cambridge Semantics has published a number of helpful “lessons” covering concepts related to the Semantic Web. Since we last checked in with this excellent tutorial series, they have added several lessons:

Semantic Web vs. Semantic Technologies – “That Semantic Web technologies and semantic technologiesboth start with semantic is often a source of confusion. This short lesson clarifies the relationship between Semantic Web technologies and semantic technologies.” continued…

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RDF: The Basics

Angela Guess — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 14:30:41 +0000

A new article by Ric Roberts offers an introductory-level explanation of RDF for newcomers to the Semantic Technology space. Roberts begins, “Linked Data is based around describing real world things using RDF. A lot of articles about Linked Data assume you already know what RDF is all about: if you are coming to it for the first time, this article explains the basics. RDF stands for Resource Description Framework. It’s a W3C standard for modeling information.” continued…

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A Fundamental Linked Data Debate

Richard Wallis — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 11:00:51 +0000

There is a fierce debate going on in the world of the Semantic Web and Linked Data, the question being is it of fundamental importance to realising the benefits of the technology or are they just dancing on the head of a pin. The core debate revolves around something with the stunningly opaque title of the httpRange-14 issue.

The debate has been rumbling on for years but was reignited over the last few days by proposals being submitted to the W3C to clarify and hopefully simplify things. I use the word ignited as that what I was beginning to think my iPhone was about to do – it has been buzzing away like a bumblebee on speed over the last few days announcing the arrival of yet another passionately held opinion from a member of the respected Semantic Web/Linked Data community from Sir Tim Berners-Lee downwards. Fortunately for those of you that do not follow the W3C’s Technical Architecture (TAG) and Linked Open Data (public-lod) mailing lists it may have gone unnoticed.

Let me try to explain, in as simple terms as possible, what the fuss is all about and why it may be important. From my point of view, and there are many surrounding this, the issue is a combination of two problems.

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What W3C’s R2RML and Direct Mapping Mean to Enterprise Data

Juan Sequeda — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 11:00:50 +0000

I’m very happy to announce that the World Wide Web Consortium’s RDB2RDF Working Group, in which I participate as an Invited Expert, has published two Candidate Recommendations: R2RML: RDB to RDF Mapping Language and A Direct Mapping of Relational Data to RDF. This has been a long road and we still have some ways to go. The standardization process goes back to the W3C Workshop on RDF Access to Relational Databases, which took place in October 2007. The W3C RDB2RDF Incubator Group followed afterwards. After almost 5 years, we are on track to have a standard. However, what is this standard bringing to the table?

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New Paper — OWL: Yet to Arrive on the Web of Data?

Angela Guess — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 13:00:52 +0000

A new paper is currently available for download entitled OWL: Yet to arrive on the Web of Data? The paper was written by Birte Glimm, Aidan Hogan, Markus Krötzsch, and Axel Polleres. The abstract states, “Seven years on from OWL becoming a W3C recommendation, and two years on from the more recent OWL 2 W3C recommendation, OWL has still experienced only patchy uptake on the Web. Although certain OWL features (like owl:sameAs) are very popular, other features of OWL are largely neglected by publishers in the Linked Data world.” continued…

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Introduction to: RDFa

Juan Sequeda — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 09:00:43 +0000

Simply put, RDFa is another syntax for RDF. The interesting aspect of RDFa is that it is embedded in HTML. This means that you can state what things on your HTML page actually mean. For example, you can specify that a certain text is the title of a blog post or it’s the name of a product or it’s the price for a certain product. This is starting to be commonly known as “adding semantic markup”.

Historically, RDFa was specified only for XHTML. Currently, RDFa 1.1 is specified for XHTML and HTML5. Additionally, RDFa 1.1 works for any XML-based language such as SVG. Recently, RDFa Lite was introduced as “a small subset of RDFa consisting of a few attributes that may be applied to most simple to moderate structured data markup tasks.” It is important to note that RDFa is not the only way to add semantics to your webpages. Microdata and Microformats are other options, and I will discuss this later on. As a reminder, you can publish your data as Linked Data through RDFa. Inside your markup, you can link to other URIs or others can link to your HTML+RDFa webpages.

