Daniel’s Blog

I was wondering about the Presidents in the United States of America, and wondered what their religions were. So I zipped up some SPARQL queries to run against DBpedia, they aren’t perfect (i.e. they don’t capture all of the presidents due to mislabeling and me not being too bothered about the answers), but it provides some answers.

The Democrats:

SELECT ?PresidentName ?ReligionName
WHERE
{
?president
dbpprop:party <http://dbpedia.org/resource/Democratic_Party_%28United_States%29>;
dbpprop:order dbpedia:President_of_the_United_States;
<http://dbpedia.org/ontology/religion> ?Religion;
rdfs:label ?PresidentName.
FILTER (lang(?PresidentName) = "" || langMatches(lang(?PresidentName), "en")).
?Religion rdfs:label ?ReligionName.
FILTER (lang(?ReligionName) = "" || langMatches(lang(?ReligionName), "en"))
} ORDER BY ?ReligionName

Which the answer is viewable “Democratic Presidents Religions”

The Republicans

SELECT ?PresidentName ?ReligionName
WHERE
{
?president
dbpprop:party <http://dbpedia.org/resource/Republican_Party_%28United_States%29>;
dbpprop:order dbpedia:President_of_the_United_States;
<http://dbpedia.org/ontology/religion> ?Religion;
rdfs:label ?PresidentName.
FILTER (lang(?PresidentName) = "" || langMatches(lang(?PresidentName), "en")).
?Religion rdfs:label ?ReligionName.
FILTER (lang(?ReligionName) = "" || langMatches(lang(?ReligionName), "en"))
} ORDER BY ?Religion

Which the answer is available directly here: “Republican Presidents religions”

Please note

• It doesn’t return all presidents of the parties
• It does use the DBPedia SPARQL engine (powered by OpenLink Virtuoso)
• It does use some shortcuts (i.e. not defining PREFIXs and the FROM clause), as the DBPedia SPARQL engine provides these nice shortcuts.

It’s absolutely fantastic that more and more people are taking up Semantic Web solutions and providing RDF.

Guys and Girls it’s time for the next step!

This is something that I’ve been thinking about for a while. People, although they are taking up the SemWeb, they don’t seem to understand the full power of it’s expressiveness. This isn’t a providing problem, this is a usage problem…. Yes it’s fantastic that we can interlink objects now, but what does it mean to be an object? What can we learn implicitly and explicitly from this highly-structured and highly-distributed web of data objects? and finally, what can we do with what we learn?

These questions are the real heart and real soul of the Semantic Web, and an area in which us Semantic Web advocates have really mentioned much before.

And please note, this shouldn’t *just* be an academic thing. Systems which embrace this, and which are in the wild, would greatly benefit. It’s breaking down the walled-garden and combining the intelligent systems which have previously been in websites like amazon.co.uk and google, and exposing those methods to the real semantic data.

The key to all of this is improvement of society. If your project improves society (or helps the environment in some way), then your project should be excellent. Whether or not it makes money!

Hope this all makes sense…. feel free to ask questions, or give your opinion.

Daniel

Here are some predictions for Computing & IT in 2009:

• Hardware
  • More and more Cloud Computing services (and improvements)
  • Personal Supercomputer Hardware (such as NVidia Tesla)
• Software
  • Advancement of ease-of-use in Operating Systems, particularly Linux… which will see more of a take up this year than ever before.
  • Browsers (particularly Mozilla-based and Opera) will start to contain more and more Semantic Web based features.
• Web
  • More people and organisations providing Semantic Web services. Leaders in this field will help greatly, such as the BBC, BT and the UK Government.
  • The original developers and advocates of the Semantic Web, will start to move away from it a little in an attempt to improve the semantics of the Semantic Web. Areas such as Fuzzy Logic, Bayesian Probability, Advanced Description Logic, Intelligent Agents and Artificial Neural Networks will be bridged with the Semantic Web by researchers.
  • Web development will become more and more like desktop application development.
  • Web design will become more focused on providing the data rather than providing pictures, fusing with Information Architecture.

BUT! More importantly, things may seem to slow down in terms of development within the computing field. This won’t be entirely the case, we’ll see more efficiency improvements than feature additions… and these developments will probably help the efficiency of those companies using that software/hardware.

Although I’ve mentioned all of this. Please note that I truly feel that we should move away from a materialistic view to a more societal and/or spiritual point of view. This means that although new things may be released in the future, we should recognise them, but not be tempted by them if they are not necessary updates.

Good News!

My second article through IBM developerWorks has been published! (there are one or two things wrong with this article, I won’t say anything about it for now and will try to rectify it asap!)

It’s titled “Building Semantic Web CRUD operations using PHP” (<– click the title to go read it). It’s essentially about showing:

• The similarities and differences between the Relational Database Model and the Resource Description Framework model.
• The similarities and differences between SQL and SPARQL.
• How to implement SPARQL calls for Creation, Reading, Updation and Deletion (CRUD) operations using PHP.

After a bit of toying with it (keep at it, because it will be challenging but worth it!), you should be able to build your Web Application with RDF and SPARQL manipualtion.

If anyone has any questions about it (or about my previous developerWorks article which was titled “Intelligent Agents and the Semantic Web“) then please do let me know.

Oh yeah, by the way… both of my articles so far have been “featured” articles on the IBM developerWorks front page

Daniel

Hi all,

Just letting you all know that this months Semantic Web Gang podcast for October 2008 was released today. It’s available on the The Semantic Web Gang blog as a post titled “October 2008: The Semantic Web Gang discusses the launch of Twine“. It is in fact about the recent public release of the Twine.com system by Radar Networks.

Plus, we’ve got Nova Spivack (the CEO of Radar/Twine) and Jim Wissner (the Chief Architect of Twine) on the call!

It’s great. I am on the call, I didn’t say much on the call particularly as just as I was about to ask a question someone else usually piped up just before me and asked a question (often the same question!). I appear at the start and the end of the recording though.

The central thing that I am interested in is actually still under the hood of Twine. I’m incredibly interested by the progression of the recommendation algorithms, particularly through modern machine learning techniques. I’m also interested in their automatic ontology editing. It’s very exciting, and I do have a feeling that the public release that you see today isn’t the entirety of twine.

It was lovely to speak to Nova and Jim, and the rest of the gang. There should be another episode later this month

Enjoy!

Daniel

Intelligent Agents and the Semantic Web

One of my (independent) articles has been published as a feature article on the IBM developerWorks website. It is “Intelligent Agents and the Semantic Web“. Not only that, but they also published a podcast episode with me. Have a read, the examples are in Java, but all the theory applies to any programming language and agent library.

What? “Semantic” Web, “Linked” Data and Web “3.0″? What are they?!!!?

Today (Tuesday 28th October 2008), I gave a seminar/discussion of the new web-based buzzwords, and explained that terms like Semantic Web, Linked Data and Web 3.0 aren’t marketing nonsense but very well defined techniques and technologies. The seminar went really well, and the ideas were well received.

In fact, you can have a look at the “iPaper” version of the slides , thanks to my academia.edu account.

New main website design

I’ve got a brand new combine harvester…. well, actually a new main website design which explains what I do, what I’m interested in… and gives a lot more info than my old one did. Go have a look at vanirsystems.com.

Yeah, you heard me right:

Linked Data is more important than the Large Hadron Collider

My points:

• I feel that the Large Hadron Collider is a bit of a waste of time, money and a big waste of energy (think of all the carbon emissions!).
  • Why do we need to know the very very smallest parts of things?
  • Why do we need to know what happened microseconds after the big bang?
  • Why not just analyse what happened if the Higgs Boson was and wasn’t found (every possible aspect)?
  • Face it: It’s not going to cure Cancer, or prevent HIV
  • Face it: we’re still going to be here whether or not the Large Hadron Collider was successful
• Linked Data on the other hand is incredibly important
  • Everything in real life (conceptual/abstract and objective/physical) is interconnected with everything else
  • We have a lot of data about everything, but it’s not interconnected
  • Linked Data allows for the interconnectedness of data, and therefore true computation modelling of everything. Which then allows for a real and useful insight into scientific (and artistic and historic) data!
  • Just imagine a world where you can easily browse through the history of the atom, and then delve into the science found on the atom, and then go deeper into the subatomic level, and then browse back out into the historic realm, finding out about experiments that happened and whether it had any impact on society.
  • Thanks to Linked Data:
    • a lot of problems can be solved before they arise
    • new areas of research can be formed
    • “recreating the wheel” can be prevented
    • a really interesting browsing experience can be achieved

So there we go. That is why Linked Data is more important than the Large Hadron Collider….

Sorry to the physics-geeks, but maybe you can gain something useful from Linked Data if you aren’t already. I know that some Chemistry and Physics people already have some Semantic Web / Linked Data research & development going on, and hey Tim Berners-Lee did start the Web project at CERN.

I fear that a lot of people within science and even computer science forget to look at things with Holistic eyes, as a lot of science and mathematics is incredibly Reductionist.

What happens when you combine:

• BBC Radio Data
• BBC Radio Online Listening
• Attention Profiling
• OpenID
• OAuth
• Ruby on Rails

Something called Radio Pop!

Radio Pop is a prototype system by the BBC Radio Labs, it has the eye candy and a good concept… let’s hope that it goes further! They’re certainly heading in the DataPortability, Linked Data and WUPnP direction, which is fantastic and will help with the future evolutions of the Web.

I’m hoping that they’ll release an RDF and SPARQL API in the near future (at the moment they have a plain XML based API).

What is Google Chrome?

Google Chrome is a fresh expression of web browser, they’ve tried to make it quite bare-bones in terms of user interface but the backend is hooked into Mozilla Gecko (the engine behind Firefox, K-Meleon and Camino) and WebKit (the engine behind Apple’s Safari, and Adobe AIR), but with it’s own JavaScript engine (also Open Source) called V8.

At the time of writing this, only the Windows version was available. Mac and Linux versions are due to be released soon.

I’m writing this on Wednesday 3rd September 2008, I’m testing Google Chrome version 0.2.146.27 on Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate on a Toshiba Qosmio (2.4GHz Intel Dual Core).

Initial impressions

• Good: It’s reasonably quick with loading pages, everything seems to load up at the same time.
• Good: I like the URI highlighting. You’ll notice in the address bar the domain name is darker than the protocol, directory and file names
• Good: It handles viewing my own webpage nicely
• Good: handles javascript graphics manipulation well (for instance, my recent ModernEsotericChristianity page which uses the OpenLink AJAX ToolKit load up RDF and then show (and manipulate) an SVG graph using JavaScript)
• Good: It loads scriptaculous and jQuery (including Visual jQuery) well.
• Good: you can use search engines other than Google, in the address/search bar.
• Bad: No menu bar… I can’t stand not having a menu bar, not having one is one of the things I really dislike in Microsoft Windows Vista, the newest Microsoft Office and Microsoft Internet Explorer. It is a lot easier to use a menu bar than it is to use some silly drop down button.
• Bad: No status bar
• Bad: No plugins/add-ons/extensions… like the Firefox extensions that you get. Personally, I can’t live without the Web Developer Toolbar and OpenLink Data Explorer. I know that some people wouldn’t be able to live without Firebug, and soon alot of people will crave Mozilla Ubiquity.

Tests

How about using well established web-based tests to find out how it fairs up against Firefox, Safari, Opera and Internet Explorer.

Conclusion

The conclusion is, if you want stability when it comes to accessing pages then go for Google Chrome as it is most likely to render the style and graphics of a page correctly. Safari comes up second in terms of style renderisation, followed by Firefox and Opera. Quite clearly you should never use Internet Explorer.

In terms of easiest to use, Chrome provides a nice interface but I think it needs some extra bits (such as a menu bar). Opera also provides some neat user experience features. Safari is really simple to use. Firefox has a reasonable user interface and it’s theming can make things even easier if desired. I personally find Internet Explorer really awkward to use.

For extensibility, nothing beats Firefox. The add-on system is practically perfect with its update from repository feature, and there are so many extensions in that repository. There are some plugins for Safari (see pimpmysafari.com ) , although not many. Unfortunately Chrome doesn’t have extensions yet, but as it reuses modules from the Firefox and Safari engine I suspect it will do in the future. As far as I know Opera and Internet Explorer don’t really have extensions yet, their developers tend to prefer to build features into the software.

For now, I think I’ll be sticking with Firefox… but I do suspect that Google Chrome will grow, and because of competition that will make Firefox, Safari and the other browsers grow also.

Peace and Light,

Daniel

—

UPDATE - the hour of 0 on the 10th September 2008

After making a fresh install of the 64bit Opera version 9.25 on my Ubuntu machine I achieved an 84/100 score for the Acid3 test. Which is obviously the highest score available now.

