Since the early days of Sematic Web I have been expecting that this technology would become very important for Search Engine Optimization.

Until recently, however, the most important component for this to happen has been missing: the major search engines completely ignored RDF and other semantically enriched markup.

This as changed now finally Yahoo and, more recently, Google announced to analyze and index rich mark up like microformats and RDFa.

Just today I stumbled upon a nice article by the E-business and Web Science Research Group of the Universität der Bundeswehr München titled GoodRelations and Yahoo SearchMonkey with five very practical examples how to enhance your web pages for better relevance in the Yahoo search index.
They make use of RDFa and the GoodRelations Web Ontology.

This is all very exciting and I expect way more to come!

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• Organic Seo For Small Businesses Part Ii (slideshare.net)
• Google supports RDFa – SEOs work changes forever (ithoughts.de)
• Google and Future of the Semantic Web (mehmetalierturk.com)
• Yahoo adds tools to bolster search results (macworld.com)
• Rich Snippets: Tipping point for the semantic web (mikeaxelrod.com)
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I personally think that this marks the start of “real world” adoption of semweb, be it through a surrogate approach via microformats.
Why now? Because improved representation of your content in Google is simply too big to ignore. If embedding microformatted content (or, hopefully, RDFa) brings you an advantage in Google Page Rank, web site owners and SEO specialists will rapidly adopt the technology. Without the google index incentive this never would happen.

The other side may be that data quality gets diluted in a way. Up till now we are used to working with reasonably clean and consistent collections (like DBpedia, MusicBrainz to name a few), where the data quality matters all by itself. That is radically different from entering some code for the purpose of cranking up your rank on the search engines.

Maybe in a year from now we are all busy with implementing trust- and reputation systems for linked data instead of spreading the word. I’m curious if the nature of linked data makes this job any easier than with the unstructured web of documents.

Update: Ivan Hermann tells it all in a nutshell: RDFa, Google.

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• Google supports RDFa – SEOs work changes forever (ithoughts.de)
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• Google Announces Support for Microformats and RDFa (4cloudcomputing.blogspot.com)
• Will You Use Google’s New “Rich Snippets” Markups? (seroundtable.com)

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Since about three months ago, when I started using the Zemanta wordpress plugin, the uptake has been huge. Searching for “Related articles by Zemanta” on google gives now 110k+ hits.

To me, this is currently the most practical example where semantic web technology really does make a difference. Just like with Twine, the real benefit of this technology lies in the background, where associations are made and retrieved, “just in time”. All without bothering end-users with ontologies, RDF and SPARQL endpoints. Using Zemanta, all these bloggers are benefiting from the ever increasing web of linked data to enrich their blogs. And the benefit may well be mutual: by carefully selecting the auto-suggested related articles and imagery, you as a blogger tell implicitly what categories your post matches to, thus linking back to the very same pool of linked data.

Give it a try yourself, get the Zemanta plugin (many platforms are supported) and share your experiences!

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• Zemanta: Real-Time Semantic Discovery & Blogging Tool (andrewapeterson.com)
• Zemanta (oblogn.com)
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• Zemanta (grapes2dot0.blogspot.com)

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Image via Wikipedia - this version is in fact outdated again, by now the open resources have already doubled.

“Linked Media: Weaving non-textual content into the semantic web” – Raphaël Troncy

Traditional media cunsumption (like TV) is declining and moving to the web. The question is: how can we make media into a first class object on the web?

Lots of issues: codecs, metadata, content protection and so on. Is there a viable OSS alternative?

Media Fragments WG

Case: media fragments identification and selective retrieval of media fragments, the goal of the Media Fragments WG of the W3C. Basic principles apply: fragment identification needs to be based on the URI.

There are four dimensions which define a fragment: time (point or interval), space (rectangle for now), track (video, audio, subtitles) and id (the unique name of the fragment).

The possibilities are limited by the container format can express (e.g. quicktime and such) Protocols include http, rtsp and a lot of proprietary protocols like mms, and the various p2p protocols.

Much of the fragment identification is already possible for the most important players in the market, but the syntax is not standard in any way.

Warning, hardcore geekery ahead…

The current proposed standard uses hash marks appended to the URI, which a smart user agent has to strip off and convert into some appropriate http headers. Media servers handle the request, do the slicing and make sure that the fragments are cacheable as well.

Example: mypodcast.mp3#t=15,45

translated into the Request

GET .../mypodcast.mp3
Accept: application/mp3
Range: seconds=15-45
...

Response:

HTTP/1.1 206 Partial Content
Accept-ranges: bytes, seconds
Content-length: 2310034
...

First implementations can be based on plug-ins: Apache mod_annodex combined with for instance a Firefox add-on to create the right requests.

Media Annotations WG: Core Ontology

A couple of proprietary metadata schemas do exist, the first approach is to make the semantic meaning of all of these more explicit and to be able to map various schemas to each other.

There is a simple client read-only demo for metadata which looks very similar to the schema I used for the Twones Active API.