Why publish RDFa? continued…

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The Simple Power of the Link

Richard Wallis — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 11:00:36 +0000

I often read blogs and watch conference presentations extolling the virtues and benefits of adopting Semantic Web and Linked Data techniques & technologies. It makes me wonder how those new to the field ever get through the blizzard of acronyms and techno-speak, to understand what is being promoted and how it might be relevant to them and their business. In this post I will attempt to demystify and identify the core benefits of Linked Data without burying you in LD-speak!

Let me start with the web itself. Imagine if you will that you have just returned from desert island exile for the last decade and a half. You are introduced to the web and start using Google searching to find out what this web thing is all about. You are assailed with an overwhelming array of acronyms terms and concepts – Ajax, Javascript, HTML, CSS, HTTP, XML, DOM, URL, Flash, RDFa, JSON, Microformats, SEO – argh! where do you begin? However after some digging it becomes clear that there is a blindingly simple concept at the core that only uses three of them: HTML – a simple markup language to describe how a web page should be laid out, URL – a globally unique way to address a page on the Internet, HTTP – a simple way to request and receive a page across the Internet. continued…

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JWS Releases Special Issue on Scalability

Angela Guess — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 14:30:18 +0000

The Journal of Web Semantics has released volume 10, a special issue on Scalability edited by Jeff Heflin and Heiner Struckenschmidt: “Preprints from the issue, which includes a short introduction and four research papers, are available on the Journal of Web Semantics preprint server.” The preprints include an editorial by Heflin and Struckenschmidt entitled Web-Scale Semantic Information Processing.

Other preprint articles currently available online include the following: Scalable Distributed Indexing and Query Processing over Linked Data by Marcel Karnstedt, Kai-Uwe Sattler and Manfred Hauswirth; Searching Web Data: an Entity Retrieval and High-Performance Indexing Model by Renaud Delbru, Stephane Campinas and Giovanni Tummarello continued…

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New Whitepaper: Semantic Technologies & Social Business Platforms

Angela Guess — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 11:00:12 +0000

A new whitepaper is available for free via Refinder. The paper entitled Semantic Technologies Tap Unrealized Potentials of Social Business Platforms was written by Franz Jachim, Leo Sauermann and Bernhard Schandl. The abstract states, “Social technologies and collaboration tools start to find broad acceptance in the enterprise domain. As well, semantic technologies have been around for a while, offering a range of benefits in the handling of information, including the pervasive linking of content, fostering new forms of content discovery and navigation, and improving content metadata and information retrieval.” continued…

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SWC Book Release – Linked Open Data: The Essentials

Angela Guess — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 13:00:57 +0000

The Semantic Web Company has released a new book in conjunction with the Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Partnership (REEEP) entitled Linked Open Data: The Essentials. Martin Kaltenbock reports, “Linked Open Data: The Essentials – is a a quick start guide for decision makers who need to quickly get up to speed with the Linked Open Data (LOD) concept and who want to make their organisation a part of this movement.” continued…

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Christine Connors on the History of Classification

Angela Guess — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 13:00:30 +0000

Christine Connors has written a short history of classification, noting how today’s taxonomies play into the grand scheme of things. Connors begins, “The earliest known means of classifying an object and keeping it in order are girginakku. These are ancient Mesopotamian clay tablets that were attached to scrolls and tablets and used to identify the contents. Examples of approximately 5300 years in age can be found in the British Museum. Girginakku at Glencairn. These clay tablets were used for many purposes, including cataloging. The famous Library of Alexandria in Egypt housed one of the earliest forms of library catalog in the third century BCE. The library reportedly housed more than 120,000 scrolls which were stored in bins categorized by subject.” continued…

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