RDF API, JSON Serialization and Standardization – webr3.org: "RDF API, JSON Serialization and Standardization
Since there's been a lot of discussion about JSON serializations of RDF, and the need for an RDF API, I thought I'd offer my own personal thoughts on what we need from a JSON serialization and an RDF API."
30 December 2010
BigQuery - Google Code
BigQuery - Google Code: "Interactively analyze large datasets
BigQuery is a web service that enables you to do interactive analysis of massively large datasets. Scalable and easy to use, BigQuery lets developers and businesses tap into powerful data analytics on demand.
Features
Speed - Analyze billions of rows in seconds
Scale - Terabytes of data, trillions of records
Simplicity - SQL-like query language, hosted on Google infrastructure
Sharing - Powerful group- and user-based permissions using Google accounts
Security - Secure SSL access
Flexibility - REST APIs, JSON RPC, Google Apps Script"
BigQuery is a web service that enables you to do interactive analysis of massively large datasets. Scalable and easy to use, BigQuery lets developers and businesses tap into powerful data analytics on demand.
Features
Speed - Analyze billions of rows in seconds
Scale - Terabytes of data, trillions of records
Simplicity - SQL-like query language, hosted on Google infrastructure
Sharing - Powerful group- and user-based permissions using Google accounts
Security - Secure SSL access
Flexibility - REST APIs, JSON RPC, Google Apps Script"
The Semantic Puzzle | EU-Report on the requirements for a paneuropean Open Government Data Portal
The Semantic Puzzle | EU-Report on the requirements for a paneuropean Open Government Data Portal: "EU-Report on the requirements for a paneuropean Open Government Data Portal
December 15, 2010 By: Thomas Thurner Category: Linked Data & Open Data, Open Government Data, Tools & Software
The recently published report on a hearing of an experts in Luxembourg this November, provides a snap-shoot on the discussion if a central open data infrastructure may make sense. The experts group list several positive effects like union-wide comparability of some government data set, as well as the role of being motor for national and regional initiatives. It is stressed several times, that a swift progress, in coming those plans reality, is crucial for success.
Read more at: Report – Technical workshop on the goals and requirements for a pan-European data portal"
December 15, 2010 By: Thomas Thurner Category: Linked Data & Open Data, Open Government Data, Tools & Software
The recently published report on a hearing of an experts in Luxembourg this November, provides a snap-shoot on the discussion if a central open data infrastructure may make sense. The experts group list several positive effects like union-wide comparability of some government data set, as well as the role of being motor for national and regional initiatives. It is stressed several times, that a swift progress, in coming those plans reality, is crucial for success.
Read more at: Report – Technical workshop on the goals and requirements for a pan-European data portal"
Happy New Year: What’s Ahead for the Semantic Web (Part 1) - semanticweb.com
Happy New Year: What’s Ahead for the Semantic Web (Part 1) - semanticweb.com: "The New Year’s almost here, and of course that brings with it a time to reflect on what’s been and muse on what’s ahead. To that end, the Semantic Web Blog asked some industry names to share their perspectives – and concerns about some of the direction, as well. Start reading about them today, and join us again tomorrow for their insights, Part 2."
Reaching the pinnacle: truly open web services and clouds - O'Reilly Radar
Reaching the pinnacle: truly open web services and clouds - O'Reilly Radar: "Free software in the cloud isn't just a nice-sounding ideal or even an efficient way to push innovation forward. Opening the cloud also opens the path to a bountiful environment of computing for all. Here are the steps to a better computing future."
Cloud 2011: The Year of the Network - O'Reilly Broadcast
Cloud 2011: The Year of the Network - O'Reilly Broadcast: "The pace of innovation in the cloud in the last few years has been astounding. It's difficult to recognize today's cloud computing landscape as having any relationship to where it was a year ago. In spite of all the innovation that's been going on, one area remains in the dark ages—the network. My 2011 prediction is simple: 2011 will be the year of the network in the cloud."
Open Knowledge Foundation Blog » Blog Archive » OpenCorporates: the Open Database of the Corporate World
Open Knowledge Foundation Blog » Blog Archive » OpenCorporates: the Open Database of the Corporate World: "OpenCorporates: the Open Database of the Corporate World
December 20th, 2010
This is a guest post by Chris Taggart, a member of OKFN’s open government working group and creator of OpenlyLocal, who today launched a new website OpenCorporates in collaboration with Rob McKinnon (a project they first demoed at the Open Government Data Camp in November)."