Another demo is about the linking of resources within the Cultural Heritage project. A very simple web interface allows for fast data entry where  terms are auto-completed with linked resources (canoncal names etc.). The interface looks like the Freebase web front-end.

The Web of Data

Interesting: the Semantic web is now being re-branded as the Web of Data. Oh well, maybe that is a good idea after all…

So what is it about:

Expose open datasets as RDF. Example DBpedia with slightly over 9M RDF triples. All of this linked to the rest of the Linked Data Cloud, which is expanding rapidly.

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Since I have my Android G1 phone, I picked up an old habit of listening to some favorite podcasts (the walkman player in my previous cell phone was simply too crappy for this – sorry Sony, you should have stuck to the cassette tape player).

One of my favorite Semweb podcasts is the Talking with Talis series.

The Clay Shirky conversation is noteworthy, especially if you’re in the content distribution buiness.

Favorite quote: “These (web) tools don’t get socially interesting until they get technically boring” (at 6’15″).

More on this theme in his book “Here comes every body” (haven’t read it yet).

Check it out here: Clay Shirky in Conversation – Here Comes Everybody – the social effects of the Internet. If you want to listen to all podcasts, better subscribe to the Talking witht Talis iTunes feed because the shows are scattered all over the various talis sites- and blogs.

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Just download and install the Triplify script, a lightweight tool to translate SQL query results into RDF triples and return the result in N3 (Notation3) or as JSON.

The script itself is only capable of generating RDF, the actual matching between data and RDF output is specified in a configuration file. These configurations are available for many popular web applications, here is a Triplify configuration for WordPress 2.7.x.

Installing is almost as simple as dropping the triplify directory in your WordPress root directory and uploading the correct configuration file. No need to configure any specific values for your WordPress set-up, these are read from the top level wp-config.php file.

Now go to your blog and request the URL http://yourblog/triplify/ – this will return your blog’s content as RDF/N3 and at the same time register the feed at the Triplify Registration (well, if you leave the register switch at “true” in the config file).

Now you dan play with your RDF data in various sources on the web, or locally.

A good start for exploration is the SIMILE Welkin browser, also available as Java web start: run Welkin thru Java WebStart.

Continue for an example…

The following screen shot gives an impression how the top level RDF data looks for this blog.

Hurdles

In practice, I met some hurdles to overcome.

To start with, the config file is presented as nicely formatted and colored source code. Make sure you save this as plain (ascii) text, otherwise you will get strange error messages because of non-breaking spaces and other bad characters in the source.

Then, if you use the anti-spam plugin “bad-behavior” you will notice that some web resources don’t give any result or seem to hang forever. I found this with Simile (Exhibit, Potluck) and the Sindice search index engine.

Add the following IP addresses to bad-behavoir/whitelist.inc.php:

    $bb2_whitelist_ip_ranges = array(
        [...]
        "18.51.2.218",         // Simile.MIT.EDU 18.51.2.218
        "140.203.154.173",     // Sindice Fetcher
    );

Happy experimenting!

A nice paper about Triplify will be presented at the coming WWW conference: Triplify – Light-weight Linked Data Publication from Relational Databases

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You can read about all noteworthy and sometimes even anecdotal events there, so I limit myself ot some personal observations at this place.

Noteworthy was the first keynote by Adeo Ressi, “Get Funding for Your Dream“. According to him, now is the best time ever to start a new venture. But at the same time, there are many dangers luring in VC funding, which you should be aware of.

One of the most central statements: you ore strictly on your own for reviewing the contract terms when it come to closing a deal. Your legal advisor will be honest with you up to the point when you sing a contract with them, as they have just one incentive left afterwards: close the deal and get the percentage of the value you negotiated earlier. Every delay is just wate of time – so forget about honest advice on VC terms.

This reminds me of the peculiar situation we have with real estate brokers and financial advisers over here: these people all work for a percentage of the deal, so nobody is at your side when it comes to choosing the real best option, let alone a careful review of the terms.

The rest of the talk was about what to expect when going through the movements, from choosing investors, preparing your references (they will be interviewed, even the unlikely ones, and should always be unconditional positive about you) and, indeed, bad terms vs acceptable ones.

Interesting – and enlightening – it looks like we are doing pretty well regarding our own startup Twones.com.

The keynote by Leah Culver of Pownce was charming and gave most of all insight in the networking aspects of starting a online business. Her suggestion to talk more about the how and why around OAuth was not accepted by the audience. Regretful, I would have liked a quick introduction in this emerging standard as an alternative to all those proprietary solutions for all those social networks.

Nova Spivack of Twine held the keynote I was looking forward to the most. This time, surprisingly, the audience chose for an introduction into the semantic web, rather than a presentation about Twine.

And this presentation was well done. No new or surprising elements for those who follow Nova Spivack’s blog (his “CEO blog” at Radar Networks), but I am sure that many people in the audience will have “got it“. And from personal experience I know how difficult it is to explain the relevance of the highly abstract and often complex elements of the semantic web.

