New things@en

  • dbpedia.org allows you to query Wikipedia like a database - featuring a SPARQL endpoint and data browser with a visual query builder

  • Futil is/are FOAF utilities, this write-up provides a bit of background, and stuff about the results of scuttering LiveJournal, Tribe etc.
  • Sweet Tools is Michael Bergman's compilation of 378 Semantic Web tool descriptions, presented in a facetted browser embedded in WordPress (!) using Exhibit. How it was done, more background.

Bit more about the last one. On the panel (via videolink) at SWAP2006, Stefano Mazzochi mentioned there was something of a benevolent Trojan side to the innocuous Javascripty Web 2.0 tools like Exhibit, Timeline etc coming from the SIMILE team (not his words, but that was roughly the gist). Although the person using these tools doesn't need to think about gobbledegook like RDF, when they use the tools they are putting first class data on the web in a Semantic Web-friendly fashion.

David Huynh, who's responsible for the Javascript in question explains nicely why the work around Exhibit etc is so cool :

Let’s take 5 minutes to imagine the possibilities: any average blogger, on any day, who has a little bit of structured data in any domain, can easily enter the data into a Google spreadsheet and embed an exhibit in a blog post or a blog page. The data is published in a faceted browsing UI, on maps, time lines, histograms, etc. It can be copied off in various formats including RDF/XML, Semantic MediaWiki text, Tab-Separated Values, … It can be readily harvested by Piggy Bank, and re-published to a Semantic Bank …

Now, we’re not just talking about the usual suspects of domains like photos and bookmarks. We’re talking about any arbitrary domain of data: the stamp collection your grandma left to you, the push puppet collection you collected for who knows why, … Yes, the real world data. The data that people care about.

@en

Danny Ayers
2007-01-23T19:33:02+01:00

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