Category: SemWeb

There are activities towards updating the RDF standard.

Here are my thoughts on what problems and solutions we have:

Leobard’s thoughts about needed changes to RDF.

Problems:

1) Reification is not an aesthetically appealing model because it forces the triple/statement structure on quads. Therefore it is not used much and discouraged by some “named graph” enthousiasts. Nevertheless, the need to identify and annotate single triples and their values is there.

2) rdf:value, datatype, language, and reification all address the same need and are redundant.

3) The relation between a web resource (i.e. a web page in html) and the RDF document (named graph) containing the RDF data of the web page can NOT be expressed with the RDF standard. There exist various, scarcely documented methods such as the HTML Header tag “” or 303 redirects, or content negotiation. Some of these methods are described in “Cool Uris for the Semantic Web”). This has been causing personal bellyaches for me since editing “Cool Uris for the Semantic Web”. It is not aesthetic as this central feature of linked data and RDF can’t be represented in RDF.

4) Statements about reified triples must be possible for sets of triples.

Suggestions for Solutions: [syntax: problem->solution]

1)->S1) On the core level of RDF, add an URI identifier to a triple. Let Serializations allow to add this URI to the triple. Add a triple identifier to the core of the spec and APIs.

2)->S2) Deprecate rdf:value.

3)->S3) In RDFS we already hint at HTTP dereferenciation and linked data in rdfs:seeAlso and its subproperty rdfs:isDefinedBy. In foaf we have foaf:homepage that links a resource to its web page. In SKOS we had skos:isSubjectOf (but it was removed) I propose “”” rdfs:describes a rdfs:Property; rdfs:domain rdfs:Resource; rdfs:range rdfs:Resource; rdfs:comment “The subject RDF resource is metadata for the object document.” “”” . This solution seems to add problems though, as the relation between document and resource is dynamic and ever changing.

3)->S3.1) Leave it as is. The problem of linking between HTML and RDF representations is on the level of HTML and not on RDF.

In the NEPOMUK EU project, we have created standards and implementations for the semantic desktop. Based on which assumptions?

To get an understanding what people do at various companies and what support they need, a set of personas was created. Based on interviews with real people, a persona is a fictitious person that represents a user group.

Here is Claudia, she and her colleague Dirk were the two most popular personas within our project group:

The personas helped us to think about what the software must do for the users, demo the software, create prototypes, and create test data for unit testing. As they helped us, maybe they can also help you, so I asked around in the consortium if we could publish them, and we could, so here they are:

• NEPOMUK personas.zip
• NEPOMUK testdata (this was public before, both is related, so having the link here will help you)

A definition was given by the authors from the Human Computer Interaction Group at KTH:
A persona is a fictitious person that represents a user group. They are based on users studies on real people.

Personas are a detailed description and a visualisation of the users. They have a life, goals and scenarios where they fulfill their goal. They help us to focus on the users during the design and give all stakeholders in the project a clear picture of the users’ needs and requirements. Everyone in the project has the same view of the users and personas are also a constant reminder of the users.

When personas are used in the design work and they make it easier to design for them. They “depersonalise” discussions on functionality and allow the designers to focus on designing for the personas.

you can also find the personas in the list of deliverables:
nepomuk.semanticdesktop.org/xwiki/bin/view/Main1/Deliverables

p.s. The personas were so good, we continued using them at the NEPOMUK KDE Workshop. There, the story continues with news on Claudia’s private life. In fact, she is having a wedding with her long-term friend Berit in Holland! Read the fascinating news and N3 files yourself…

Videolectures has put my talk at ESTC 2009 online. We made 3rd place for gnowsis then. A true winner talk 🙂

http://videolectures.net/estc09_sauermann_gno/

of course, it shows all our secret plans to take over the world, so enjoy watching.

“Vienna will be evolving into a city of knowledge, away from repetitive work to a diversification of simple manual labor and high-skilled jobs. This already happens and must be aknowledged by economic politics.”

somehow like this go the introductionary words of an Article titled “IT Stadt Wien” in “Information Professional” 4/2009, the magazine of the UBIT IT guild in Vienna.

What caught my eye is the wish for more software products coming from the Vienna region. As we have a lot of semantic web companies around, that could potentially also mean: how can we do semantic web products in Vienna? Currently, a lot of software is bought from international corporations (lets call some names: SAP, Microsoft, Siebel, …) or done from scratch in software development projects. What we need are more product-producing software companies in Vienna. Especially we need them because by going for a beer with people working in productive companies, others can learn how to run a business (the author of the article put it “the needed knowledge is not here…”).

My 2 cents:

1. yep, when I finished university, the choice was “install microsoft windows server 2000 for the rest of your life”. or try something on yourself – which I did because the alternative is boring
2. what about Altova?

To my knowldge, Altova is the only company in the Vienna region that sold a PRODUCT. With PRODUCT I want to say: they have a software that has the quality, marketing, features needed to sell it worldwide as an off-the-shelf product. They opened up offices in Beverly, MA, USA also, as far as I know to improve sales in the US market (did they also move development and taxing?). Who else did this in Vienna?

Is Altova open to share their knoweldge? I would be the first one lining up to learn from them, being in the situation to try to do a similar feat.

