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!
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.
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:
