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A stable content environment for the dynamic media market

That Linked Open Data will act as a future technologie for media companies is a well known thesis. But Wolters Kluwer demonstrates the very real praxis of that. I had the chance to talk to Christian Dirschl, Content Architect at Wolters Kluwer in munich.

Thomas Thurner: Wolters Kluwer has recently appeared as a strong supporter of the Semantic Web community. You are also one of the Use Case partners in the LOD2 project. What is the interest of Wolters Kluwer in the Semantic Web?

Christian Dirschl: The mission of Wolters Kluwer is to be “The Professional’s First Choice”. Our customers are using more and more the Web and its technologies as an environment for their daily work. This includes also new access paths to information like mobiles or tablets. The Semantic Web with its capabilities of using accepted standards on the one hand and being able to add new information and intelligence to the Web on the other hand is a proper and necessary part of this overall development. Wolters Kluwer will help its customers in leveraging this potential by being an innovative and constitutive actor within the community. In the end, we want to offer better products right at the point of need in order to support our customers’ core processes more efficiently.

Thomas Thurner: Wolters Kluwer is one out of 3 Use Case partners in LOD2 – you are the lead of the publishing & media use case – what is this use case all about?

Christian Dirschl: The Publishing & Media Use Case covers three main aspects.
First, we want to find out how Semantic Web technologies and data can enhance our own internal core processes, which we call the Content Supply Chain. The aim is to use Semantic Web standards internally, to access data – especially Open Government Data – from the cloud in order to offer our customers more relevant information in a linked and integrated manner with lower costs than we do it today.
Second, we want to support the further development of the Semantic Web by publishing data into the cloud. We hope to achieve a win-win situation with the community, so that we help the cloud to deal with the legal domain in a more knowledgeable way; but also that our information is widely used and linked to other relevant data sources.
Third, we have to explore future trends in the development of new licensing and business models. The world of the Semantic Web is in this respect fundamentally different from traditional publishing business models and we have to find and implement new ways how best to monetize our assets.

Thomas Thurner: Media companies like Wolters Kluwer have been familiar with traditional approaches and technologies (like taxonomies or XML) to organize content for years. Do you see this as an advantage to make the step towards linked data, or is the semantic web rather a “webby thing”?

Christian Dirschl: First of all, I don’t think that media companies on average are used to taxonomies or XML. There is a wide variety in this area. We at Wolters Kluwer work already a long time with this technology and from a content or data point of view, the Semantic Web is simply a big step forward. So in this respect, it is definitely an advantage to have experience in structured data and metadata.
The challenges lie more in other areas like technology and the mindset of the people, what relevant “information” will look like and where it will come from in the future. The Semantic Web standards are a technological challenge for our business. We are used to adhere to internal and therefore proprietary standards and the shift to these open standards requires a lot of know-how that we are currently developing.
The more fundamental challenge is about a new paradigm of what information is. People are still thinking in isolated products and the publisher being the main delivery channel of information to its customers. The Semantic Web gives the customer himself a lot of freedom of how and what and when he wants to use and consume information.

Thomas Thurner: One obvious advantage of semantic web technologies is to lower costs of data integration efforts by using standards. Which concrete use cases for this approach could you think of in the media industry?

Christian Dirschl: The media industry consists of companies themselves. So data integration issues must be solved as in all other large company as well. But in addition, content and information is our core asset. So we are facing additional challenges, especially because we live in a very dynamic market. We buy companies and content pools and then we sell others again in order to be able to make a comprehensive offering for our customers. With every acquisition, new integration issues come up and the usage of Semantic Web standards help us in managing these issues including keeping the costs in an acceptable range. In addition, more and more different media like mobile and tablets are in use and each of them needs a different shaping of information concerning e.g. granularity of content and metadata structures. Semantic Web standards can support us in all these areas as well.

