Blogs, RSS, Semantic Web: a Perspective Marco Brandizi gives_presentation Fermo, 25 Nov 2005 organized_by has_place_date has_name_ works_in part_of

Once Upon, along ago...

The WWW idea 1) GET index.html 2)... 3) GET web_arch.gif 3) Web browser (client) index.html web_arch.gif 4) Web Server

The WWW idea: links (again, from the Berners-Lee proposal)

The Web evolution: dynamic applications Storage (SQL / Relatio nal DB) Engine / Web Programming Environment Web Server

The Web evolution: CMSs

The Web evolution: weblogs (or blogs)

The Web evolution: Wiki

Social networking Content is widely shared, people can improve and enrich it Web contents are related one each other considering how people use them Networks of people are created by people themselves, with the help of software Publish the contents, let the people invent novel creative ways to use them (RSS and Atom)

Social networking: Page Rank

Social networking: del.icio.us

The Web evolution/2 Reduction of hardware and connectivity costs Multimedia devices, TCP/IP enabled devices

The Web evolution/2: Scripting <?php $server = $_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT']; if (strpos($server, 'MSIE') !== false) { echo 'You are using Internet Explorer '; } else { ?> You're using browser and it is not MS IE. Good... ;-) <? } ?>

The Web evolution/2 Ideas and technologies for developers Scripting Complex architectures: Model/View/Controller (MVC), XML (more in in the follows) Persistent objects (EJ2EE) Web services (more in the follows) Pluggability (ex.: Client side scripting (Javascript) Standardization (DOM) New approaches: AJAX

The Web evolution/2: AJAX (From

The Web evolution/2: AJAX (From Ok, in MS Access was trivial, but...

The Web evolution/2: AJAX

Limits of hypertext model HTML is often a mess where data drowns (From

Limits of hypertext model HTML is often a mess where data drowns

Limits of hypertext model Links are semantically poor, especially for the machines What's this link about? The author An opposite point of view? A related topic? Xlink: nice, but not so much... Search by keywords: Google is simple and great, but... “cancro”... but NOT “Oroscopo” “European projects guidelines”... actually I was looking for “CORDIS”

Representing contents: XML Marco Brandizi Via Và 182 Fermo AP IT Via Vattelappesca 1 Milano IT Andrea... AddressBoo k Person Address Brandizi Marco Andrea Via Và Fermo Via Vattelappesca Milano

Representing contents: XML From

But it's not enough... XML is not enough flexible and expressive Representation of meaning Surname and “Family name” Extending a schema connecting information

Resource Description Framework (RDF) You may handle statements Subject/Property(or verb)/Object may reference public resources, identified by URIs (like Web pages) A given resource may flexibly be annotated by many statements Meaning of statements may be defined by other statements and higher languages (which still are RDF representable)

RDF example From Computational Biology (Nature Group), Sept 2005,

RDF Example

RDF examples: RSS and Atom RSSOwl, see also Rojo

News feeders/Aggregators What you can do with a news feeder Read news from multiple sites, in a single reader Group items into topics, aggregate items Rate/tag contents and exploit social networking: Amphetarate, Rojo Publish your topics on your BlogRoll, OPML. Write new smart software! In the future Publish comments and alike Maintain your blog Semantic blogging ( See also (about RSS/Atom and social implications):

Examples of RDF: FOAF Friend of a Friend (FOAF), see also LinkedIn

More than RDF: “Ontologies”

Ontologies Examples of queries with ontologies “nails is-part-of elephant”? yes, because: “has-legs” and “has-nails” are particular “has-parts” transitive relation “is-part-of” is the inverse of “has-parts”

Ontologies Examples of queries with ontologies “giraffe is-eaten-by lion”? yes, because: giraffe is-a herbivore > is-a animal lion is-a carnivore > lion eats animal > lion eats giraffe “is-eaten” is the inverse of “eats”

“Ontologies” Other examples: vocabularies, directories, goods catalogs WordNet Ontolingua MeSH, Gene Ontology Simple Knowledge Organisation System Simple example:

Ontologies examples

Semantic news: news.com.com

Annotea, Annozilla

Annotea and future of Web Annotations Represent the meaning of annotations Represent the meaning of concept annotations Common taxonomies and ontologies annotea/slide9-0.html

Semantic Annotation: SMORE (

Semantic Web Example: Piggy Bank

Piggy Bank

Putting all together: W3C and Semantic Web

URI: how to address things on internet Unicode: the “alphabet” RDF-S, OWL: ontologies, define the semantics of things SPARQ-L: to make semantic-aware queries Rules, Logic, proof, trust: deductions, logical “reasoning”, inference It's complex, but it's needed, because we want...

...this!

Services Integration: Web Services User Amazon Web site 3 rd parties catalogs Purchase Service CC service VISA Mastercard ,2b

Services Integration How to realize such services integration? Call remote code (RPC, J2EE) Code mobility (Java Applets, Agents) Exchange messages, use XML => SOAP and Web services How to discover services? Handily or Registers How to know that a service is about “book purchasing”? Up to user Ontologies! How to compose services? Up to user Reasoning!

myGrid and Taverna

WSs and Semantic Web Give me the directions from A to B... do it automatically... find the best option!

Conclusions (?) What we are learning from... AJAX More and more Interactive Web A flexible approach for developers RDF, RSS, Atom and alike: Publish the contents, let the world find how to use them Ontologies, Knowledge representation in the Web: More power to the machines to help the mankind...Yet another AI failure? Web Services The web as a inter-connection of services, which can creatively composed... hopefully... automatically... hopefully...

Conclusions (?) What we are learning about the future, beyond the technologies... More horizontal access to information Less rafts in the ocean, with social networking and alike More “Open Culture” Semantic Web must be open and full of standards Applications are coming (almost) from grassroots people Contents are accessed in uncontrollable fashion, usually by mass Killer applications are more and more OS independent (good news for Linux, and not only...)

Conclusions (?) But.. Traditional models and powers still are well alive There is a country, there in South Europe... Software Patents Digital divide is a really worrying obstacle, and it's not only about not accessing a computer Society improvement is not (only) a technology matter What is Internet? Still in many places “wiring” means setup electricity

Conclusions (?) Hopes for the future... Open Source, Open technologies, Open culture Share the code Share the contents, your musics, piece of art, etc. Share the passion for technologies, from social point of view Have fun! ;-)

Semantic Web around here...

Want to know more? 14, 15, 16 Dec See Also

Thanks! Find this slides at: