Daniel? Blog

I? quite tired as it? quite late and I?e been working on the new site all evening. But, I have just released it! It? called lc8n.eu

The site is a web application which acts a bit like a URL Shortener, but for locations instead. It forwards you to a map of a particular location.

Heres an example of where I am:
* https://lc8n.eu/a

It? at the very beginnings of it? life, and I? planning to do a lot with it. I hope you enjoy using it! You can use it like this (via twitter):
“Hi everyone. I? currently located here: https://lc8n.eu/a , quite tired because I?e been working on the new site all evening.” - https://twitter.com/danieljohnlewis/status/5993518753

As I say. It is quite early on in its life, so if you have any thoughts, comments or bugs that you?e spotted then please do get in touch. I?l be more than happy to answer.

Well I?e released details of the Bristol Knowledge Unconference 2009.

Our main website is: Bristol Knowledge Unconference 2009 : https://www.craftivism.net/wiki/UnCraftivism/Bristol_Knowledge_Unconference_2009

It will take place in the Arnolfini Arts Centre in Bristol on the 12th and 13th December 2009 as part of the “unCraftivism” satellite event which is part of the Craftivism exhibition. unCraftivism is about merging technology and art, and Bristol Knowledge Unconference will be one stream of working during that weekend, other events during the weekend will be done in collaboration with Dorkbot Bristol and the Bristol Robotics Lab.

The Knowledge Unconference will be similar to what it was last year, it?l be all about Knowledge - although we?e slightly more focused this time and have a subtitle: “The Art of Knowledge”, and will experiment with the mixture of art and science that is knowledge. Last year we were lucky to have over 50 people turn up from diverse areas of expertise such as: Knowledge Management, New Media, Semantic Web, Business, Chemistry and Psychology… and we hope to continue to have a diverse mixture of people to take on the subject of knowledge, with a twist of art.

I hope that you will be able to join us, as this will be a really exciting event.

Feel free to get in touch any time if you have any queries:

Daniel Lewis
* UK Telephone: 07834355516
* International Telephone: +447834355516
* Email and Jabber: danieljohnlewis [at] gmail [dot] com
* Bristol Knowledge Unconference 2009 website: https://www.craftivism.net/wiki/UnCraftivism/Bristol_Knowledge_Unconference_2009
* Twitter: @danieljohnlewis
* Skype: daniel.lewis

Hi all,

One of my last blog posts was about trying to find a job here in/around Bristol. Well the good news is that I?e found something to do

From today (Wednesday 10th June 2009), I have a two week contract at nameless. A lovely web design/development agency in the heart of Bristol. They really are a lovely company, who know practically everything about nice user interfaces coupled with strict observance of web standards. It? going to be good to work as a Content Analyst (a task which is usually assigned to Information Architects) for them for two weeks - particularly as I know some of their staff quite well.

But that? only a temporary thing. After the two weeks with nameless, I shall be going into permanent full-time work at another web agency in Bristol called Sift Media, which is a publishing company specialising in professional (B2B) online communities (those in Accounting may know of AccountingWEB, those into Knowledge Management may know of KnowledgeBoard…. both of these are projects by Sift Media). I shall be working in the technical team at Sift Media as a Web Developer and probably will offer my various other skills (such as Technical Writing, Knowledge Engineering, Semantic Web etc) when they are needed. Sift Media is part of a larger organisation called The Sift Group, which is a more general web organisation providing the Collaboration and Social Networking platform called Sift Unity.

I? very excited at being able to work for both nameless and Sift Media, as both are incredibly professionally and socially reputable organisations.

This is the next part of my journey!

Thank you to all of those who have helped me in my job search, and to those who have sent me their best wishes. I really appreciate it.

Cheers,

Daniel

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? perfect (i.e. they don? 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 <https://dbpedia.org/resource/Democratic_Party_%28United_States%29>;
dbpprop:order dbpedia:President_of_the_United_States;
<https://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 <https://dbpedia.org/resource/Republican_Party_%28United_States%29>;
dbpprop:order dbpedia:President_of_the_United_States;
<https://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? 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? absolutely fantastic that more and more people are taking up Semantic Web solutions and providing RDF.

Guys and Girls it? time for the next step!

This is something that I?e been thinking about for a while. People, although they are taking up the SemWeb, they don? seem to understand the full power of it? expressiveness. This isn? a providing problem, this is a usage problem…. Yes it? 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? *just* be an academic thing. Systems which embrace this, and which are in the wild, would greatly benefit. It? 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

Rumours have it, that there will be another Bristol Knowledge Unconference.

The last one was a success… a good turn out, some interesting talks and discussions. So it? only right to do another one.

This one coming up doesn? have a date yet, or a location. It will, unlike the previous, have a “theme” which I?l be trying to get speakers for…. and of course, it?l be in Bristol somewhere.

So… I need some helpers. Please do get in contact with me if you can:

• help me find a location
• help do some general organisational/administrative assistance
• offer to do a talk about knowledge, set to a specific them
• give some money to pay for food and drink

I will strive to make this Unconference completely free for attendees, which does mean that we require the location to be free (or sponsored) and the food to be supplied (or paid for) by some organisation(s)/people.

So please do get in contact if you can help in any way by sending me an email ( danieljohnlewis at gmail dot com ). Else, I?l keep you all up to date through my blog.

Thank you,

Daniel Lewis

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? be entirely the case, we?l see more efficiency improvements than feature additions… and these developments will probably help the efficiency of those companies using that software/hardware.

Although I?e 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.

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

OK, so I?e fully moved in now to my flat in Bristol (well, there are a few things still to unpack and to sort out…. but everything is now in the new flat). I had a few problems getting the Internet sorted quickly, but I have just received my shiny new cable modem.

Over the past week I?e been training myself up on the internals of Virtuoso, in particular RDF Views and ODBC-based hosting. I?e got a lot of things to add to my “Universe of Discourse”, and you?l see them in due course (most likely in the form of blog posts). You?l also see a report on my experience at XTech 2008 soon, which happened earlier in the month. I?e also got a bit of catching up in terms of latest announcements on the Semantic Web / Linked Data front.

In the meantime I was asked by Pete Cooper to take some pictures of my bookshelves. He asked a while ago, but I thought I? wait until I moved, so that things could be a bit clearer and more sorted. So, the long awaited bookshelf pictures are available via flickr.

I think I am going to enjoy living here, its a great location and I?e got loads more room here than I did in my old place. Lots of things to look forward to also.

You?l hear from me again soon.

Daniel