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.

PoolParty 2.6 available now!

23
Feb
2010

By Andreas Blumauer | Category: Partner News, Technology

PoolParty 2.6 was released today with useful new features:
  • Special import functionalities: Each concept can be populated with multi-lingual lists of sub-concepts via CSV import.
  • User Management: Each PoolParty user belongs to one or many usergroups which can own and edit one ore many thesauri. Projects published into the “public” group can be viewed via wiki frontend without login.
  • New skin: Beside “White Russian” and “Tequila Sunrise” and new skin called “Bluebird” is available now (all skins are named after cocktails)
import-via-csv