Top-Down: A New Approach to the Semantic Web

Earlier this week we wrote about the classic approach to the semantic web and the difficulties with that approach. While the original vision of the layer on top of the current web, which annotates information in a way that is "understandable" by computers, is compelling; there are technical, scientific and business issues that have been difficult to address. One of the technical difficulties that we outlined was the bottom-up nature of the classic semantic web approach. Specifically, each web site needs to annotate information in RDF, OWL, etc. in order for computers to be able to "understand" it. As things stand today, there is little reason for web site owners to do that. But there are alternative approaches. In this post, we will look at the solution that we call the top-down approach to the semantic web, because instead of requiring developers to change or augment the web, this approach leverages and builds on top of current web as-is. Why Do We Need The Semantic Web? Conclusion

GUESS: The Graph Exploration System, Download Download If you would just like to run GUESS you have the option: Version 1.0.3-beta Install the latest beta (08/13/2007). This does not come with an installer, but has many more features. I am working on a general installer for all systems, but please let me know if you have any problems installing in the meantime. You will want to read the README.TXT and tutorial/walk through in the manual. Source GUESS is distributed under a GPL license. DeepaMehta -- Homepage

RDF-Gravity Sunil Goyal, Rupert Westenthaler {sgoyal, rwestenthaler}@salzburgresearch.at Salzburg Research, Austria RDF Gravity is a tool for visualising RDF/OWL Graphs/ ontologies. Its main features are: Graph VisualizationGlobal and Local Filters (enabling specific views on a graph) Full text SearchGenerating views from RDQL QueriesVisualising multiple RDF files RDF Gravity is implemented by using the JUNG Graph API and Jena semantic web toolkit. Figure 1: Screenshot of RDF-Gravity, showing a part of Wine Ontology 1 Graph Visualisation RDF Gravity defines a visualization package on top of the JUNG Graph API. Configurable renderers for edges and nodes of a graph, including different node shapes and edge decorations etc.A Renderer Factory allowing the configuration of the above node and edge renderers based on the type of an edge or node. For graph layout, it uses the layout algorithms directly supported by the Jung API. 2 Global & Local Filters 3 Full Text Search 4 Visualising Multiple RDF Files

Thoughts on Google Plus: The Magic Isn’t Social, It’s Semantic It’s been said that I’ve called Google Plus “one of the subtlest and most user-friendly ontology development systems we’ve ever seen.” I did, and you can listen for yourselves on the Semantic Link podcast. Why did I do so? Well, G+ follows some of the basic principles of linked data: it uses persistent HTTP URIs for people, Sparks (concepts) and posts. Let’s take those points one at a time, with pictures. Persistent URIs for People Everyone with a G+ account gets assigned a random string of numbers as their unique identifier. [click images to open them at full size in new tabs/windows] How is this ontological? Persistent URIs for Sparks Sparks are the name Google uses to refer to concepts, also known as subjects, categories, tags, terms (you get the idea.) This warrants more dissecting and attention. One interesting thing to note, especially for those who aren’t clear on the fact that semantic data can be kept private. Persistent URIs for Posts Why this Matters They’ve learned.

The Alliance for Networking Visual Culture

Quote from the post: The essence of a top-down semantic web service is simple - leverage existing web information, apply specific, vertical semantic knowledge and then redeliver the results via a consumer-centric application. by trappi Jul 19