Another point: the wko magazine didn’t mention article author’s names – for a magazine this is a no-go, I want to know who wrote what and to whom I can address letters. Add names!

gnowsis.com has a new homepage. And a new corporate identity. I like it, makes me proud to lead this as CEO.

background info:
Gnowsis.com is a European startup developing a product for personal information management.

Information is stored in many different applications, but you can´t look everywhere. You know there is something you are looking for but don´t know exactly where. Gnowsis makes your data accessible in an easy and effective way!
Save hours of wasted time whenever you´re trying to re-find a thought because you don´t know what the information is related to or where it is filed. Be sure things don´t get lost and have all relevant information immediately at hand.

Gnowsis talks to your applications and relates documents with your information. Just like human thoughts, a network of projects, people, topics, events, and others is created. This is presented in a standardized format (semantic web) to lower integration costs with enterprise information management systems and SaaS solutions. Users can create semantic wiki pages to take notes. Via plug-ins, the semantic automated gnowsis recommendation system is available in everyday office applications, to go beyond what is offered today. The product is based on results of the Integrated European Project NEPOMUK, the EPOS Project, and the gnowsis project initiated at the DFKI.

psst: product is currently in private alpha, to stay informed I can recommend you sign up for the newsletter.

If someone asks me “what is the semantic web”, I have a new answer: go look into the demozone.

http://demozone.semantic-web.at/

Gratulations to the team of the semantic web company for launching this, I see these guys now as the world premier semantic web consulting agency: in a vendor-neutral way, they show what semantics you can get.

Before this, I only had the W3C SWEO use case collection, now I have two answers. Good work!

(early adopters: yes, its out there since some weeks now, but I still think we should blog about it)

Hello readers, now one of the first blog-posts here about our work in the startup company www.gnowsis.com. People need tools to write down information, we are working on them and I will give a preview on what we do at the ESTC 2009 conference in Vienna – and you can get a special discount on the entrance fee to talk to us.

http://www.estc2009.com/
The conference is packed with top semantic web technology providers and consulting agencies able to help out, gnowsis is also presenting in a
talk and we can meet and I can introduce you to many people at the
conference.

We have a special reduced fee for gnowsis partners:

Normal Prices:
Early Registration: 270 EUR (available until 30th of October – that is TODAY)
Regular Registration: 320 EUR

With gnowsis partner code:
250 EUR.

Want one? please ask now, and I send you a coupon code (we got only 5 left!)
Mail me at info@gnowsis.com

Besides the reduced fee, staying in Vienna in December for a few days is
a good chance to buy charming christmas gifts at the Wiener
Christkindlmarkt.

best, Leo Sauermann

I have been tracking everything “semantic desktop” for the last years, but this beauty has evaded me until now. disclaimer: this may not help much to explain the ideas, and is a bit long, but the mystic sound and nice appeal make it mesemerizing to watch – if you can, enjoy this in a relaxing atmosphere….

Here’s an animation I did a few years ago to explain the idea of the “social semantic desktop”, using Lego visualisations I made in the LDraw CAD package. Music is by yours truly from http://johnbreslin.com/wiki/index.php...

If you are interested in my PhD, you can now buy it on Amazon.
http://www.amazon.de/Semantic-approach-Personal-Information-Management/dp/3866244495/

as blogged before, I finished and published my PhD. Its a good reference on all topics related to the semantic desktop: personal information management, information extraction, pimo, application plugins, semantic wikis, and how people used them.

Now, my work did hit the Amazon store and can be bought by you together with other interesting books such as Founders At Work

P.s.: Disclaimer: If you buy it through the links on this page, you support me, I took this opportunity to join Amazon’s affiliate program 😉

As I just also blogged on OSCAF. I will be there, see that you can join also.

Sebastian Trüg from NEPOMUK-KDE organises a social semantic desktop workshop, a practical meeting to bring pragmatic implementers together.

After the first Nepomuk workshop in June being a great success it is time
to start the planning for the next one. In fact there will be two workshops
before the end of the year: one dedicated to the open social semantic desktop
and one general Nepomuk hands-on coding sprint for everyone interested in
Nepomuk development.

The Nepomuk Open Social Semantic Desktop

techbase.kde.org/Projects/Nepomuk/OpenSocialSemanticDesktopWorkshop2009

This workshop will be focused on the discussion of social features in Nepomuk
and the integration with platforms such as OpenDesktop.

Today Nepomuk allows to handle local resources and data can not be exchanged
with other users. The next step needs to be the integration of such
functionality. It needs to be possible to define privacy parameters on Nepomuk
information, to share Nepomuk data with other users, to integrate information
from online sources, and to enrich online data with the information stored in
Nepomuk.

The goal of the workshop is to bring together experts from the semantic
desktop and ontology design as well as those from online services and peer to
peer communication. Together the theoretical (and hopefully also
technological) basis for an open social semantic desktop in KDE will be
created.

Important projects related to this topic include Telepathy, Kopete,
OpenDesktop, Silk, and OSCAF, the new desktop ontology project.

The workshop will take place in Freiburg, Germany again (it is just so
convenient for me 😉

If you are interested in participating please add your name, email address,
and the dates that are convenient for you to the Workshop wiki page.

Be aware that the e.V. is sponsoring the event for both travel and
accommodation expenses.

I am looking forward to seeing you in Freiburg.

Regards,
Sebastian Trueg