Semantic Web

Semantic Web services follow a life cycle, right from deployment to its invocation.

The life cycle of Semantic Web services comprises different stages like service modeling, service discovery, service definition and service delivery. The life cycle begins with modeling the web service and the service request by the provider and the consumer respectively. Web service descriptions are developed using models like OWL-S, WSMO. Service descriptions are used in the discovery stage on which discovery algorithms, matchmaking techniques are applied. Once a set of service providers are identified for a service requester, service definition takes place to select the concrete service. Finally, the concrete service is delivered to the service requester in the delivery phase.

Continue reading Semantic Web Service Life Cycle and Service Modeling

Freebase stores millions of entities and assertions about nearly every topic one can ponder (thanks are owed to their seed dataset – Wikipedia – and their amazing community). The amount of information that Freebase stores is incredible, and is a testament to what can be accomplished with the help of a dedicated community and a little (or a lot) of clever software engineering.

Continue reading Can Graphd Scale to Meet Semantic Web Demands?

I just stumbled upon a useful resource from Sindice (the Semantic Web search engine) called the Map of Data. The Map of Data lists sites that export their information via Microformats and embedded RDF (as well which format(s) the sites are using). Each site has been categorized and conveniently placed into lists. The categories include books, people, places, products and listings, social news, events, politics, and more. According to Sindice over 10 billion pieces of reusable information can already be found across 100 million pages.

Over the years I've noticed that the importance of algorithms and data tends to shift back and forth, depending on which at the time is hardest to duplicate (often from a business perspective). This effect seems to be caused by the availability or demand of one side increasing or decreasing, shifting the balance of importance to the other. At one point the world of software was dominated by the proprietary. The organization with the best software (backend, algorithms, etc) was the dominant entity and data (from say, a Web 2.0 perspective) was generally not the focus. This may have partly been the responsibility of a mindset formed during an era with very little storage space and before mass user activity on the Web.

Continue reading Algorithms vs. Data: The Seesaw Effect

Now that Freebase is available as Linked Data a big question that comes to mind is whether these two major projects will move to assimilate one another. DBpedia and Freebase – two endeavors primarily focused on curating unstructured and semi-structured data about everything and releasing it back into the wild (with structure) – get the bulk of their information from Wikipedia, so the amount of topical overlap is assumed to be extremely high. DBpedia gains new information when it extracts data from the latest Wikipedia dump, whereas Freebase, in addition to Wikipedia extractions, gains new information through its userbase of editors.

Continue reading Cross-Pollinating DBpedia and Freebase

At ISWC2008 Freebase released its new RDF service for generating RDF representations of Freebase topics, allowing Freebase to be used as Linked Data! To obtain the RDF data for a topic send a GET request to http://rdf.freebase.com/rdf/some.topic.id where "some.topic.id" is replaced by the desired topic identifier (slashes in the identifier must be replaced by dots). Topic data can be represented as N3, RDF/XML or Turtle depending on the preferences expressed in your client's HTTP Accept header. Try it out with the Freebase topic Semantic Web.

Continue reading Freebase Officially Linked Data with Release of RDF Service

ReadWriteWeb just posted an interesting article about investor opportunities and pitfalls in the Semantic Web space. The questions were asked to a panel of industry insiders at the SemTech 2008 conference. Panelists include Amanda Reed (Palomar Ventures), Eghosa Omoigui (Intel), and Stephen Hall (Vulcan Capital). This information can be very useful if you're looking to start a business within the Semantic Web industry.

When constructing the Semantic Web, we are actually building two varied aspects simultaneously. One aspect is the Web that includes things such as the communication protocols, the Web data presentation formats, and so on. In particular, we have invented new technologies such as RDF, OWL, SPARQL, and other W3C recommended Semantic Web standards. The other aspect is the semantics that represent the meanings of Web data. Building semantics is, however, different from building the Web.

Continue reading Building Semantics is Different from Building the Web

Today finally I logged in to Twine the first time. I was reading yesterday about some shortcomings of the system, so I was keen on trying out the system by myself to get my own impression.

It's true that the system isn't as easy to understand as del.icio.us or other bookmarking tools. It takes a while until you get used to all those additional ways you can navigate through the system. Remember: "Twine looks at content and parses it automatically for the names of people, places, organizations and other subject tags. Users are then able to navigate between related content, view recommended content and connect with recommended people with related interests."

Continue reading My First Experiences with Twine

A lot of you emailed me asking where to find more videos, so I'm delivering the goods. I've expanded the previous list from a paltry 17 to a remarkable 302, and I've included podcasts this time! There were so many videos I had to break them up into different categories for easier skimming. There are no duplicates, however I did place some videos into more than one category when I felt it was appropriate. This list is monstrous, enjoy.

Continue reading 302 Semantic Web Videos and Podcasts!