SCMS - Semantic Content Management Systems for Enterprise Knowledge Management & News Mining » Sören Auer

Indian-Summer School on Linked Data

Sören Auer — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 21:48:34 +0000

ISSLOD takes place in late summer from Sep 12-18, 2011 in Leipzig with hopefully still a lot of Indian Summer (i.e. Altweibersommer / Бабье лето) sunshine rays.

The Linked Data methodology is a light-weight approach to facilitate the transition from the document Web to the Web of Data and ultimately a Semantic Web. With a wide availability of Linked Data tools and knowledge bases, a steadily growing R&D community, industrial applications, the Linked Data paradigm already became crucial building block of the Web architecture.

ISSLOD is primarily intended for postgraduate (PhD or MSc) students, postdocs, and other young researchers investigating aspects related to the Semantic Data Web. The Summer School will also be open to senior researchers wishing to learn about Semantic Web issues related to their own fields of research.

For further details please visit: http://isslod.lod2.eu

ISSLOD is organized by the EU-FP7 project “LOD2 – Creating Knowledge out of Interlinked Data”. Lecturers comprise distinguished experts from LOD2 member organizations as well as invited speakers, the majority of which will – apart from their lectures – also be present for the duration of the school to interact with students. Interaction with senior researchers and establishing contacts within young researchers is a main focus of the school, which will be supported through social activities and an interactive, amicable atmosphere.

ISSLOD Application Deadline: 30 July 2011

Notifications: 5 August 2011

ISSLOD: 12-18 September 2011

There will be a limited number of student grants available. Details of the registration process will be announced on the Web site, after the application deadline. We will keep the registration fee low (175 EUR) and provide reasonable accomodation packages (less than 40 EUR per night) for students.

Software release: LIMES – Link Discovery Framework for Metric Spaces

Sören Auer — Fri, 19 Nov 2010 12:36:58 +0000

The first public release of the LIMES framework (Link Discovery Framework for Metric Spaces) is available for download at: http://limes.sf.net LIMES implements time-efficient and lossless approaches for large-scale link discovery based on the characteristics of metric spaces. It is typically more than 60 times faster that other state-of-the-art link discovery frameworks. LIMES is available:

as a standalone Java tool for carrying out link discovery on a local server (faster). In this case, LIMES must be configured via an XML file,
via the easily configurable web interface of the LIMES Linking Service at http://limes.aksw.org (results can be downloaded as nt-files).

AKSW coordinates EU-funded research project LOD2 aiming to take the Web of Linked Data to the next level

Sören Auer — Sun, 05 Sep 2010 14:51:19 +0000

All wealth of information is already widely available on the Internet or in company-wide Intranets. In many situations, however, we tend perceive this plethora of information as an information overload, since it is still rarely possible to answer search queries going beyond simple keyword-searches and tedious to integrate information from different sources in unforeseen ways. Enabling such intelligent ways to process information on the Web is the key aim of the Semantic Web vision, but it seems that its realization based on logic and reasoning will take more time than initially anticipated. Recently however, the Linked Data paradigm - a more lightweight and pragmatic approach for integrating information on the Web - gained traction. It is based on representing information in facts consisting of subject, predicate and object (aka RDF triples), publishing these on the Web and interlinking them by using the same mechanism as linking between web pages (via URIs). With more than 20 billion facts thus already published as Linked Open Data (LOD) the document Web is enriched with a data commons comprising, for example, all the BBC programming, Wikipedia as a structured knowledge base (DBpedia) and statistical information from Eurostat and the US census. Co-funded by the European Union with 6.5 Million Euro as well as by companies and research institutions from 6 European countries the project LOD2 aims to realize the Web of Linked Data by developing crucial technological building blocks for the application of the Linked Data paradigm in companies, Web communities and governmental institutions. In particular, the LOD2 project will develop:

enterprise-ready tools and methodologies for exposing and managing very large amounts of structured information on the Data Web,
a testbed and bootstrap network of high-quality multi-domain, multi-lingual ontologies from sources such as Wikipedia and OpenStreetMap.
algorithms based on machine learning for automatically interlinking and fusing data from the Web.
standards and methods for reliably tracking provenance, ensuring privacy and data security as well as for assessing the quality of information.
adaptive tools for searching, browsing, and authoring of Linked Data.

The resulting tools, methods and data sets have the potential to change the Web as we know it today. This makes LOD2 relevant for researchers, industry and citizens alike. Whether it is about the efficient integration of enterprise data, the open-standardized access to scientific publications and experiment data or the opening of governmental data silos for the creative use by citizens, LOD2 will improve the usability of the Web for integrating heterogeneous information. The 4-year collaborative research and development project, which is coordinated by the AKSW research group from Universität Leipzig starts in September 2010. Involves the partners Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica from the Netherlands, National University of Ireland, Galway, Freie Universität Berlin, UK-based OpenLink Software, Semantic Web Company from Vienna, the Belgian IT service providerTenForce, the french specialist for Enterprise search Exalead, the international publishing house Wolters Kluwer as well as the non-profit NGO Open Knowledge Foundation. For companies and organizations owning large datasets of public interest and interested in publishing and interlinking these on the Data Web, the LOD2 partners offer a Linked Open Data Starter Service (LODS). The application deadline for this free consulting and development support is 15th of December 2010. Further information is available from the LOD2 website http://lod2.eu.

AKSW at ESWC

Sören Auer — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 12:49:42 +0000

Extended Semantic Web Conference started yesterday in Hersonissos, Crete. AKSW is involved in this years ESWC in various ways: We co-organized the 6th Workshop on Scripting and Development (SFSW10) probably for the last time this year at ESWC, since the original aim of promoting more light-weight, pragmatic semantic web applications of the SFSW workshop series became now rather mainstream. Sören was one of the panelists of the panel on “Linked Data: Now what?”. With the two papers “LESS - Template-Based Syndication and Presentation of Linked Data” and “Improving the Performance of Semantic Web Applications with SPARQL Query Result Caching” AKSW is also well represented in the main scientific conference programme.

Semantic Web Journal launched

Sören Auer — Sat, 24 Apr 2010 22:11:26 +0000

A short while ago the Semantic Web Journal was launched. Pascal Hitzler and Krzysztof Janowicz are editors-in-chief and AKSW’s Sören Auer serves on the editorial board. The journal published by IOS Press differs from other journals, in particular, since it follows an open and transparent peer-review process, which engages a wider community besides expert reviews. Supported by its young and agile editorial board, the SWJ can be expected to bring a lot of fresh wind to an already aging Semantic Web community. Since SWJ just started, it is right now a perfect time to submit an article to SWJ or propose a special issue. Please check out: http://www.semantic-web-journal.net.

GoodRelations and LESS

Sören Auer — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 06:52:58 +0000

Martin Hepp just published a short tutorial on using the GoodRelations vocabulary for product, price, and company data together with LESS. Martin explains, how a public SPARQL endpoint holding GoodRelations data can be accessed and results displayed using LESS. The tutorial is available at: http://www.ebusiness-unibw.org/wiki/GoodRelationsAndLESS