December 20th, 2010
This is a guest post by Chris Taggart, a member of OKFN’s open government working group and creator of OpenlyLocal, who today launched a new website OpenCorporates in collaboration with Rob McKinnon (a project they first demoed at the Open Government Data Camp in November)."
Open Knowledge Foundation Blog » Blog Archive » Exploring European Energy Data
Open Knowledge Foundation Blog » Blog Archive » Exploring European Energy Data: "Exploring European Energy Data
December 16th, 2010
The following post is from Jonathan Gray, Community Coordinator at the Open Knowledge Foundation.
Today was the Eurostat Hackday, where coders and designers in several European cities gathered to dig into the Eurostat data, the biggest source of statistical information about Europe and European member states. We met at the Centre for Creative Collaboration in London, who very kindly agreed to host us for the day."
December 16th, 2010
The following post is from Jonathan Gray, Community Coordinator at the Open Knowledge Foundation.
Today was the Eurostat Hackday, where coders and designers in several European cities gathered to dig into the Eurostat data, the biggest source of statistical information about Europe and European member states. We met at the Centre for Creative Collaboration in London, who very kindly agreed to host us for the day."
Open Knowledge Foundation Blog » Blog Archive » Cultural Heritage rights in the age of digital copyright
Open Knowledge Foundation Blog » Blog Archive » Cultural Heritage rights in the age of digital copyright: "On December, 10th the COMMUNIA WG3 gathered in Istanbul for the final workshop, with the aim of producing a set of recommendations about cultural heritage and the public domain."
Name matching strategy using bibliographic data | Open Biblio (graphic) Projects
Name matching strategy using bibliographic data | Open Biblio (graphic) Projects: "One of the aims of an RDF representation of bibliographic data should be to have authors represented by unique, reference-able points within the data (as URIs), rather than as free-text fields. What steps can we do to match up the text value representing an author’s name to another example of their name in the data?
It’s not realistic to expect a match between say, Mark Twain to Samuel Clemens, without using some extra information typically not present in bibliographic datasets. What can be achieved however, is the ‘fuzzy’ matching of alternate forms of names – due to typos, mistakes and omitted initials and the like. It is important that these matches are understood to be fuzzy and not precise, based more on statistics than a definite assertion."
It’s not realistic to expect a match between say, Mark Twain to Samuel Clemens, without using some extra information typically not present in bibliographic datasets. What can be achieved however, is the ‘fuzzy’ matching of alternate forms of names – due to typos, mistakes and omitted initials and the like. It is important that these matches are understood to be fuzzy and not precise, based more on statistics than a definite assertion."
JISC OpenBibliography: Development ideas | Open Biblio (graphic) Projects
JISC OpenBibliography: Development ideas | Open Biblio (graphic) Projects: "Now that we have a queryable British National Bibliography dataset, we are investigating useful functionality to take advantage of the data.
The team have listed a few development ideas based both on our own interests and on discussion with others in the community:
flagging – attaching notes to bibliographic records highlighting possible updates
wikipedia – link to wikipedia by author / title / ISBN for further information
book crossing – search an ISBN, find where a copy of it is available
public libraries – search by ISBN and find out which local public library it is in
exporting records – for example to bibtex
google scholar lookup"
The team have listed a few development ideas based both on our own interests and on discussion with others in the community:
flagging – attaching notes to bibliographic records highlighting possible updates
wikipedia – link to wikipedia by author / title / ISBN for further information
book crossing – search an ISBN, find where a copy of it is available
public libraries – search by ISBN and find out which local public library it is in
exporting records – for example to bibtex
google scholar lookup"
URL Design — Warpspire
URL Design — Warpspire: "URL Design
You should take time to design your URL structure. If there’s one thing I hope you remember after reading this article it’s to take time to design your URL structure. Don’t leave it up to your framework. Don’t leave it up to chance. Think about it and craft an experience.
URL Design is a complex subject. I can’t say there are any “right” solutions — it’s much like the rest of design. There’s good URL design, there’s bad URL design, and there’s everything in between — it’s subjective.
But that doesn’t mean there aren’t best practices for creating great URLs. I hope to impress upon you some best practices in URL design I’ve learned over the years and explain why I think new HTML5 javascript history APIs are so exciting to work with."
You should take time to design your URL structure. If there’s one thing I hope you remember after reading this article it’s to take time to design your URL structure. Don’t leave it up to your framework. Don’t leave it up to chance. Think about it and craft an experience.
