Baby Steps Towards A Library Graph

It is one thing to have a vision, regular readers of this blog will know I have them all the time, its yet another to see it starting to form through the mist into a reality. Several times in the recent past I have spoken of the some of the building blocks for bibliographic data to play a prominent part in the Web of Data.  The Web of Data that is starting to take shape and drive benefits for everyone.  Benefits that for many are hiding in plain site on the results pages of search engines. In those informational panels

Google SEO RDFa and Semantic Search

Today’s Wall Street Journal gives us an insight in to the makeover underway in the Google search department. Over the next few months, Google’s search engine will begin spitting out more than a list of blue Web links. It will also present more facts and direct answers to queries at the top of the search-results page. They are going about this by developing the search engine [that] will better match search queries with a database containing hundreds of millions of “entities”—people, places and things—which the company has quietly amassed in the past two years. The ‘amassing’ got a kick start

Linked Data a Recipe for Food?

What relevance does Linked Data have for a City’s food supply you may ask. “We live in a world where the agri-food supply chain, from producer all the way through to final consumer, is extremely inefficient in the flow of knowledge.. ..with the application of Semantic Web and Linked Data technologies along the food supply chain, it will make it easier for all actors along there to know more about where their food comes from and where their food goes.”

A Data 7th Wave Approaching

I believe Data, or more precisely changes in how we create, consume, and interact with data, has the potential to deliver a seventh wave impact. With the advent of many data associated advances, variously labelled Big Data, Social Networking, Open Data, Cloud Services, Linked Data, Microformats, Microdata, Semantic Web, Enterprise Data, it is now venturing beyond those closed systems into the wider world. It is precisely because these trends have been around for a while, and are starting to mature and influence each other, that they are building to form something really significant.

A Kasabi Day at Semtech Berlin

I spent yesterday at the first day of excellent Semantic Tech and Business Conference 2012 in Berlin.  It was a good day covering a wide range of topics, a great range of speakers and talks, and most encouragingly some really good conversations in the breaks.  I had the pleasure of presenting the opening session The Simple Power of the Link which seemed to provide a good grounding introduction to what to some is a fairly complex topic.  My slides are available on Slideshare, and I provided a background article on semanticweb.com, if you want to check them out. In my

Cloud Computing Back In The Future

Checking out Cloud Expo Europe. Much, in Linked Data circles, is implied about the mutual benefit of adopting the Cloud and Linked Open Data.
I was interested to see if the cloud vendors were as data [and the value within it] aware as the Linked Data vendors are cloud aware.

Open Data: Digital Fuel or Raw Material?

I have been reading with interest ‘Digital Fuel of the 21st Century: Innovation through Open Data and the Network Effect’ by Vivek Kundra. Well worth a read to place the current [Digital] Revolution we are somewhere in the middle of, in relation to preceding revolutions and the ages that they begat.

OK So Who Noticed the SOPA Blackout

All in all, I believe the campaign has been surprisingly effective on the visible web. However, what prompted this post was trying to ascertain how effective it was on the Data Web, which almost by definition is the invisible web. Ahead of the dark day, a move started on the Semantic Web and Linked Open Data mailing lists to replicate what Wikipedia was doing by going dark on Dbpedia

Schema.org Déjà vu

The Web has been around for getting on for a couple of decades now, and massive industries have grown up around the magic of making it work for you and your organisation.  Some of it, it has to be said, can be considered snake-oil.  Much of it is the output of some of the best brains on the planet.  Where, on the hit parade of technological revolutions to influence mankind, the Web is placed is oft disputed, but it is definitely up there with fire, steam, electricity, computing, and of course the wheel.  Similar debates, are and will virtually rage,

Web, Semantic Web, SEO, SERP and Linked Data

Like many of my posts, this one comes from the threads of several disparate conversations coming together in my mind, in an almost astrological conjunction. One thread stems from my recent Should SEO Focus in on Linked Data? post, in which I was concluding that the group, loosely described as the SEO community, could usefully focus in on the benefits of Linked Data in their quest to improve the business of the sites and organisations they support. Following the post I received an email looking for clarification of something I said. I am interested in understanding better the allusion you