Daniel’s Blog

I would like a new computer for my work and studies. I would like to build it rather than buy an all in one package, and I want to do so in a way so that it is optimised for my work and studies (naturally). So here are my requirements:

• It must be able to run linux (most likely Ubuntu (probably the standard Gnome Version)).
• It must be good for Symbolic Logic Programming and Declarative Functional Programming (e.g. languages such as Prolog and Haskell).
• It must be good for very mathematical equations, such as the ones that you find in Artificial Neural Networks and other Artificial Life (ALife) Systems.
• It must be able to run the Java Virtual Machine and the Mono Virtual Machine very well.
• It must be able to run OpenLink Virtuoso.
• It must have a network card (ethernet connection), preferably 10/100/1000.

I’d also like to be able to plug it into a 5.1 Surround Sound System, plug into TV and have a DVD Drive - but these are not essential, and just for a bit of entertainment.

Does anyone have any advice on hardware (please keep in mind that I won’t buy any of this stuff until late Summer, so estimated suggestions are good)?

I just felt an Earthquake here in Oxford… bizarre Documentally said it is centred in Northamptonshire. Approximate time-date: 00:59am 27th February 2008.

Thank you to Tom Morris for pointing out that a SKOS primer is in Working Draft.

The SKOS Primer is indeed available now in W3C Working Draft Format. There has also been an update to the SKOS Reference Document recently (also currently in W3C Working Draft Format).

I am pointing this out here for two reasons:

1. I used the SKOS format for my undergraduate project to link tags together in a meaningful way
2. OpenLink Data Spaces (ODS) also uses SKOS (Documentation of ODS with SKOS is available)

Briefly, what is SKOS?

SKOS is a dialect/vocabulary of RDF to build thesauri and taxonomies which are also known as “concept schemes”. With SKOS you can build structures of terminologies using relationships such as “narrower”, “broader”, “prefLabel” (for a preferred label) and “altLabel” for an alternative label. Its a very useful format, and highly recommended.

Tomorrow (aka Wednesday 27th February 2008) I will be travelling to (and from) London for a very important Lunchtime Meeting. Which does mean that I won’t be online for a big chunk of the day, call me if its urgent, email me if its not so urgent. I will be working on OpenLink stuff on my travels. I apologise for any inconvenience.

There is a competition for developing a logo for the DataPortability Project.

I’ve added my contribution:

You can win stuff! You can also see other peoples contributions on the flickr pool.

Technorati Tags: dataportability, data, portability, logo, competition

What DataPortability Is:

I just spent my Sunday evening (from about 6pm GMT until 9:30pm GMT) having a discussion about what data portability is exactly. Here is my first informal definition, which seems to fit the general idea that was being talked about.

First things first. DataPortability is a brand… its a kind of un-organisation (a bit like BarCamps are un-conferences); a group of people and organisations who have the same philosophy, a philosophy of the portability of data. Every member of DataPortability should push for (advocate/evangelise) portability of data to web-users, developers and organisations. The DataPortability Project will support other projects/groups working towards data portability (at the moment this explicitly includes communities involved in OpenID, OAuth, Microformats and the Semantic Web). Some members of DataPortability are also involved with legal issues and privacy which are just as important as the portability of data. The DataPortability Project is there to support people into a Web of Data.

Portability of data, or data portability is portable data. In other words, data can be copy/pasted and/or moved from one location to another. This is dependent on accessibility.

There is an issue of identity of data, in my opinion this can be described in a format such as RDF and identified using a URI (in the case of a user identifier this could be an OpenID, which is a URI connected with an authentication protocol).

Similar to the Semantic Web?

There are things “in” the DataPortability Project which are similar to things in the Semantic Web Project/Community and vice-versa. The Semantic Web basically provides the theory/research, tools and techniques to create and link objects together. The DataPortability project, however, provides advice and support to create objects which can be moved around over the web. Both groups are looking into privacy and legal issues. Both groups do use and research each others recommendations.

Linked Data

Linked Data is essential, I can’t stress this enough, and I will be focusing on this a lot in the future. It is not explicitly part of the DataPortability Project, but it is part of the Semantic Web. It is essential for the Web of Data to exist.

Note

These are very rough thoughts based on an informal skype chat, DataPortability members are developing a more formal definition. I’ll let you know when its released, but the above are my thoughts.

Document Links

• The Data Portability Project Site
• The Data Portability General Google Group
• Semantic Web Frequently Asked Questions <- very good resource for those starting to figure out what the Semantic Web is.

I just had a little thought about how to explain the Ontologies that you find on the Semantic Web. You could say:

An Ontology is a bit like a thesaurus, but with a hierarchy of terms each with its own properties

SemWeb people: Does this make sense?

Non SemWeb people: I wonder if this is a useful way to understand Ontologies.

Here is my DataPortabilityAndMe video

John Breslin‘s DataPortabilityAndMe Video is also good, and so is Ian Forrester‘s DataPortabilityAndMe Video.

Technorati Tags: DataPortabilityAndMe, dataportability, semanticweb, web

Some people have written up about SemanticCamp on their blog posts, here are the ones that I know of (in no particular order):

• Daniel Lewis : “SemanticCampLondon - Quick Review“
• Yves Raimond: “Yay for SemanticCamp!“
• Frances Berriman: “SemanticCamp London“
• Jeremy Keith: “Semantopoly“
• Tom Heath: “Saturday and Sunday at SemanticCamp“
• Benjamin Nowack: “Back from SemanticCamp London“
• Andrew Walkingshaw: “Semantic Camp London“
• Glenn Jones: “Semantic Camp London“
• Premasagar Rose: “SemanticCampLondon“
• Tom Morris: “SemanticCamp Roundup“
• Jon Linklater-Johnson: “Semantic Camp“
• Henry Story: “Semantic Bar Camp London and Flue“

The best thing is that the event seems to have good reviews from both the Semantic Web community and the Microformats community… which means that it was a success in regard to bringing the two together!

(p.s. if I have forgotten any then let me know and I’ll add them to the list. I would point you to the Technorati SemanticCamp tag search, but not everybody tags and uses Technorati)

Technorati Tags: semanticcamplondon, reviews, blogs

After reading a blog post by Ben Goertzel about formalising Consciousness and Will using Hyperset Theory, I delved into reminding myself about some set theory and learning a lot about Hypersets.

I was quite astonished to find that the whole of the RDF language is perfect for Hyperset theory. Thank you Ben for writing that blog post, it came at a perfect time because of my recent talk at SemanticCamp was about the technologies that have and should influence the development of the semantic web, and I mentioned:

• Object Orientation
• Frames
• Semantic Networks

I can now add Hyperset Theory to the list.

What is a Hyperset (briefly)?

A hyperset is a set which can contain itself, so it is recursively declarative. A good example is a set of types, which is a type itself [1]:

Types = {Types, Booleans}

Booleans = {true, false}

To quote from Piotr Kaminskis report [1]:

The advantage is that types and instances are all part of the same model and can be treated
uniformly, which is very important for semistructured data

Which should sound very familiar to Semantic Web developers because an Ontology (a set of hierarchical classes) is defined in the same structure as a set of instances, which is (in most modern cases) RDF.

Piotr actually goes on to develop a metamodel called Braque based on Partially Ordered Hypersets (aka Hyper-pomsets), and actually applies that to the Semantic Web in a second report [2] submitted as a Master of Science Thesis.

This also comes back to something which was mentioned at SemanticCamp: “someones metadata is another persons data”. For example, a hierarchy of animal types is an ontology as it is a class hierarchy and therefore metadata, however, it is also data as names and properties are themselves atomic (this might not be the best example, but its the best I can think of at the moment).

Hyperset theory is technically a subtheory of Non-well-founded set theory.

So we, as Semantic Web developers, can learn from this

As the ontology-instances relationship is all just a lot of triples in a big set, which isn’t explicitly classical set theory and could quite easily be and often is a hyperset, we can learn from hyperset theory too. Where does it really help, where does it hinder, are there any good work-arounds which are used in hyperset theory which could be used in my RDF. These are all questions which can be asked from hyperset theory and potentially applied to Semantic Web theory.

There are similar questions that can be asked of Frames, Semantic Networks and Object Orientation. What can we learn, because the Semantic Web is just an extension of these things which provides an even longer history to the Semantic Web than what people often think of as just the Web, RDF and OWL.

References

[1] Kaminski, P. “Using Hypesets to Represent Semistructured Data”, Information Systems Modeling 2002. Available online <https://www.ideanest.com/braque/ISM2002.pdf> (Accessed: 20th February 2008)

[2] Kaminski, P. “Integrating Information on the Semanitc Web Using Partially Ordered Multi Hypersets”, MSc Thesis at the University of Waterloo. 2002. Available Online: <https://www.ideanest.com/braque/Thesis-web.pdf> (Accessed: 20th February 2008)