Daniel? Blog

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

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.

Good News!

My second article through IBM developerWorks has been published! (there are one or two things wrong with this article, I won? say anything about it for now and will try to rectify it asap!)

It? titled “Building Semantic Web CRUD operations using PHP” (<- click the title to go read it). It? 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

Kingsley Idehen has done a fantastic blog post highlighting the fact that we?e already got a fantastic platform which encapsulates all of the necessary Linked Data, “Web 3.0“, Portable Data and WUPnP features (in addition to Relational Database and Application Hosting) in the form of Virtuoso Universal Server.

Go have a look now, the post is titled “Virtuoso? Universal Server Architecture (Conceptual and Technical)“.

Just a note to say that if you are in the Oxford area on the 6th February (2008) then please, please come to the Oxford Geek Night 5. Its at the Jericho Tavern Pub in Oxford and starts at 7:30pm. It features a bit of socialising, a bit of watching presentations and some fun.

If you do come then please come and say hello

Many thanks,

Daniel

Links:

• Oxford Geek Night 5
  

Technorati Tags: oxford, geek, night, oxfordgeeknight, ogn5, jerichotavern, jericho

Hi all, I? not feeling very well, but I have found enough energy to work today and I wanted to blog about Amazons new Web Service called SimpleDB. SimpleDB is a database with a webservice interface.

I? not going to go into too much detail about how it works, or what it does. I just want to find out whether it is more compatible with Semantic Web technology, so lets think about this:

There is a blog post by someone called Charles Ying, titled “What you need to know about Amazon SimpleDB“, he says that Amazon SimpleDB is built using a programming language called Erlang. Erlang is a functional programming language, I feel that it resembles Haskell. Now, during my undergraduate degree at Oxford Brookes University I did a module titled “Advanced Topics in Databases”, which covered Object-Relational Databases and Object-Oriented Database, but the most interesting thing it covered was Functional Databases. We were using Haskell to make a Functional Database, unfortunately we didn? go into to much detail, but we managed to query static data with yet more Haskell.

After a good look around I believe that SimpleDB is a dynamic functional database system, which can be queried using HTTP commands instead of using Erlang or SQL. I think this is probably a good thing, because it will get the “relational databases work for every situation” or “there are only relational databases” thought out of the heads of the people that believe such a thing.

But does a Functional Database / SimpleDB Model fit in with the Semantic Web? I believe so, and here are my reasons:

• Functional Programming languages have Semantic Web libraries, e.g. Swish and Trinity for Haskell, Wilbur for CLOS, (can? find any for Erlang yet, let me know if you know of any RDF tools for Erlang). Obviously you can? play with functional libraries through SimpleDB, because its all hidden behind webservices, which brings me to my next point.
• SimpleDB is hidden behind webservices, and you access it via HTTP. This means that any semantic web application that you may want to build can use the address of a query to a SimpleDB instance as a URI to an object.
• SimpleDB works using domains instead of tables, this is probably the most important of my points here. As it says on the SimpleDB website, you can go into a certain item of a domain and add a new property to that item without adding it to any other items. This is a key attribute of the semantic web, its not a typical relational database, you can add more information about an object if you need to, something a lot harder to do in a relational database.

The Functional Database Model is a nice one, and I hope that I have shown you that it does fit with the Semantic Web. However, in my opinion, Semantic Web technology is probably best suited with an Object-Oriented Database backend, as RDF describes objects (or alternatively with a triple store).

Technorati Tags: simpledb, amazon, functional, semweb, objectoriented, erlang