About Wolters-Kluwer
Wolters Kluwer Deutschland GmbH is part of Wolters Kluwer n.v., a leading global information services and publishing company. The company provides products and services for professionals in the health, tax, accounting, corporate, financial services, legal and regulatory sectors. Wolters Kluwer has annual revenues (2010) of €3.6 billion, employs approximately 19,000 people worldwide and maintains operations in more than 20 European countries, in North America and in Asia Pacific. Wolters Kluwer is headquartered in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

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Posted on 2011/06/06 by Thomas Thurner

Posted in Interview | Tagged , , ,

Version 2.4 of the Silk – Link Discovery Framework – released on 01 June 2011

We are happy to announce version 2.4 of the Silk – Link Discovery Framework for the Web of Data.

The central idea of the Web of Data is to interlink data items using RDF links. However, in practice most data sources are not sufficiently interlinked with related data sources. The Silk Link Discovery Framework addresses this problem by providing tools to generate links between data items based on user-provided link specifications. It can be used by data publishers to generate links between datasets as well as by Linked Data consumers to augment Web data with additional RDF links.

Link specifications can either be written manually or developed using the new Silk Workbench. The Silk Workbench, is a web application which guides the user through the process of interlinking different data sources. It’s being shipped with the 2.4 version of Silk.

The Silk Workbench offers the following features:

  • It enables the user to manage different sets of data sources and linking tasks.
  • It offers a graphical editor which enables the user to easily create and edit link specifications.
  • As finding a good linking heuristics is usually an iterative process, the Silk Workbench makes it
    possible for the user to quickly evaluate the links which are generated by the current link specification.
  • It allows the user to create and edit a set of reference links used to evaluate the current link specification.

The Silk Link Discovery Framework includes three applications to execute the link specifications which address different use cases:

  1. Silk Single Machine is used to generate RDF links on a single machine. The datasets that should be interlinked can either reside on
    the same machine or on remote machines which are accessed via the SPARQL protocol. Silk Single Machine provides multithreading and
    caching. In addition, the performance can be further enhanced using an optional blocking feature.
  2. Silk Server can be used as an identity resolution component within applications that consume Linked Data from the Web. Silk Server
    provides an HTTP API for matching instances from an incoming stream of RDF data while keeping track of known entities. It can be used for
    instance together with a Linked Data crawler to populate a local duplicate-free cache with data from the Web.
  3. Silk MapReduce is used to generate RDF links between datasets using a cluster of multiple machines. Silk MapReduce is based on Hadoop and
    can for instance be run on Amazon Elastic MapReduce. Silk MapReduce enables Silk to scale out to very big datasets by distributing the
    link generation to multiple machines.

More information about the Silk framework, the Silk Link Specification Language, as well as several examples that demonstrate how Silk is used to set links between different data sources in the LOD cloud is found at:

http://www4.wiwiss.fu-berlin.de/bizer/silk/

The Silk framework is provided under the terms of the Apache License, Version 2.0 and can be downloaded from

http://www4.wiwiss.fu-berlin.de/bizer/silk/releases/

The development of Silk was supported by Vulcan Inc. as part of its Project Halo and by the EU FP7 project LOD2 – Creating Knowledge out of Interlinked Data (http://lod2.eu/, Ref. No. 257943).

Thanks to Christian Becker, Michal Murawicki and Andrea Matteini for contributing to the Silk Workbench.

Happy linking,

Robert Isele, Anja Jentzsch and Chris Bizer
(FU Berlin)

Posted on 2011/06/01 by Martin Kaltenboeck

Posted in Software Project Release | Tagged , , , ,

LOD2 infrastructure for public service information

On May the 10th and 11th I represented the LOD2 consortium on the share-psi.eu in Brussels. This conference was set up by ETSI and W3C in preparation of the Digital Agenda meeting in Brussels in mid June 2011. The audience was a mix of public services, private companies and non profit organizations. You can find the slides here and notes here. I presented the LOD2 objectives and plan and was considered “uncontroversial”. Some of the highlights of the LOD2 presentation:

  • LOD2 prepares the infrastructure to manage, manipulate, enrich, link, search, … the data that you are publishing and are about to publish.
  • LOD2 is a fine selection of innovative companies and research centers.
  • LOD2 works on 3 use cases of which one is relevant to you: Open Government Data. This is next to a publishing (legal content) and an enterprise HR use case.
  • LOD2 recently launched a survey on Open Government Data. The results are available here. These results serve as input to the OGD use case (and results are also available for re-use as linked open data).
  • LOD2 has a service that can bootstrap your Linked Open Data project. The service is called PubLink.
    (Supporting organisations like the Greater London Authority, the City of Vienna, the Finish Parliament – beside others)

Some things to remember:

  • Some large companies where there giving presentations or participating as guests: IBM, Orange, Adobe, …
  • The KADME presentation on ArticWeb was particularly interesting because it realizes some of the objectives of linked open data and proofs the need for linked open data. It is however not based on open data sources but on old fashioned aggregation and scraping and it is funded by the oil and gas industry.
  • OpenCorporates.com should be supported because it is probably one of the main drivers for opening up the European internal market. In addition it is an enabler of more transparency.
  • FearSquare.com launched a discussion on the publication data. What is the impact on society? What are the side effects?
  • Licenses? The legal worked is working on synchronization of the licenses that vary across countries, sectors or other boundaries.

Posted on 2011/05/24 by BastiaanDeblieck

Posted in Events, WP10 – Training, Dissemination, Community Building | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

LOD2 webinar series starts on 1 June 2011

The LOD2 project has a lot to offer – beside many other benefits – the linked (open) data software tools of the LOD2 partners.

To showcase these tools to the interested public we have set up the LOD2 webinar series starting by 01 June 2011 with the following webinar:

 

 

 

 

When: June 1st, 2011 (4PM CEST / 10AM EDT)
Who: the PoolParty Team will hold a webinar about
What: “Semantic Search (via PoolParty)”

Abstract

  • Semantic Search is an often quoted technology which promises to improve search in enterprises and on the web.
  • Let´s take a closer look at semantic search: How can you benefit from it and what has to be done to establish such an application?
  • Which role play thesauri and how can different data sources be integrated with PoolParty to make them searchable in a “semantic way”?

Semantic Search Slides – as a good preparation for the webinar:

Semantic search
View more presentations from ABLVienna

 

This live-webinar (45 minutes) will give you an overview over “semantic search” and if you have questions around this hot topic – our “webinarists” will be happy to answer them.

All you need to join is a web browser, internet access and to register as follows

Information and registration click here!

 

This is the initial phase of the LOD2 webinar series – other software tools for linked (open) data by partners of the LOD2 consortium will follow – and I can tell you: there are really a lot of useful tools inside the LOD2 technology stack!

Excerpt of LOD2 Linked Open Data Software Tools:

So stay tuned and follow the LOD2 webinar series!

Posted on 2011/05/19 by Martin Kaltenboeck

Posted in Announcement, Events, WP6 – LOD2 Stack | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Winners of the 2010/2011 LOD2 PUBLINK consultancy service

When the LOD2 project came into being in September 2010, the LOD2 consortium decided to offer a free Linked Open Data consultancy service to interested organisations and institutions to showcase what the potentials and benefits of linked open data (LOD) principles and technologies are – the LOD2 PUBLINK consultancy service – see also PUBLINK page. PUBLINK is accomplished by LOD2 together with the FP7-funded project LATC.

The first call of PUBLINK was promoted from September 2010 until the deadline on 20th December 2010 (via several channels as viral marketing, mailing lists, presentations at events etc). Its focus has been on Linked Open Data publishing: both in the area of know-how transfer (workshops and trainings) of LOD publishing principles, LOD tools and technologies and in the area of concrete implementations by publishing data sets as Linked Open Data together with the respective PUBLINK partner.

Today the LOD2 consortium is proud to announce the winners of the first call for participation in PUBLINK – the Linked Open Data Starter Service.

