Category Archives: Linked Data & Open Data

Andreas Blumauer

Free Webinar on Enterprise Semantics

by , Category: Linked Data & Open Data, Mashups & Web services, Tools & Software, Videos & Tutorials, Vocabularies & Languages

PoolParty Team gave a webinar on November 28, 2012. We talked about scenarios and applications using semantics in enterprises. Some of the use cases we have discussed were:

  • Semi-automatic tagging of content (Sharepoint, Confluence, …)
  • Semantic enterprise search (Mindbreeze, FAST, Exalead, …)
  • Linked Enterprise Vocabularies
  • Enterprise linked data integration (queries across Oracle databases and unstructured text)

WATCH the VIDEO.

We showed the latest developments of PoolParty platform and we gave insights how structured data from relational databases can be mashed with unstructured text when using linked data alignment. We also showcased how we mashed a large text corpus with statistical financial data on top of PoolParty and UltraWrap.

Thomas Thurner

Semantic Web driven tagging tool makes clean energy content searchable and findable!

by , Category: Linked Data & Open Data, Tools & Software

New reegle API will tag online resources automatically – and suggest related content.

A new cost-free tagging tool is now available to anyone who provides online resources in the clean energy field. This API (application programming interface), developed by the Semantic Web Company, will automatically tag documents and web content that cover renewable energy, energy efficiency and climate-relevant topics according to the well maintained Reegle’s Clean Energy and Climate Change Thesaurus. It can also suggest related documents from the growing pool of content that has already been indexed using the tool.

“Tagging” means that when integrated into a website, this API will automatically scan the site’s content and identify specific terms, concepts and geographic mentions and then apply tags to each so all resources connected with the site are searchable online.

“By automating the tagging process, we can help ensure that content is classified in a consistent way across the entire sector, based on our Clean Energy Thesaurus” notes Florian Bauer, Operations & IT Director of REEEP. “This will help make major depositories of existing information open and accessible, and help promote clean, low-carbon development in the process.”

In addition to tagging, the API can also make suggestions for related reading from the web resources already indexed, thus enriching the content of any website. “Sharing your own indexed resources with the API content pool can increase the outreach of your documents hugely,” recommends Denise Recheis, expert in knowledge management at reegle.

Try out service

The tool is available at http://api.reegle.info, where you can try out the API on the spot. Simply cut and paste a block of text, and a demonstration will show all of the concepts, terms and categories that the tool automatically generates.

Free API key

On this site, web developers can register to get a free API key for each project, with no limit on the number of keys. When logged in, the dashboard includes a request builder to help developers to build the necessary code. The service is available in five different languages: English, French, Spanish, Portuguese and German. The API returns the formats RDF/XML and JSON.

About REEEP

The reegle tagging API project is a collaborative effort with NREL (OpenEI), weADAPT and IDS (eldis), and was made possible by support from the CDKN Innovation Fund. For further information about the reegle tagging API Reeep’s Thesaurus and Knowledge Manager Denise Recheis is available.

Thomas Thurner

Free Webinar: How NPOs and NGOs make use of Linked Data and Controlled Vocabularies

by , Category: Linked Data & Open Data, Videos & Tutorials

NPOs and NGOs are acting more-and-more as open data providers for various stakeholders like citizens, enterprises and communities. Linked open data becomes a key concept to meet several demands of information professionals, for instance interoperability and accessibility of data, multilinguality and harmonisation of metadata.

The open data value chain is about to change from a rather simple to a more complex network of data streams which produces new revenue models and more differentiated roles – linked open data plays a central role in this development.

This webinar is about the use of linked open data and controlled vocabularies in the specific enviroments, NGOs and NPOs are working in. Get an overview about the underpinning motivation and concepts which drive the very concrete use cases which will be presented:

  • Andreas Blumauer – Semantic Web Company: Linked Data and Controlled Vocabularies – concepts for NPOs and NGOs
  • Claudio Baldassarre – Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the UN: The Fisheries Linked Open Data project – data harmonization with semantic technologies

Register for Free
Tuesday, October 9, 2012 5:00 PM – 6:00 PM CEST
https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/261932082

About the Fisheries Linked Open Data (FLOD) project: It is the Fisheries division (FI) case study to test an approach to data harmonization with semantic technologies. Inside FLOD more than 10 coding systems consistently co-exist. The coding systems classify entities from the following domains: land and marine geography, land and marine geo-politics, fishery legislation, and fishery techniques, with others planned for connection in the future. FLOD is used as an integrated FI data source in geospatial applications and as a data aggregator in the FIGIS web portal, while new use cases are decreeing it the glue among pre-existing FI information systems, as well responding to requirements of query federation from remote information systems.

Pascal Hitzler

What’s Wrong with Linked Data?

by , Category: Calls & Competitions, Linked Data & Open Data, Literature & Publications, Uncategorized
Earlier this year, we posted a special call for Linked Dataset descSemantic Web journalriptions, to be published in the Semantic Web journal. This kind of call and paper type is a novelty in the Semantic Web community. We did this to provide another outlet for research enabling work (as opposed to research work as such), because Linked Data is currently one of the drivers of the Semantic Web effort. However creators and curators of datasets can rarely get acknowledgement for their contributions by publishing in high-profile conference proceedings or journals.

 

We expected a very good response to this call, and indeed we received 27 submissions. Consequently, we have now made Linked Dataset descriptions a standing paper type for the Semantic Web journal, which means that these types of papers can now be submitted at any time to the journal. In addition to the submissions, we also received very encouraging communication in response to our new paper type, some researchers even reported that “the call already prompts some people to improve their datasets” (we are in no position to verify this, though).

 

Following our own policy for the journal, the calls include a very crisp formulation of the review criteria which are to be applied to papers of this type. We strongly recommend to reviewers to directly reference these criteria in their reviews. For Linked Dataset papers, the criteria are as follows.
  • Quality of the dataset
  • Usefulness (or potential usefulness) of the dataset
  • Clarity and completeness of the descriptions
When we set these criteria, we thought that they should be easy to meet. The papers are supposed to be short (recommendation is 6 pages), and the third of the criteria is really only about doing a good job when writing the paper. Assuming that the publishers of a Linked Dataset were doing a good job, we thought that there should be no “quality of the dataset” problem. Assuming that people would not go through the trouble of publishing a dataset without it being useful (or at least potentially useful), we also thought that the “usefulness” condition should be easy to meet.

 

However, we were in for a bit of a surprise. At this point in time, we have completed the first-round reviews for 26 of the 27 papers, and half of them had to be rejected due to issues with dataset quality or usefulness. For 5 of the datasets, the reviewers even indicated that “they are in fact not linked data.”

 

Clearly, our sample is not necessarily representative for all of Linked Data. For some of the most prominent datasets we have not received papers (most likely because they are already published elsewhere). However, it may not be unreasonable to take our findings as an indication that often Linked Datasets may have substantial issues with quality and usefulness.

 

We will know more after the second round of reviews. And we’re looking forward to receiving more submissions of Linked Dataset descriptions.

 

We would be more than happy if the state of Linked Data would turn out to be better than our limited sample indicates and hope that our call and the paper type will contribute to the effort of improving the quality and especially applicability of Linked Data. We are optimistic, that with more experience, best practice, and application focus, Linked Data will become more than just more data.

 

Krzysztof Janowicz, http://geog.ucsb.edu/~jano/
Editors-in-Chief, Semantic Web journal, http://www.semantic-web-journal.net/

 

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