Linked Open Data: The Essentials – A quick start guide for decision makers

20
Jan
2012

By Andreas Blumauer | Category: Partner News, Use Cases

Together with REEEP (Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Partnership) the Semantic Web Company (SWC) has composed a fundamental publication on the topic of Linked Open Data. Linked Open Data: The Essentials provides answers to the following key questions:
  • What do the terms Open Data, Open Government Data and Linked Open Data actually mean, and what are the differences between them?
  • What do I need to take into account in developing a LOD strategy?
  • What does my organisation need to do technically in order to open up and publish its datasets?
  • How can I make sure the data is accessible and digestible for others?
  • How can I add value to my own data sets by consuming LOD from others?
  • What can be learned existing best practices?
  • What are the key potentials of sharing and consuming open datasets?
Read more about this publication and find out how to obtain a copy.

Using WordPress to publish Linked Data

11
Dec
2011

By Andreas Blumauer | Category: Partner News, Technology

PoolParty Team has recently published an improved version of their WordPress plugin which enables linked data enrichments of blogs. Therefore a SKOS based vocabulary has to be uploaded or retrieved from a SPARQL-endpoint. Users and developers benefit from
  • automatic annotation of all blog entries displayed as tooltips
  • a comfortable search facility with auto-complete over all concepts from the linked thesaurus including semantic search over the whole blog
  • an integrated thesaurus browser, plus
  • a corresponding linked data frontend including RDF/XML serialization of the underlying thesaurus + SPARQL endpoint
The improvements of version 2.2.3 compared to older versions in detail:
  • Updating the plugin via the wordpress admin interface has been simplified. The plugin now gets the ARC2 triplestore and installs it automatically without need to intervene manually.
  • There is a new sidebar-widget which incorporates a search field including autocomplete. This autocomplete service suggests terms from the glossary. Once such a term is chosen, one is automatically connected to the webpage describing the term. The widget can be pulled into any sidebar (depending on the theme) from the sub-section of appearance/widgets.
  • There is a new shortcode with which specific parts of the content can be excluded from automatically being linked. The shortcode is called ppt-noparse. Automatic linking is disabled for any text between the code.
  • Automatic finding and linking of concepts in running content can be totally disabled under settings. The glossary area is still present and can be reached via the glossary link and the sidebar widget.
The plugin can be downloaded from the WordPress plugin directory. SKOS based vocabularies can be obtained from the vocabulary server of the Semantic Web Company, from the W3C-SKOS Wiki or as another example, for the area of clean energy from reegle-Server. The plugin is already used by the reegle blog, (reegle is a leading search and data hub in the are of clean energy) or – as another example – by the Semantic Puzzle Blog. For blogs which are specialised on writing about climate change or renewable energy a specialised version of the WordPress linked data plugin can be downloaded and installed. A comfortable way to generate SKOS thesauri for nearly any domain was recently published: SKOSsy is a tool which extracts controlled vocabularies from DBpedia serving as a “seed thesaurus” for further extensions and enhancements which can be managed with powerful SKOS editors like PoolParty Thesaurus Manager.

Survey result: Controlled Vocabularies Matter!

04
Jul
2011

By Andreas Blumauer | Category: Partner News, Technology

As announced in another blog post a survey was conducted by Semantic Web Company which should find out how controlled vocabularies are perceived and applied by information managers today. Some of the results are covered by a blog post titled “Thesaurus based search engines will become main stream in the near future“, the survey results can be downloaded here.

PoolParty as a provider of standards based tools for

is pleased with the results because they reveal that industry is heavily interested in open standards like SKOS or RDF and sees the value of linked data based on W3C´s semantic web stack. Here is a short extract of the survey:

Do you think enterprises and other organizations can significantly benefit from using Linked Data?

The answer is a clear YES. A subsequent question also reveals that all kind of organisation sizes have about the same opinion concerning linked data. Only few people think that linked data is a “niche thing”. In general it can be said, that over 90% of the participants think that most or at least some organisations can benefit from using linked data.

