SDMX and RDF: Getting Acquainted

SDMX
SDMX (Statistical data and metadata exchange) is a widely accepted standard for communicating data  in the realm of official statistics.
‘SDMX is an initiative to foster standards for the exchange of statistical information. Sponsored by BIS – ECB – EUROSTAT – IMF – OECD – UN – World Bank.’
More and more applications accept and [...]

About necessary and unnecessary things

In a interview given at a technology symposium at the Embassy of Finland in Washington (15 October 2009), ‘Berners-Lee speaks about the importance for governments to place great amounts of data on the Web and the emergence of the semantic Web. He cites successful examples in Britain.’

And he repeats what he already said in one [...]

Small steps

There are specialized search engines like sig.ma using semantic technology (but working in niches), and there are the big search machines slowly starting to use such an approach. Yahoo does it for some time already and Google goes RDFa and microformats.
Google looks for markup formats (microformats and RDFa) and displays reviews and ratings and also [...]

Prague Conference – Statistics and Internet

The conference “Statistics – Investment in the future 2″ took place in Prague from 14 to 15 September 2009.
More than 100 participants attended 22 sessions.
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The session ‘Statistics and the Internet’ saw 4 presentations:
Managing the Internet in a statistical institution
Leon Oestergaard, Statistics Denmark
Influence of the Internet on dissemination of official statistics
Tomaz Smrekar, Statistical Office of the [...]

Just published: Web 2.0/3.0 and Official Statistics

Statistical Journal of the IAOS 2008
Volume 25, n° 3-4/2008

Special Issue: Web 2.0 and Official Statistics

Editorial, pp. 79-80
GARDNER Jessica – Blogs, wikis and official statistics: New perspectives on the use of Web 2.0 by statistical offices, pp. 81-92
Abstract

THYGESEN Lars, SUNDGREN Bo – Innovative approaches to turning statistics into knowledge, pp. 93-102
Abstract

TEN BOSCH Olav, DE JONGE [...]

“Journalism Needs Data in 21st Century”

This is an interesting summary from ReadWriteWeb about the role of data in media with several fresh innovative examples coming up 2009.  Some of them have already been presented before as posts in this blog. The conclusion is that journalism is data-driven and demands open access to raw data. Data should be transparent and not [...]

Yebol: Semantic Search Engine for Statistics?

Have a try with for example “official statistics“!

More structure in results in Yebol than Google.  Only “statistics”  or other combinations like global and international give interesting variations in  patterns of results.
Yebol offers categorised search results for about 10 million search terms. Within half a year “every possible search term” is said to be included. See [...]

ReadWriteWeb Interview With Tim Berners-Lee, Part 1: Linked Data

Written by Richard MacManus / July 8, 2009 6:00 AM / 8 Comments
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How Linked Data Relates to The Semantic Web
RWW: Earlier this year you gave an inspiring talk at TED about Linked Data. You described Linked Data as a sea change akin to the [...]

The Semantic Web Gang

The Semantic Web Gang is a monthly round-table podcast bringing together a regular panel of commentators on the Semantic Web.
Some examples:
May 2009: The Semantic Web Gang discuss Wolfram Alpha and Google’s RDFa
April 2009: The Semantic Web Gang discuss vocabularies and ontologies
July 2008: The Semantic Web Gang discusses interfaces to the Semantic Web

Helping free up government data

Some weeks ago Tim Berners Lee’s message at TED was:  Raw Data Now! .
Now Gordon Brown charged him with helping free up government data for all to use.
In a telephone interview with Rory Cellan-Jones,BBC technology correspondent ‘he was adamant that this was not some party political job, but part of a grand global missio’. [...]

Linked Data is Blooming: Why You Should Care

From ReadWriteWeb:
Written by Richard MacManus / May 18, 2009 3:15 AM
Last week we discussed how the current era of the Web is evolving. One of the concepts we noted was Linked Data, an idea whose time has come in 2009. Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the Web, gave a must-view talk at the TED Conference earlier this year [...]

Semantic Web and Official Statistics

Semantic Web and Official Statistics – an open discussion. Some incomplete  remarks about how to  bring statistics into the Semantic Web ( I am still learning)
Introductory note: Made for machines
Semantic Web or the Web of Data is made first and foremost for machines. ‘In the future the entire web will be one giant tightly interconnected [...]

A platform for LINKED public data (2)

Talis announced a platform for public data (28th March 2009): Talis Connected Commons (thanks Leigh for the hint).  This is specially interesting because this platform is more than a data store, it is a semantic data store offering data in triple format (RDF) and services accompanying these triples like a SPARQL query,  support for uploading [...]

Raw Data Now! Tim Berners Lee and Hans Rosling

Tim Berners Lee joins Hans Rosling in his initiative to make data accessible for everybody. While Hans Rolsing’s starting point is getting data in order to rise awarness and understanding in social affairs Tim Berner Lee’s starting point is his engagement for a semantic web and for linking data – not only linking documents like [...]

Semantic Web For Dummies

I am surprised: In the last weeks surfing the Web citations of Semantic Web appeared more frequently than ever, the topic becomes more and more popular. Wrong or right,  a certain proof is in the recent publication of this book:
Jeffrey T. Pollock, Semantic Web For Dummies, Wiley, 2009.  ISBN: 0-470-39679-2

Looking into the (near) future of [...]

Web Wide World – Internet of Things (IoT)

The Web evolves. Everything is being tracked. Data and real world objects are linked together and the web is the medium where all this happens – so the (perhaps not so far) vision.
Nova Spivack discusses this in his article ‘From World Wide Web to Web Wide World — The Web Breaks Out of its Petri [...]

The Web: My genie in the bottle.

A panel with representatives from Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft talking about the future of the Web. Moderated by Nova Spivack. Worth to have a look at !
Panelists

Howard Bloom, Author, The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century
Peter Norvig, Director of Research, Google Inc.
Jon Udell, Evangelist, Microsoft Corporation
Prabhakar Raghavan, PhD, Head [...]

Semantic Web: increasing activity

‘”Semantic Technology is here.” That was the resounding message delivered at the 2008 Semantic Technology Conference (“SemTech”) that took place 18-22 May in San Jose, California.’  (said a member of the organizing committee)
There is increasing activity in the field of Semantic Web: Conferences, software development, websites (258,000 results for semantic web googled and 61,300,000 for [...]

A Tool Shed using Semantic Web

More and more Web 2.0 applications give us more and more possibilities to manage and share our bookmarks, our RSS feeds, our photos and so on: iGoogle, netvibes, linkedin, del.icio.us, flickr, twitter … but let’s be honest:  We don’t have time for all these applications, we risk to get lost.
Now a second generation of applications [...]

Semantic Web Video

This short video gives an introduction to the semantic web. Nothing really new but very well made and a reassuring test that we all know this already.
Here it is.

And here is – playing in another category – Tim Berners Lee on the Semantic Web.