Richard Wallis has written an article about the latest updates to WorldCat.org. He writes, “After we experimentally added RDFa embedded linked data, using Schema.org markup and some proposed Library extensions, to WorldCat pages, one the most often questions I was asked was where can I get my hands on some of this raw data? We are taking the application of linked data to WorldCat one step at a time so that we can learn from how people use and comment on it. So at that time if you wanted to see the raw data the only way was to use a tool [such as the W3C RDFA 1.1 Distiller] to parse the data out of the pages, just as the search engines do.” Read more

Kurt Mackie reports that a beta version of Microsoft Script Explorer for Windows PowerShell is currently available for download: “Script Explorer finds PowerShell Scripts and snippets, as well as modules and help resources. Users can specify searching across local or network repositories. It also searches across PoshCode repositories, the TechNet Script Center Repository and Bing. Microsoft took a semantic Web approach when it designed Script Explorer, according to Jason Hogg, a principal architect at Microsoft. For instance the tool will track down actual code rather than just finding the words ‘PowerShell script’ when it searches, he explained in a blog post.” Read more

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.” Read more

The Guardian.co.uk Data Blog has released an array of data regarding the riots in London and around London in the hopes that socially aware developers will use the data to create helpful visualizations, mashups, apps, and the like. The article states, “The riots that started in London have spread across England, to Bristol, Birmingham, Liverpool and Nottingham. [Tuesday] night incidents were reported from a variety of places such West Bromwich, Birkenhead, Salford and Gloucester. Fewer incidents were noted in the capital city as police deployed 16,000 officers onto the streets and many shops and offices closed early. It was a different story in the West Midlands which has now arrested 300 people since the beginning of the riots. The country has seemingly changed overnight. [Tuesday] it was announced that Parliament would be recalled and discussions about policing strategy continue. But what exactly has happened where?” Read more

Microsoft Research has published a new paper entitled “Pedagogy: a social networking approach to knowledge discovery.” The summary states, “The construction of semantically structured, accurate, and comprehensive knowledge bases remains an important but difficult problem. Acquiring the wealth of human knowledge in a machine-readable format would have invaluable benefits for semantic web services and AI applications in general. In this report I outline a new approach that aims to address this challenge by harnessing the power of social networking.” Read more