Hi Richard,
Thanks - this is exactly the kind of substantiated counter-argument I
was hoping for ;-)
But seriously - we must minimize this confusion. A first necessary step
would be to complete the 2006 document - I just spent two hours
searching for examples of how the new vCard should exactly be used, and
I at least knew exactly what I was looking for. How much worse will the
same task be for someone from outside of the SW/LOD box?
Martin
Richard Cyganiak wrote:
Martin,
On 7 May 2009, at 07:51, Martin Hepp (UniBW) wrote:
(Due to the masses of "old" vCard data, it would not be prudent for
any data-consuming application to accept only "new" vCard data anyway
- see my SWOOGLE figures from the initial mail - 230,000 vs. 470
datasets - which implies that continuing to create "old"-style vCard
should be tolerable.)
This is a questionable conclusion for several reasons.
1. AFAICT the data from Swoogle is outdated. I haven't heard any news
from the project since 2007. Given that the new vCard-in-RDF work is
from November 2006, these stats might be misleading, and the sites
that Swoogle has indexed might have gone offline or changed to the new
namespace.
2. FWIW, Sindice reports 12k documents using the old and 254k using
the new one, but this is not comparable to the Swoogle numbers because
many of the new hits are from hcard microformats (which Sindice maps
into the new vCard namespace).
3. Pure document numbers say nothing about how "locked in" a standard
is. The 230k documents that Swoogle reports might all come from a
single site, and switching them all to a new namespace might be a
five-minute thing. (99% of the use that Sindice sees for the old
namespace is from Josh Tauberer's usgov dataset.)
4. Yahoo reports 1B+ hcard microformats on the Web. All
microformat-to-RDF converters I'm aware of map them to the new
namespace (e.g. any23, Swignition, SearchMonkey).
I conclude that the old namespace is obsolete and should be ignored
and avoided, in the interest of converging on a single namespace.
Best,
Richard
Or am I wrong in any of those points?
Best
Martin
PS: Research in the economics of standardization shows that the
migration to a new standard requires technology to reduce the
switching costs for everybody involved (at least users and
application developers). Otherwise, positive network externalities
for the established standard cause inertia that may eventually
prevent the broad adoption of the new standard. So just publishing a
new version may not be sufficient given the strong position of the
old vCard spec. We need conversion tools etc.
Renato Iannella wrote:
On 7 May 2009, at 12:08, Sandro Hawke wrote:
Interestingly, it doesn't seem like this question has ever come up
before. If there were a Working Group with this in scope, it could
(following appropriate process) publish a new version at that same
location, but short of that, there's no handy solution. Harry and I
have talked about it, though, and will try to come up with something.
--------------------------------------------------------------
martin hepp
e-business & web science research group
universitaet der bundeswehr muenchen
e-mail: [email protected]
phone: +49-(0)89-6004-4217
fax: +49-(0)89-6004-4620
www: http://www.unibw.de/ebusiness/ (group)
http://www.heppnetz.de/ (personal)
skype: mfhepp
Check out the GoodRelations vocabulary for E-Commerce on the Web of Data!
========================================================================
Webcast explaining the Web of Data for E-Commerce:
-------------------------------------------------
http://www.heppnetz.de/projects/goodrelations/webcast/
Tool for registering your business:
----------------------------------
http://www.ebusiness-unibw.org/tools/goodrelations-annotator/
Overview article on Semantic Universe:
-------------------------------------
http://www.semanticuniverse.com/articles-semantic-web-based-e-commerce-webmasters-get-ready.html
Project page and resources for developers:
-----------------------------------------
http://purl.org/goodrelations/
Upcoming events:
---------------
Full-day tutorial at ESWC 2009: The Web of Data for E-Commerce in One Day: A
Hands-on Introduction to the GoodRelations Ontology, RDFa, and Yahoo!
SearchMonkey
http://www.eswc2009.org/program-menu/tutorials/70
Talk at the Semantic Technology Conference 2009: Semantic Web-based E-Commerce:
The GoodRelations Ontology
http://www.semantic-conference.com/session/1881/
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tel;work:+49 89 6004 4217
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