The weirdest thing is that in order to achieve such a high score, it needs to be a fresh install… not quite sure why. Please note that the scores in my original post are not fresh installs and, Firefox in particular, had a lot of use before the test.

Just a Reminder.

If you haven’t signed up and want to come then please click the “Sign-up-now” link at the bottom of: http://knowledgeunconference.eventwax.com/bristol-knowledge-unconference

Recent email:

Here’s the recent email that I sent out to those on the attendee list:

– Reminder Section –

We are just sending you a reminder that this Friday, the 5th September 2008, the Bristol Knowledge Unconference will be running between 2pm and 6pm at eOffice Bristol on Wine Street in Bristol City Centre. Remember, it’s completely free to attend, we aren’t going to ask for any money.

More details about what, where and when are available on the website: http://knowledgeunconference.eventwax.com/bristol-knowledge-unconference

– Good News Section –

—- Tea, Coffee and Water —-

As some of you know, we were having problems finding tea and coffee machines. Luckily, eOffice have been very kind enough to offer them to us (with water) for free along with the conference room. So that problem has now been resolved.

If you wish to bring snacks in then you are very much free to do so as we won’t be providing snacks this time (maybe next time).

—- Preset slots are now set! —-

When organising the event I decided that we needed to have two definite preset slots in order to kick off the event… these slots shouldn’t be seen as “keynotes”, it is purely to get into the spirit of the event and they will be identical in structure to the four “set-on-the-day” slots.

I am pleased to announce that we’ve got the two preset slots set:
* 1st Preset Talk: “OpenShakespeare and Milton” by Iain Emsley of the eScience department at STFC
* 2nd Preset Talk: “The Fragmentation of Knowledge in the Brain” by Derek Smith, a Senior Lecturer in Informatics and Cognitive Science at the University of Wales Institute, Cardiff

Both preset slots are about different aspects of knowledge storage, the first is a computational aspect and the second is a biological aspect. So it’ll definitely be rather interesting!

—- “Set-on-the-day” slots —

We have four “set-on-the-day” slots available, which means that on the day we turn up and those who can do a 15 minute presentation, will then put their name on a card and unless we’ve got just four (or less) people on cards we’ll take a vote for the presentations that we wish to hear. Any presentations not done will be placed on the list for the next Bristol Knowledge Unconference.

So if you’re happy quickly zipping up a 15 minute presentation about something related to knowledge then please do, it can be techie or scientific or even business related. Just remember that the target audience is a mixture of technologies, scientists, new media specialists and business-oriented people.

Just a reminder, the structure of all talks throughout the day is:
* 15 minute standard presentation
* 5 minute table talk, where people talk at their tables about the subject matter at hand, this tends to generate some more interesting ideas for the….
* 10 minute questions and comments time, in which the presenter gets quizzed

—- Posters —-

I have been asked by someone to put up a poster because they won’t be able to attend this time. If you fancy bringing along a poster to put up promoting your product, service or even job vacancies then please do.

—- Other bits —-

* At the last count we have 60 people on the attendee list, and from all kinds of aspects of knowledge - which is wonderful!
* At the venue there will be: projector, wifi, seats, tables. I will also be bringing two laptops: MacBook (with Mac OS X 10.5, including Firefox 3, Keynote, OpenOffice and Adobe Reader) and a Toshiba Qosmio 17inch Laptop (with Windows Vista Ultimate, including Firefox 3, Internet Explorer 7, OpenOffice and Adobe Reader). Feel free to bring your own laptop and/or other mobile devices.
* If you don’t want to present then that’s absolutely fine, there is no pressure. If you do want to present and don’t get the chance, then there will be more Bristol Knowledge Unconferences in the future, in which you’ll be able to present at.
* Remember: the event is going to be quite sociable, fun and a great place to learn in an informal atmosphere.
* Bring a digital camera along if you can, take some photos and then upload them to your favourite photo sharing site. If you can take movies too then that’s awesome.
* If you have a blog then please do review the event once it’s finished if you can. Your feedback will be greatly appreciated and will go into making the next one even better.

– Contact Section –

As usual, if you have any questions or comments then please do let me know either by email, skype or phone.

– Finally –

I’ll see you there!

Daniel