The following applicants have been selected from various public institutions across Europe (you can also find the responsible LOD2 team contact person for each PUBLINK partner):

The six awardees will receive trainings, consultancy workshops and on-site support in the publishing of Linked Open Data (LOD) within the next months. Until June/July 2011 they will be provided with an overall effort of 10-20 days of support from highly skilled Linked Data professionals from the LOD2 consortium. Through a standardized phased approach each organization has the opportunity to migrate some of their data using Linked Open Data to the internet in a smooth way and with a minimum of risks.

Trainings and workshops will, moreover, give them the ongoing competence to manage the Linked Open Data space successfully with regard to their data publications.

The LOD2 team will keep you informed about the status and the results of the PUBLINK project at the LOD2 weblog.

A second call of PUBLINK is planned for the end of this year, focusing on consuming Linked Open Data.

More information about the PUBLINK consultancy service of LOD2 and LATC is also available at: http://lod2.eu/Article/Publink.html

Posted on 2011/05/02 by Martin Kaltenboeck

Posted in Publink, WP10 – Training, Dissemination, Community Building | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

LinkedGeoData Release 2

The AKSW research group is happy to announce a new release of LinkedGeoData!

The aim of the LinkedGeoData (LGD) project is to make the OpenStreetMap (OSM) datasets easily available as RDF. As such the main target audience is the Semantic Web community, however it may turn out to be useful to a much larger audience. Additionally, we are providing interlinking with DBpedia and GeoNames and integration of class labels from translatewiki and icons from the Brian Quinion Icon Collection.

The result is a rich, open, and integrated dataset which we hope to be useful for research and application development. The datasets can be publicly accessed via downloads, Linked Data, and SPARQL-endpoints. We have also launched an experimental “Live-SPARQL-endpoint” that is synchronized with the minutely updates from OSM whereas the changes to our store are republished as RDF.

The improvements over the somewhat aged previous release in the middle of 2009 can be summarized as:

  • Better data quality thanks to a more flexible mapping system.
  • Spatial query support as supported by OpenLink’s Virtuoso enterprise edition.
  • Two Sparql-endpoints: one containing the data of the most recent LGD release,
  • and one experimental one synchronzied with OpenStreetMap.org!
  • More interlinking
  • Improvements on the LGD-Browser (however this is work in progress)

We would like to thank the whole AKSW group and OpenLink for their support in making this release possible. Furthermore this work is acknowledged by the European Union within the LOD2 project.

Example Links:

Sparql-Queries: See http://linkedgeodata.org/OnlineAccess/SparqlEndpoints
Live-Sync-Status page (work in progress): http://live.linkedgeodata.org/status
Ontology: http://linkedgeodata.org/ontology/
LGD-Browser: http://browser.linkedgeodata.org/
Linked Data Example: http://linkedgeodata.org/triplify/node264695865
Published Changesets: http://downloads.linkedgeodata.org/releases/110406/changesets/
based on: http://planet.openstreetmap.org/minute-replicate/

Posted on 2011/04/27 by JensLehmann

Posted in Announcement, Software Project Release, WP3 – Creation, Enrichment and Repair | Tagged , , ,

The hype, the hope and the LOD2

The pan-European Project LOD2 is one of the biggest projects dealing with linked data. Scientists, programmers and software architects in various European countries are working on the next generation of linked open data. In a series of interviews I’m presenting people working on and with LOD2. As a start, I had the chance to talk to Sören Auer, head of the LOD2 project.

Thomas Thurner: Over recent years the LOD movement gained tremendous momentum. As one of the key players in this area how do you perceive this development? Hype or hope?

Sören Auer: From my point of view the momentum LOD gained is deserved. We should strive for a Web, which is more decentralized, democratic, participatory, transparent and inclusive. Linked Open Data is from my point a key technological building block on this road. However, a lot of work is ahead of us. LOD has to find its way directly into mainstream technology such as CMSes, Search Engines, Web Applications, Mash-Ups and we have to show users and stakeholders the direct added-value of this technology.

Thomas Thurner: What is the current state of the LOD cloud from a technological point of view? Where do you see room for improvement?

