Jim Harris recently posted episode seven of the Open MIKE Podcast, Guiding Principles for the Open Semantic Enterprise. Harris explains, “Method for an Integrated Knowledge Environment (MIKE2.0) is an open source delivery framework for Enterprise Information Management, which provides a comprehensive methodology that can be applied across a number of different projects within the Information Management space…  The Open MIKE Podcast is a video podcast show, hosted by Jim Harris, which discusses aspects of the MIKE2.0 framework, and features content contributed to MIKE 2.0 Wiki Articles, Blog Posts, and Discussion Forums.” Read more

Mike Bergman writes, “Every couple of months I return to the idea of the open world assumption (OWA)  and its fundamental importance to knowledge applications. What it is that makes us human — in health and in sickness — is but a further line of evidence for the importance of an open world viewpoint. I’ll use three personal anecdotes to make this case.” Read more

Mike Bergman has continued his series of articles on UMBEL with a look at structOntology, “the online ontology viewing and management tool that is an integral part of the open semantic framework (OSF), the framework that hosts the UMBEL portal.” Bergman writes, “Ontologies are the central governing structure or “brains” of a semantic installation. As provided by the OSF framework, ontologies are also the basis for instructing user interface labels and how the interface behaves. The Web is about global access, immediacy, flexibility and adaptability. Why can’t our use of ontologies be the same?” Read more

Mike Bergman has written yet another insightful article regarding the rationale for semantic technologies. He writes, “Frequently customers ask me why semantic technologies should be used instead of conventional information technologies. In the areas of knowledge representation (KR) and knowledge management (KM), there are compelling reasons and benefits for selecting semantic technologies over conventional approaches. This article attempts to summarize these rationales from a layperson perspective.” Read more

Mike Bergman has posted an interesting article on the topic of structure as it pertains to the web. Bergman writes, “One of the main reasons I am such a big fan of RDF as a canonical data model is its ability to capture information in structured, semi-structured and unstructured form. These sources are conventionally defined as: (1) Structured data — information presented according to a defined data model, often found in relational databases or other forms of tabular data. (2) Semi-structured data — does not conform with the formal structure of data models, but contains tags or other markers to denote fields within the content. Markup languages embedded in text are a common form of such sources. (3) Unstructured data — information content, generally oriented to text, that lacks an explicit data model or schema; structured information can be obtained from it via data mining or information extraction.” Read more

Mike Bergman reports that the latest UMBEL release includes schema.org and GeoNames support. He writes, “We are pleased to announce the release of version 1.05 of UMBEL, which now has linkages to schema.org and  GeoNames. UMBEL has also been split into ‘core’ and ‘geo’ modules. The resulting smaller size of UMBEL ‘core’ — now some 26,000 reference concepts — has also enabled us to create a full visualization of UMBEL’s content graph.” Read more

Mike Bergman recently gave a talk in which he discussed how “the pragmatic contributions of semantic technologies reside more in mindsets, information models and architectures than in ‘linked data’ as currently practiced.” He writes, “No matter how expressed, the idea behind all of these various [Semantic Web related] terms has in essence been to make meaningful connections, to provide the frameworks for interoperability. Interoperability means getting disparate sources of data to relate to each other, as a means of moving from data to information. Interoperability requires that source and receiver share a vocabulary about what things mean, as well as shared understandings about the associations or degree of relationship between the items being linked.” Read more

Mike Bergman recently asked the deceptively simple question, what do things mean on the semantic web? He explains, “The crowning achievement of the semantic Web is the simple use of URIs to identify data. Further, if the URI identifier can resolve to a representation of that data, it now becomes an integral part of the HTTP access protocol of the Web while providing a unique identifier for the data. These innovations provide the basis for distributed data at global scale, all accessible via Web devices such as browsers and smartphones that are now a ubiquitous part of our daily lives.” Read more

Mike Bergman, who has compiled an excellent list of Semantic tools over the years, has been busy again. This time he’s announcing AI3’s first annual State of Tooling for Semantic Technologies. Bergman begins, “We have been maintaining Sweet Tools, AI3‘s listing of semantic Web and -related tools, for a bit over five years now. Though we had switched to a structWSF-based framework that allows us to update it on a more regular, incremental schedule [1], like all databases, the listing needs to be reviewed and cleaned up on a periodic basis. We have just completed the most recent cleaning and update. We are also now committing to do so on an annual basis. Thus, this is the inaugural ‘State of Tooling for Semantic Technologies‘ report, and, boy, is it a humdinger.” Read more

Mike Bergman recently shared some helpful information regarding ontology-driven apps. He begins, “For some time now, Structured Dynamics (SD) has been touting the unique advantages of ODapps, or  ontology-driven applications. ODapps are modular, generic software applications designed to operate in accordance with the specifications contained in one or more ontologies. The relationships and structure of the information driving these applications are based on the standard functions and roles of ontologies (namely as domain ontologies), as supplemented by UI and instruction sets and validations and rules. When these supplements are added to standard ontology functions, we collectively term them adaptive ontologies.” Read more