URL Design is a complex subject. I can’t say there are any “right” solutions — it’s much like the rest of design. There’s good URL design, there’s bad URL design, and there’s everything in between — it’s subjective.
But that doesn’t mean there aren’t best practices for creating great URLs. I hope to impress upon you some best practices in URL design I’ve learned over the years and explain why I think new HTML5 javascript history APIs are so exciting to work with."
Mining of Massive Datasets
Mining of Massive Datasets: "This book is placed on the Web for free use of all who wish it. We do, however, retain copyright on the work, and we expect that you will acknowledge our authorship if you republish parts or all of it. We are sorry to have to mention this point, but we have evidence that other items we have published on the Web have been appropriated and republished under other names. It is easy to detect such misuse, by the way, as you will learn in Chapter 3."
IT History Society - Resource Sites
IT History Society - Resource Sites:
[About Archive-It and the collection]
This catalog of resource sites concerning IT history is the only one of its kind. If you know of any additions we should make to the database, please submit them here.
Learn more about the ITHS Archive Database Project"
[About Archive-It and the collection]
This catalog of resource sites concerning IT history is the only one of its kind. If you know of any additions we should make to the database, please submit them here.
Learn more about the ITHS Archive Database Project"
27 December 2010
CLIR Report
CLIR Report: "While the purview of digital forensics was once specialized to fields of law enforcement, computer security, and national defense, the increasing ubiquity of computers and electronic devices means that digital forensics is now used in a wide variety of cases and circumstances. Most records today are born digital, and libraries and other collecting institutions increasingly receive computer storage media as part of their acquisition of 'papers' from writers, scholars, scientists, musicians, and public figures. This poses new challenges to librarians, archivists, and curators—challenges related to accessing and preserving legacy formats, recovering data, ensuring authenticity, and maintaining trust. The methods and tools developed by forensics experts represent a novel approach to these demands. For example, the same forensics software that indexes a criminal suspect's hard drive allows the archivist to prepare a comprehensive manifest of the electronic files a donor has turned over for accession.
This report introduces the field of digital forensics in the cultural heritage sector and explores some points of convergence between the interests of those charged with collecting and maintaining born-digital cultural heritage materials and those charged with collecting and maintaining legal evidence."
This report introduces the field of digital forensics in the cultural heritage sector and explores some points of convergence between the interests of those charged with collecting and maintaining born-digital cultural heritage materials and those charged with collecting and maintaining legal evidence."
inkdroid › dcat:distribution considered helpful
inkdroid › dcat:distribution considered helpful: "dcat:distribution considered helpful
The other day I happened to notice that the folks at data.gov.uk have started using the Data Catalog Vocabulary in the RDFa they have embedded in their dataset webpages. As an example here is the RDF you can pull out of the HTML for the Anonymised MOT tests and results dataset. Of particular interest to me is that the dataset description now includes an explicit link to the actual data being described using the dcat:distribution property."
The other day I happened to notice that the folks at data.gov.uk have started using the Data Catalog Vocabulary in the RDFa they have embedded in their dataset webpages. As an example here is the RDF you can pull out of the HTML for the Anonymised MOT tests and results dataset. Of particular interest to me is that the dataset description now includes an explicit link to the actual data being described using the dcat:distribution property."
26 December 2010
hangingtogether.org » Blog Archive » OCLC Research 2010 - Cloud Library
hangingtogether.org » Blog Archive » OCLC Research 2010 - Cloud Library
What’s the idea? In the same way that cloud computing offers resources and applications on demand without the user having to operate and own the underlying assets, the cloud library project posited that it is now possible for academic libraries to rely on access to needed book and journal assets rather than manage them as locally-resident and managed physical items.
What’s the idea? In the same way that cloud computing offers resources and applications on demand without the user having to operate and own the underlying assets, the cloud library project posited that it is now possible for academic libraries to rely on access to needed book and journal assets rather than manage them as locally-resident and managed physical items.
Coyle's InFormation: Response to JPW
Coyle's InFormation: Response to JPW
Note: John Price Wilkin of Michigan wrote a post on the Open Knowledge Foundation blog that is very critical of the library linked data movement and the creation of numerous disjoint files of bib data in linked data formats. I admit that it isn't clear to me what he thinks should happen, but it seems to be something like this photo, which I took at the Online 2010 exhibit hall. This is OCLC's booth.
A separate cloud for libraries. Totally the wrong idea.