Sören Auer: Currently, the technological state of LOD seems to be comparable to the early days of the Web. We are still able to draw maps/clouds of the LOD datasets and data links are still sparse and difficult to maintain. This reminds me a lot of the early days of the Web, where we also had problems with broken links (the infamous 404). Later, after content management systems and Web applications automatized the link generation and maintenance this improved a lot and I hope we are on the same road with LOD technologies finding its way into more and more Web systems.

Thomas Thurner: How is the LOD2 project addressing these issues? What are the project’s key objectives?

Sören Auer: LOD2 is addressing these issues in three ways: First, we develop new research approaches highly relevant for LOD, for example, for Linked Data management, automatic data linking as well as Linked Data enrichment and quality improvement. Second, we implement and integrate these approaches into specialized tools (e.g. SILK, OntoWiki, Virtuoso and DL-Learner) forming together the integrated LOD2 stack. The LOD2 stack can be used by data publishers for the whole life cycle of Linked Data management ranging from extraction over linking, authoring and enrichment to exploration & search.

Thomas Thurner: What do you think are the most important factors to bring LOD to the masses?

Continue reading →

Posted on 2011/04/19 by Thomas Thurner

Posted in Uncategorized

Semantic CKAN – Revisited

A year ago or more the service http://semantic.ckan.net/ was
established as a side-project to provide a Linked Data version of
the CKAN dataset registry. It was a very simple Python script
that used the CKAN API to generate the linked data version in flat
files on the disk which were then served by a web server that had
simple content-type autonegotiation awareness.

In the meantime the number of data registries running the CKAN
Software has grown quite impressively. The main http://ckan.net/
registry isn’t even the biggest anymore having been eclipsed by
http://data.gov.uk/, but it is still easily the most varied and
perhaps the most useful depending on what sort of data you are looking
for. In any event whilst it would still be possible to run the same
script for multiple registries, and make the corresponding
configurations in the web server, the situation really wants an
approach that is designed from the start to work with a distributed
network of (meta)data sources. The current version of
http://semantic.ckan.net/ is the second iteration of work discussed in
a previous article.

There is parallel work happening within the core CKAN software. In the
context of the UKLP it has acquired the ability to harvest metadata
about georeferenced datasets for INSPIRE. In the context of LOD2
it is being extended to be able to handle information about linked
data sources. In both of these cases the data model of CKAN is
severely strained. The INSPIRE data is only minimally modelled – this
is not a criticism, it is the right decision given the tight deadlines
for compliance with the EC directive – and for linked data it means
that dataset publishers might typically publish a voiD description
of their data and this canonical rich description needs to be
shoehorned into the CKAN data model. CKAN is production software,
however, used in some high-profile places so a certain amount of
caution is required that tends to prevent taking a radically different
approach to the problem in favour of incremental changes.

Continue reading →

Posted on 2011/04/18 by ww

Posted in WP9 – LOD2 for Citizen – PublicData.eu | Tagged , , , , , , , ,

LOD2 plenary meeting Paris: 24. – 25.03. 2011

These days the LOD2 plenary meeting takes place in Paris at Exalead / Dassault Systems on the 24th and 25th of March 2011.

About 20 members of the consortium participate in this meeting (representatives per consortium member, WP leaders and technical researchers) to present the state of play of the work in LOD2 after 6 months project duration as well as to discuss next steps, work on concrete issues together on site at the meeting and furthermore enable technology- and know how transfer in the consortium by doing show cases and hands on sessions.

Also invited guests participate at the LOD2 plenary meeting in Paris: Vassilios Peristeras of semic.eu as well as Francois Scharffe (INRIA) and Bernard Vatant (Mondeca) who presented a French research project called datalift working on linked open data too.

Beside intense discussion about the 3 LOD2 use cases: media & publishing, enterprise linked data and linked open government data the state of play of the LOD2 requirements analysis, the LOD2 stack architecture and several technical work packages were presented beside other topics.

On the 1st day of the plenary meeting mainly the state of play in all current LOD2 work packages were presented and discussed. At the 2nd day several work sessions on the use cases as well as technical hands on sessions took place.

