Jana Herwig |The Semantic Puzzle

GoodRelations webcast & spreading the word about the Semantic Web

November 26, 2008 by Jana Herwig, Category: Literature & Publications, Ontology Engineering, Vocabularies & Languages

You have probably already heard about GoodRelations, “the web ontology for e-commerce”. Martin Hepp from Bundeswehr University in Munich recently created a webcast, giving a short introduction to semantic web-based E-Commerce and to the GoodRelations vocabulary – I want to see more of such introductions which aim at a wider audience in terms of style and intellectual accessibility!

Last week I had an an encounter with a social scientist (within an academic setting) who argued that discussing the Semantic web would not make sense for him (as a social scientist), because of the present lack of social practices in that field… (*jaw-dropping*) I could not persuade him with the argument that the Linked data cloud itself was the result of a social practice – the view he had of the semantic web (which I assume was not an uneducated one) even led him to denounce that developments like Dbpedia, Twine, Revyu, or the use of metadata in general had anything to do with the Semantic Web.

And this is a big challenge.

On the one hand, it is a good thing that there are social scientists who at least have a certain notion of the Semantic Web – on the other, it seems as if all the exciting ideas and developments that have taken place in the last few years have failed to reach those who have been sensitized for the SemWeb project when the idea was first conceived. I am not meaning to make a statement about social scientists here, but rather about the need to communicate what has further happened to the original idea outside also outside of one’s own community.

Btw: In its current issue, quarterly (German-language) magazine t3n is featuring a Web 3.0 and Applied Semantic Web topic as its opener. And that is a good sign, too!

First Make.tv cast about the Social Semantic Web

November 19, 2008 by Jana Herwig, Category: Videos & Tutorials

Time for a bit of over-the-top web 2.0 adulation… at yesterday’s Digitalks event (organized once again wonderfully by Meral Akin-Hecke), Luca Hammer was there and filmed throughout the presentations and discussions – using two cameras at a time AND live-editing and live-streaming it on Make.tv. What is Make.tv? The most incredible web 2.0 application I’ve seen so far – it’s a TV-Studion in your browser! And it’s free! (Although I doubt I will stay free forever)

You can live-edit the input from several cameras – this can also be achieved by logging in on different computers at a time, thus using the input from several built-in webcams at a time. You can drag and drop the video input channels into your scene, make the embedded videos smaller to achieve a screen-in-screen effect, create your own TV design and virtual studio from graphics…. wow, wow, wow.

I played with it today, not being quite as adventurous as Luca, in that I used only one camera (see what he achieved yesterday with multiple screens), nor did I interrupt and restart the recording (which I could have), but even though, I find the visual result, i.e. the ‘studio’ I built from the book cover, impressive enough.

So here is it: My introduction of the Social Semantic Web publication (which is in German, which is why the audio is in German, too, but you don’t need to understand what I am saying to be impressed by Make.tv). Jump to seconds 3:30 to 4:30 to see how you can switch between different screens while doing the web cast.

P.S. That’s an image below – you can embed the video, but you cannot (yet) deactivate that it starts automatically if you embed it, so I’ve decided to use an image on the blog instead. Click here, or the image, to launch the webcast on the Make.tv website.

Btw, I am not sure whether I said XML or XHTML in the webcast, but of course I meant XHTML when talking about the benefits of RDFa.

Yahoo vs Google – Technology vs Advertising

November 19, 2008 by Jana Herwig, Category: Search Engines

Just stumbled upon this observation in a blog post by Daniel Tunkelang where he compares Yahoo’s and Google’s latest key word tools, and chuckled. The occasion was Yahoo’s release of a new BOSS features called Key Terms, and Google’s announcement of the release of a new tool that tells you which keyterms you’re missing (i.e. should potentially buy):

I imagine that the technology behind both tools isn’t all that different–or at least doesn’t have to be. But, while Yahoo makes friends in the technology community (especially among researchers), Google makes friends in the advertising community–and makes itself oodles of money.

Nice analogy, Daniel!

Web Awareness Barometer – please participate!

November 18, 2008 by Jana Herwig, Category: Calls & Competitions

This year, which is already beginning to draw to a close, has seen many exciting developments on the Semantic Web, in particular in the area of Linked Data. But, as past technological evolutions have shown: many innovations that researchers and experts get excited about today, won’t even have entered the market the day after tomorrow.

This is why we would like to know how you feel about the state of the Semantic Web in 2008 – which ever position on the web you are hailing from: semantic web practitioner, researcher, or ‘regular’ user.

Please participate in our survey:

Web Awareness Barometer 2008

This is not only an excellent opportunity to give feedback to resarch, development and the industry, but also your chance to win a set of two tickets for the i-Know / i-Semantics conference which is going to take place in Graz in September 2009, worth about € 700. Also, we are giving away three of our Emergency Exit – RDF t-shirts.

The survey is conducted by the Semantic Web Company (i.e. us) in cooperation with Know-Center Graz and the work group Corporate Semantic Web at the Dept. of Computer Science at Freie Universität Berlin.

Please take the survey – your participation contributes to gaining a better understanding of the potentials and barriers for the application of new web technologies, in particular of Semantic Web technologies.

The survey will close on Dec 22 – results are going to be published in February 2009. Thank you for your help and cooperation!

	if not otherwise specified