I must say that I see things quite differently from JPW. Although I agree that a bunch of static bibliographic files do not open library linked data make, my view is:
1) Each file represents a person or group who got interested in transforming library data and went through the learning process of actually doing it. Therefore each file is a contribution to our collective knowledge about linked data. When we add these files to heterogeneous stores like Open Library or Freebase, we exercise that knowledge.
2) These files are the fodder for further experimentation with mixing library data and non-library data, which to me is one of the main points of linked library data. We are in the "training wheels" stage of this change, and like training wheels these early files may end up being discarded when we finally learn to ride. I see no harm in that.
3) This experimentation is taking place primarily outside of the US in places where the OCLC record use policy does not apply. The British Library, the National Library of Sweden, soon the Bibliotheque Nationale, and a handful of German libraries are at the forefront of this. If you cannot release your bibliographic data openly, you cannot participate in the linked data movement.
4) I do think that we will have library systems that make use of a different data format to the one we have today, but those are not the same as linked data, and are definitely not the linked open data that is the main focus of the linked data activity. How we manage our data for ourselves may well be different from how we share it with the world. We do need a well-ordered library data universe where we do our bibliographic work. That should exist in parallel with open sharing that reaches beyond the library cataloging community.
Note: John Price Wilkin of Michigan wrote a post on the Open Knowledge Foundation blog that is very critical of the library linked data movement and the creation of numerous disjoint files of bib data in linked data formats. I admit that it isn't clear to me what he thinks should happen, but it seems to be something like this photo, which I took at the Online 2010 exhibit hall. This is OCLC's booth.
A separate cloud for libraries. Totally the wrong idea.
I must say that I see things quite differently from JPW. Although I agree that a bunch of static bibliographic files do not open library linked data make, my view is:
1) Each file represents a person or group who got interested in transforming library data and went through the learning process of actually doing it. Therefore each file is a contribution to our collective knowledge about linked data. When we add these files to heterogeneous stores like Open Library or Freebase, we exercise that knowledge.
2) These files are the fodder for further experimentation with mixing library data and non-library data, which to me is one of the main points of linked library data. We are in the "training wheels" stage of this change, and like training wheels these early files may end up being discarded when we finally learn to ride. I see no harm in that.
3) This experimentation is taking place primarily outside of the US in places where the OCLC record use policy does not apply. The British Library, the National Library of Sweden, soon the Bibliotheque Nationale, and a handful of German libraries are at the forefront of this. If you cannot release your bibliographic data openly, you cannot participate in the linked data movement.
4) I do think that we will have library systems that make use of a different data format to the one we have today, but those are not the same as linked data, and are definitely not the linked open data that is the main focus of the linked data activity. How we manage our data for ourselves may well be different from how we share it with the world. We do need a well-ordered library data universe where we do our bibliographic work. That should exist in parallel with open sharing that reaches beyond the library cataloging community.
07 December 2010
Virtual Travelog | Judging the likely Success of an Ontology
Virtual Travelog | Judging the likely Success of an Ontology: "Judging the likely Success of an Ontology
( System Design )
The debate about the promised value of the Semantic Web seems to me to be missing a dispassionate examination of the success, or otherwise, of existing ontology based solutions. Clay Shirky is obviously right when he states that a single monolithic ontology will never work. His critics are equally right when they claim the Semantic web will only work if it is a melange of multiple interoperable Ontologies. What is missing from the debate is a more detailed explanation of what ontologies are good at, how they interoperate, and why systems based on ontologies succeed or fail. From my perspective as a systems designer this last point is the most significant. Debates about theory are nice, but examples of real solutions are more instructive. This essay will begin to examine this question by attempting to define the anatomy of an ontology. I will use this structure in later essays to examine the reasons for success and failure of individual ontologies."
( System Design )
The debate about the promised value of the Semantic Web seems to me to be missing a dispassionate examination of the success, or otherwise, of existing ontology based solutions. Clay Shirky is obviously right when he states that a single monolithic ontology will never work. His critics are equally right when they claim the Semantic web will only work if it is a melange of multiple interoperable Ontologies. What is missing from the debate is a more detailed explanation of what ontologies are good at, how they interoperate, and why systems based on ontologies succeed or fail. From my perspective as a systems designer this last point is the most significant. Debates about theory are nice, but examples of real solutions are more instructive. This essay will begin to examine this question by attempting to define the anatomy of an ontology. I will use this structure in later essays to examine the reasons for success and failure of individual ontologies."
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