Florian Bauer: I like to view “linked data” as a “single worldwide API”

16
Mar
2011

By Andreas Blumauer | Category: Partner News, Technology, Use Cases

Florian BauerFlorian Bauer is REEEP’s Operations and IT Director, responsible for the overall operational management of the organisation, the product management of reegle (the search engine for renewable energy and energy efficiency) and the management of the IT landscape of REEEP. PoolParty Team had the chance to talk with Florian about reegle – information gateway on clean energy. Could you please give us a brief overview over reegle – what are the targets you are pursuing with this platform? The main aim of the reegle information gateway (http://www.reegle.info) is to provide a one-stop gateway to comprehensive, high-quality and up-to-date information on clean energy. By making this information accessible to stakeholders in the field around the world, and by presenting it in a user-friendly and intuitive format, reegle directly helps to facilitate the transition to low-carbon energy. The website provides information on renewable energy, energy efficiency and climate change and their various sub-sectors at a global level, and some reegle services actually combine raw data sets from several different sources, put these datasets into context and thus provide enriched information. reegle is an offshoot of the Renewable Energy & Energy Efficiency Partnership (REEEP), a non-profit, specialist change agent aiming to catalyze the market for renewable energy and energy efficiency, with a primary focus on emerging markets and developing countries. The new reegle data portal (data.reegle.info), launched in 2011, has established reegle as a publisher and consumer of Linked Open Data in the energy sector. It provides key clean energy datasets free for re-use using Linked Open Data W3C standards. » Read the rest of this entry «

Les Kneebone: “Semantic web technologies are one solution to linking education data in Australia”

15
Nov
2010

By Andreas Blumauer | Category: Uncategorized

Les Kneebone is Project Manager at Education Services Australia Ltd.
Among other projects he is responsible for Schools Online Thesaurus (ScOT).

PoolParty Team asked Les a couple of questions about thesaurus management, linked data and the semantic web. Here is a short summary of this interview:

Why did you choose thesauri to organize your information? What kind of problems are you able to solve with this approach?

A thesaurus approach was chosen rather than a subject headings approach because we assumed (and continue to assume) that post-coordinate indexing will drive vocabulary-assisted discovery.

Which role does SKOS and/or Linked Data play in order to achieve your goals?

ScOT concepts are now published as URIs. This approach solves the problem of different ScOT versions in disparate systems.

What are the most important values you generate for your stakeholders? What kind of applications can be built or have been built on top of your thesauri?

The Achievement Standards Network (ASN) provides a model for profiling curriculum statements and linking those statements to education resources using various rdf vocabularies. By profiling curriculum statements to learning resources, more precise matching is achieved.

What are the most important arguments to use Semantic Web standards and linked data, especially in education?

The Australian education sector is characterized by many disparate systems in different education jurisdictions. Semantic web technologies are one solution to linking education data in Australia.

Why did you choose PoolParty to manage your thesauri?

We had already identified SKOS as an important standard for ScOT so it was natural to select PoolParty as a our new thesaurus management tool.

What are your future plans and next steps? How do you manage to get your thesauri used, how are you going to build an “eco-system” around your work? (Do you plan to publish ScOT on the LOD cloud? Under which licenses?)

Our vocabularies are currently for non-commercial use and we don’t anticipate any change to the license at this stage. The ScOT license requires attribution, permits derivatives that must be shared, and is for non-commercial use.

Read the full interview here.

