Raw

Ok, my first attempt at a round-up (in response to Phil's observation of Planetary damage). Thanks to the conference there's loads more here than there's likely to be subsequent weeks, although it's still only a fairly random sample and some of the links here are to heaps of other resources…

Incidentally, if anyone's got a list/links for SemWeb-related blogs that aren't on Planet RDF, I'd be grateful for a pointer. PS. Ok, I forget… are there any blogs that aren't on Dave's list yet..?

Quote of the week:

In the Semantic Web, it is not the Semantic which is new, it is the Web which is new.

- Chris Welty, IBM (lifted from TimBL's slides)

Events

• 4th International Semantic Web Conference - happened this week, see : ISWC2005 Semantic Bank
• Semantic Desktop Workshop, 9-13 December 2005, Berlin
• Semantic Web Applications and Perspectives/Workshop (SWAP2005), 14-16 December, 2005
• Jena User Conference - May 10-11 2006, Bristol UK

Docs etc

• Conference highlights on the #swig chump: 2005-11-06, -07, -08, -09, -10; Ian's notes; John's resources; Leo's stories; Uldis' call to action; del.icio.us/iswc2005; flickr/iswc2005; foaf-moblog.
• Slides from Sir TimBL's conference keynotes: Semantic Web for the Industry, Putting the Web back in Semantic Web
• Daniel Weitzner's keynote: Privacy, Provenance, Property and Personhood
• Long-time SW researcher Stefan Decker now has a blog, inspirationally entitled Stefan Decker on the Semantic Web. (Stefan's one of the head honchos at DERI). Sample snippet:
  
  

  I just noticed the article from Dan Zambonini " Is Web 2.0 killing the Semantic Web?". From my perspective the article shows a misconception that people seems to have around the Semantic Web: the Semantic Web effort itself is not provide applications (like the Web 2.0 meme indicates) - it rather provides standards to interlink applications.

• Leigh Dodds has two pieces demonstrating neat facilities offered by ARQ the SPARQL query API for Java: parameterised queries and extension functions.
• A new W3C Working Group has been chartered: Rule Interchange Format WG - " to produce a core rule language plus extensions which together allow rules to be translated between rule languages and thus transferred between rule systems.". As noted by dajobe, phase 1 includes making a new XML syntax for RDF…
• UMBC Semantic Web Reference Card - if you only print one thing this year…or did you already do the SPARQL Reference card..?
• WebDescription - root wiki page for collecting notes on web description languages (ESW Wiki, announcement)
• Bot - IRC/Jabber chat bots that are either in use by Semantic Web developers or use Semantic Web technologies (ESW Wiki)
• microformat FAQs for RDF fans (ESW Wiki)
• W3C working draft : WSDL 2.0 - RDF Mapping
• SKOS (Simple Knowledge Organisation System) updated drafts: SKOS Core Vocabulary Specification, SKOS Core Guide
• working draft: SPARQL Protocol for RDF Using WSDL 1.1
• A relational algebra for SPARQL, Note on database layouts for SPARQL datastores (PDFs, Richard Cyganiak, HP)
• Amateur Fiction Online - The Web of Community Trust A Case Study in Community Focused Design for the SemanticWeb ( PDF)
• Building a Semantic Wiki - IEEE article. See also: SemperWiki - Semantic Personal Wiki (PDF), WikSAR - Towards a Semantic Wiki Experience (PDF)

Software and stuff

• Semantic Web Challenge applications (winner: CONFOTO - congrats bengee!)
• Piggy Bank 2.1.1 released.
• IRIS is a semantic desktop application framework that enables users to create a "personal map" across their office-related information objects. IRIS includes a machine-learning platform to help automate this process. It provides "dashboard" views, contextual navigation, and relationship-based structure across an extensible suite of office applications, including a calendar, web and file browser, e-mail client, and instant messaging client.
  
  (open source release due Jan 2006)
• MKSearch - "A new kind of search engine" - RDF-backed (Sesame) with Web crawler, extracts and indexes metadata.
• FOAFRealm - Our goal is to design and implement D-FOAF, a distributed authentication and trust infrastructure without a centralised authority. D-FOAF will be a backbone for trust applications based on social relationships and will establish identity of users similar to the way we establish identify and trust in real life.
• Perl Net::Flickr::RDF
• WordPress SIOC (Semantically-Interlinked Online Communities) plugin updated (just copy wp-sioc.php into the root of your WP install and it just works)
• OntoMedia is intended for the representation of heterogenous media through description of the semantic content of that media. The representation may be limited to the description of some or all of the elements contained within the source or may include information regarding the narrative relationship that these elements have both to the media and to each other.
• mSpace is an interaction model to help explore relationships in information - "Imagine Google on iTunes"

Blog post title of the week:

Don't give me that monkey-ass Web 1.0, either

- Uche Ogbuji

Also…a new threat to Semantic Web developers has been discovered: typhoid!, and the key to the Web's full potential is… Tetris.

other weeks