On the evening before the LOD2 plenary meeting, on 23.03. 2011, a LOD2 open data meetup took place at Ville de Paris – DDEEES, 8 rue de Cîteaux, 75012 Paris from 06.00pm to 08.00pm CET. Organised by the Open Knowledge Foundation the LOD2 consortium met the French and Paris open data community as well as representatives from French / Paris public administration.

Dr Rufus Pollock of the OKFN came to Paris and was giving the introduction talk for the topic of open government data – after several highly interesting presentations of French and Paris open data initiatives and activities Dr. Sören Auer of University of Leipzig presented the LOD2 project as well as the possibilities that linked open data can bring to open data projects, activities and infrastructues to ensure interoperability and an easy way for data integration and comparism etc. The participants agreed on holding such an open data meetup periodically in the future and to stay in touch with each other regarding knowledge sharing and exchange to strengthen the open data process in France/Paris.

You can find lots of presentations of the LOD2 plenary meeting Paris at the LOD2 projects’ slideshare account!

Posted on 2011/03/25 by Martin Kaltenboeck

Posted in Events, Workpackages | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , ,

Ideas on Semantic Web for Workers Mobility in EU

EC DG Employment invited me to come an explain the opportunities in semantic technologies (and linked open data). So that’s what I did on Wednesday, March the 16th 2011 in Brussels. The audience was a mix of Public Employment Service assistant directors and ICT liaison officers.

Mrs. Wallis Goelen from DG Employment did the introduction. After me the president of the HR-XML consortium Romuald Restout explained what this standard is about. DG Employment also explained the plans with ESCO,  CV and vacancy standardization effort.

Most of the EU countries where represented. I talked for 20 minutes; the conference was more than 2 days. I explained that the world is moving from a web of documents to a web of data. I showed that the right standards (URI, RDF, OWL, SKOS, …) are in place to make sure that the work allocation process (matching vacancies with CV’s) can be supported – in the broadest sense of the word -  by these new technologies and standards:

  • Data Exchange (CV and vacancy, of course),
  • Application of the knowledge available in ontologies, taxonomies, thesauruses, controlled vocabularies, …
  • Enrich, interlink information relevant to the process .

Part of my talk dealt with the idea of Open Government Data too. The PES representatives briefly received an introduction to:

  • Recovering data waste,
  • Open government policy,
  • Enable data reuse,
  • reduce costs, …

Through raising hands the majority of the participants made clear that they are convinced that the technologies presented are relevant to them.

EC DG Employment invited me to come an explain the opportunities in semantic technology (and linked open data). So that’s what I did on Wednesday March the 16th 2011 in a Brussels. The audience was a mix of Public Employment Service assistant directors and ICT liaison officers.

Mrs. Wallis Goelen from DG Employment did the introduction. After me the president of the HR-XML consortium Romuald Restout explained what this standard is about. DG Employment also explained the plans with ESCO, CV and vacancy standardization effort.

Most of the EU countries where represented. I talked for 20 minutes; the conference was more than 2 days. I explained that the world is moving from a web of documents to a web of data. I showed that the right standards (URI, RDF, OWL, SKOS, …) are in place to make sure that the work allocation process (matching vacancies with CV’s) can be supported – in the broadest sense of the word - by these new technologies and standards:

- Data Exchange (CV and vacancy, of course),

- Application of the knowledge available in ontologies, taxonomies, thesauruses, controlled vocabularies, …

- Enrich, interlink information relevant to the process .

Part of my talk dealt with the idea of Open Government Data too. The PES representatives briefly received an introduction to: recovering data waste, open government policy, enable data reuse, reduce costs, …

Through raising hands the majority of the participants made clear that they are convinced that the technologies presented are relevant to them.

Posted on 2011/03/21 by BastiaanDeblieck

Posted in Events, WP1 – Requirements, Design and LOD2 Stack Prototype, WP10 – Training, Dissemination, Community Building | Tagged , , , , , , , , ,

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