Stella Dextre Clarke & Alan Gilchrist about the “Future of Knowledge Organization on the Web”

21
Jun
2010

By Andreas Blumauer | Category: Events & Conferences, Technology

Semantic Web Company (SWC) had the pleasure and the opportunity to talk with two internationally recognised experts in the fields of information management and knowledge organization: Alan Gilchrist and Stella Dextre Clarke. SWC asked some questions about the “Future of Knowledge Organization on the Web & Linked Data” on the occasion of an event of the same name organised by ISKO UK which will take place on September 14, 2010 in London. » Read the rest of this entry «

Kingsley Idehen: “By declaring its context, Linked Data can be made more easily reusable by others”

16
Jun
2010

By Andreas Blumauer | Category: Uncategorized

Semantic Web Company talked with Kingsley Idehen who is CEO of OpenLink Software and probably one of the most profound experts on data integration issues about “Linked Data”.

The interview covers questions like:

  • How can Linked Data help to make companies more productive?
  • Do you think that the Linked Data Initiative can build upon a stable architecture or will it face more and more problems the bigger the “cloud” will grow?
  • What´s the ultimate argument for an Enterprise Architect to use languages like SPARQL at least in addition to SQL?
  • How will a “Real Time Semantic Web” change the whole game?
  • How will the “Semantic Web” be called in 10 years? Will there still be a “Semantic Web”?

Read the full version of the interview here.

Publishing Linked Data for the first time (PoolParty 2.7 release notes)

14
Jun
2010

By Andreas Blumauer | Category: Partner News, Technology

I still remember when I was publishing HTML for the first time in my life: It took place in 1996 and I used Microsoft Frontpage. It was exciting because then “I was on the Internet”. Yesterday, around 15 years later something similar happened: I published Linked Data for the first time actively! Eureka! linked-data-frontend Sure, by using Semantic MediaWiki or Wordpress’s SIOC plugin “I was already on the Semantic Web” – but a lot of data which is produced by such tools is not Linked Data but simple RDF. A closer look at all the datasets in the LOD cloud also reveals that none of them can be edited with an ease, except upcoming DBpedia Live which offers “real-time semantic web”. Conclusio: So far most of the linked data in the LOD cloud was generated by DB2RDF mapping tools like D2R which can only be handled by semantic web experts and technicians. Don´t get me wrong – this is a very important basic layer for the LOD world. All automatically generated datasets like DBpedia are kind of “highways” on the linked data map. Now it´s time to pave the side streets. Just imagine, a teacher would like to publish his knowledge about Italian painters in a way it can be re-used as linked data. Should we tell him to “open an editor, to start typing RDF triples and to upload the file via FTP”? When we started to design PoolParty in 2007 we had people in our minds who would like to contribute actively to producing data for the semantic web. People working for organizations with special domain knowledge are not only able to connect the dots from the linked data highways but also know how to customize such data for their own applications. PoolParty 2.7 offers the following features and functionalities for such tasks:
  • Linked Data editing: users generate linked data to describe their resources (concepts) on top of SKOS
  • Linked data lookup: mapping between own thesauri and additional facts from the semantic web The following resources can be used at the moment: DBpedia, Umbel, Yago, DMOZ, LCSH, Geonames & Wordnet; this service is highly configurable – also internal linked data sources can be mapped and used to enrich local thesauri; the lookup service makes use of the very fast TuQS server
  • Linked data publishing: based on linked data patterns any resource can be published as linked data, ready to re-use for any linked data application; example: http://open.poolparty.punkt.at/Wine/13 which can also be viewed by linked data browsers like Zitgist’s DataViewer
  • SPARQL endpoint: another way how PoolParty’s RDF data can be accessed by semantic web developers
In addition to these features PoolParty 2.7 comes with some other new features:
  • Translation support: works for nearly any language and domain with high accuracy – thanks to Google Translate
  • Online Documentation: PoolParty’s end-user manual is open for the public, easy to access and searchable; since PoolParty 2.7 it is available not only as PDF document but also as browsable Wiki
  • Flexible Reporting Tool: As we have already blogged before, PoolParty’s new reporting tool is flexible enough to manage to export formats like, for example, Google Synonyms; also “traditional” thesaurus reports like hierarchical reports are available
  • iPhone front-end: If you have to do research using your thesauri while you are somewhere outside of the office, this could be a possible solution for you – see this screenshot!
If you also want to publish some linked data (for the first time in your life :-) ) register to get a PoolParty demo account and go for it! It´s really easy.

