Not sure how this factors into the discussion, but I got a good
chuckle out of this Nova Spivack remix of the LOD cloud I just
discovered:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/nederhoed/2385121075/
Richard
On 3 Apr 2008, at 17:52, Aldo Bucchi wrote:
One of the nice things of Richard's cloud is that he does not get
pedantic
about exactly what a bubble means. So some of them are
straightforward LOD
sites; others are multiple sites, and still others are almost just
ontologies against which people are publishing linked data. This is
good,
because otherwise we would have long discussions about the
semantics of
bubbles and more worringly arcs!
Good point.
I tend to forget that academia is still majority here... trying to add
more info to the cloud will introduce subjectivity and ignite endless
discussions.
Let me rephrase what I meant:
"We need a source so that business people, or at least non semweb
related people, can get their hands on something concrete that conveys
the inmense amount of knowledge that is being internlinked".
You might be in favor or against this, but I can foresee that after
the W3C conference in Beijing the semantic web will be reborn as the
linked data web. I have the feeling that this whole "rebranding" is
starting to catch people's attention ( drupal, social nets, etc ) and
the LOD cloud is sitting in the midst of it. Its the link that
everyone passes around.
I have used it for several sales and fund raising presentations
myself... and I never get the "oooooh" I expect when that nice drawing
appears on screen.
Perhaps a PhD student could take this a research subject. Or someone
majoring in a data mining related area... who can give it the
"business twist".
Thanks,
Aldo
On Thu, Apr 3, 2008 at 12:18 PM, Hugh Glaser <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:
(Thanks for adding the RKBExplorer stuff, Richard.)
With reference to size, which of course matters:
One of the nice things of Richard's cloud is that he does not get
pedantic
about exactly what a bubble means. So some of them are
straightforward LOD
sites; others are multiple sites, and still others are almost just
ontologies against which people are publishing linked data. This is
good,
because otherwise we would have long discussions about the
semantics of
bubbles and more worringly arcs!
But perhaps a little more meaning could be introduced to give a
sense to
casual observers (and others) that this is no just a collection of
27 (or
whatever) sites.
Would it be hard to make some of the bubbles (such as FOAF and
RKBExplorer)
clouds themselves, to indicate this?
I rather like the idea that the LOD cloud has become a cloud of
clouds.
Best
Hugh
On 01/04/2008 23:15, "Uldis Bojars" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
On Tue, Apr 1, 2008 at 12:32 PM, Richard Cyganiak <[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
Specify the amount of data ( resources or triples ).
Individual and aggregates ( per type? )
Strength is in the numbers!
I agree that a vocabulary for describing datasets would be a good
thing. And
keeping track of and publishing numbers about the amount of data
would also
be good. I'm afraid I don't have the bandwidth to do any of those
things at
the moment, but if anyone has some spare cycles and wants to
chronicle the
project's growth in a more quantitative way, that would be great.
The chart would look more scary if it had some indicator of the
amount
of knowledge it conveys!
Scarier than a bunch of circles with funny acronyms that don't
mean
anything to most people.
That's a very good point.
The beauty of the current picture (thanks, Richard!) is in its
simplicity. Anyone can look at it and say: "I understand this.
Linked
data is a great idea.". Cluttering figure with numbers may look
scary
but will this "scary-ness" help or defeat the purpose of the
figure? I
am afraid it will be the later for many. Think iPhone versus more
complex-looking (but less successful) devices.
Having said that, if someone collected together and kept track of
numbers, that would be a great resource. Our colleague Sheila [1]
has
done some work on mapping ontologies / namespaces on the Semantic
Web.
While her work does not map 1:1 and is at a finer-grained level,
perhaps it can feed into work of analyzing linked data usage on the
web if someone is doing that. (Which might not be that trivial of a
task, unless someone already have the numbers at hand)
[1] http://www.deri.ie/about/team/member/sheila_kinsella/
P.S. Just to reiterate: not against quantitative indication of the
amount of linked data, but would keep things simple and put them
in a
separate table / figure.
Uldis
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