Using SKOS as an interface to the Linked Data Cloud

01
Jun
2010

By Andreas Blumauer | Category: Partner News, Technology

PoolParty 2.7 offers new and comfortable ways to enrich any SKOS thesaurus with additional facts from the semantic web (see: LOD cloud). This functionality (which was extended significantly with version 2.7 in June 2010) supports any thesaurus manager to generate much richer knowledge models (ontologies) around specific domains than ever before (without facing high extra costs due to additional research). There are at least three arguments why one should consider building such “extended thesauri”: skos-linked-data
  1. Use even more metadata to describe your resources and improve navigation and semantic search functionalities significantly
  2. Publish (at least) parts of your metadata / knowledge models as linked (open) data to stimulate innovative services around your contents on top of network effects
  3. Use linked data for data integration and semantic mashups; combine your own contents with contents from the web to improve your business intelligence
» Read the rest of this entry «

PoolParty releases Wordpress plugin to build glossaries for blogs

30
Apr
2010

By Andreas Blumauer | Category: Uncategorized

PoolParty Team has released a Worpress plugin which imports SKOS thesauri and automatically generates a glossary for any given blog. This works as follows:

  1. the blog admin has to install the “PoolParty Wordpress glossary plugin”
  2. the blog author has to generate a thesaurus which describes, and structures the blog content
  3. the thesaurus has to be exported in SKOS format
  4. the file has to be imported into the blog
  5. a glossary will be generated automatically
  6. all blog posts and pages which contain thesaurus concepts will be linked automatically to the glossary

Please, take a look to the glossary of this blog as an example for this software.

Download Wordpress-Plugin: PoolParty Thesaurus for Wordpress 1.0 (or go to Wordpress plugin dircetory)

glossary-plugin

Thanks to Benjamin Nowack: The thesaurus is imported and into the system and is queried via ARC2.
Thanks to rduffy. His ‘Glossary’ Plugin inpired us, and we were able to develop this plugin on top of his ideas.

Works with PHP 5, MySQL 5 und ARC2

Installation

  1. Download the plugin zip file
  2. Upload the plugin contents into your WordPress installation’s plugin directory.
  3. The plugin’s .php files, readme.txt and folders should be installed in the ‘wp-content/plugins/pp-thesaurus/’ directory.
  4. Move the ‘pp-thesaurus-template.php’ file into your active theme direcory
  5. Download ARC2.
  6. Upload the ARC files and folders into ‘/wp-content/plugins/pp-thesaurus/arc/’ directory.
  7. From the Plugin Management page in Wordpress, activate the ‘PoolParty Thesaurus’ plugin.
  8. Create a main PoolParty Thesaurus page (example “Thesaurus”) with or without body content.
  9. Create a child page (example “Item”) of the main PoolParty Thesaurus page with or without body content and take the ‘PoolParty Thesaurus’ template.
  10. Go to ‘Settings’ -> ‘PoolParty Thesaurus’ in Wordpress, enter the main Thesaurus page’s id# and import a SKOS/RDF file

Frequently Asked Questions

Does my main PoolParty Thesaurus page need to be titled “Thesaurus”?
No. It can be called however you like. Just make sure to enter the page’s id into the plugin’s settings dashboard.

Does my child page need to be titled “Item”?
No. It can be called however you like.

How do I add a thesaurus item?
Therefore you need a SKOS thesaurus management tool like PoolParty. The glossary is generated automatically from the imported thesaurus.

How can I update the glossary?
Simply load the updated thesaurus again (admin area – settings -> PoolParty Thesaurus). The old thesaurus will be overwritten. New or updated concepts will be recognized immediately by the link generator.

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