What I liked was the perspective in which Nova places the semweb:

Tagging approach
pro: easy to do
con: easy to do (inconsistence, no “meaning“)

Statistical approach (Google)
Pro: pure mathematical algorithms
Con: no understanding of the content

Linguistic approach
pro: true language understanding
con: computational intensive, scales badly, one domain at a time

Semantic Web approach (radar networks, dbpedia, metaweb, talis)
pro: more precise queries (metadadata)
con: lack of tools, who creates the metadata?

Artificial Intelligence approach (cycorp)
pro: this is the holy grail!
con: never finished and always outdated (the holy grail)
Now the Semantic Web approach is in the middle:
Software needs some improvement and you need metadata
But: advantages add up to a network effect; if I enhance my data, I get the benefit inr eturn that my data now can be linked automatically in all kind of related contexts, especially those I never could imagine myself.

And this is taking off at an increasing speed, see the updated graph on open, linked data on the web.

Characteristics of the semantic web approach:

• Make data smarter vs make software smarter
• Metadata vs AI & linguistics
• Open data enables network effects

Approaches:

• Bottom up (you need to learn RDF and such) – this is not going to happen (note: basic semweb technologies exist since around 2000).
• Top down: software builds all the RDF and OWL and stuff for you. Not surprisingly, this where Twine aims at.

Some notes on the practical side. Nova dislikes the term Semantic Web as being to vague, “Web of Data” would be more appropriate. And then, already an old theme, he adapts the popuplar but heavily overloaded term “web 2.0″ to mean “the second decade of the web” en so, web 3.0 as the third decade, roughly 2010 – 2020. So we got a timeline. And right now the early adopters are emerging, the first killer apps will be launched roughly between now and the next two years.

Finally, a critical not on business models: how do protect my business if all data has to be open and free?

The bottom line is taht every entrepreneur needs to decide for themselves, but in the long run people will move away from closed environments where they only put effort in, without being able to get the value back of their own data, let alone benefit of the network effect.

Again, this is an area were Twones will shine: our business model scale along with the network effect, the more open and the more shared each user’s data is, the more value everyone will get out of it.

Oh, and I got my private Twine invite (looks good, many thanks Nova!).

Got curious about Twones?

We will lanuch an invitation only beta at the end of the month, you can register for the beta waiting list at http://www.twones.com

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Indeed, microformats are not an alternative for RDF, not even a “poor man’s version”. But that was not a design goal at any time. What’s more: microformats are no first class semantic web objects in any way either. Rather, they are the simplest imaginable solution for semantically correct markup, limited to the most common data formats out there.

To rephrase the microformats charter, they want to be the common man’s solution, aimed at the well intending webmaster crowd. As such, microformats can be hugely successful (analogue to the “html as tag soup” success story). Fine.

Next, as we end up having millions of valid items of hCard, hReview and what not on the web, there is GRDDL to instantly promote all this content in full fledged RDF.

The good news is that we have all components currently available – many microformats are auto-generated from well designed CMS templates – and GRDDL is a Proposed Recommendation since 6 July 2007.

What we’re waiting for, is a business need to discover, transform and aggregate all of this data. I would be surprised if nobody is working on this, right now. Google, or a Google killer?

Bottom line: the semantic web has been lacking real world content for too long (not withstanding DBPedia and Freebase and such) and real world applications for the common man. Microformats can and will have a place in advocacy for this large target audience, people who grasp html and basic data constructs, but who are not interested in graph theory.

This audience will only jump on the bandwagon if they can instantly understand the intent from view source inspection. Compare the success of RSS 2.0 over the semantically superior (but more complex, RDF based) RSS 1.0 version.

In the end it will just not matter, most content will be “good enough” to be useful for the semweb (through GRDDL transformations and screen scraping), just like today’s html is good enough to be rendered, in some way, in our web browsers. By that time we will have a load of other problems, like semantic spam, the need for provenance tracking and trust levels for semantic information. But that is another story…

Update:  Semantic Report writes about Using Microformats to Get Started with the Semantic Web. So, there then!

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The conclusion is that, using a semantic web approach, you could provide links to as many contextual facts as you like, without the need of directly exposing these to the observing end user. Just use those links for queries and matching algorithms wherever appropriate.

In other words: don’t bug me with redundant metadata if I don’t need it. This might be even more true for content creation: just read Cory Doctorow’s Metacrap article again and you know why.

Years ago, almost immediately after I bought my first digital photo camera, I started to realize why metadata is important. In a few words: taking pictures is easy, storage space is cheap and deleting images is a pain. You need to carefully compare and make sure to pick the best one. So, hundreds, soon thousands of images started to pile up in the form of un-imaginatively named blobs, like “IMG_1123.JPG”. Essentially, these images get lost as the proverbial needle in a haystack.

Now you could put all those images in folders, labeled after an event, date, person or whatever. But this is a tedious job and only provides a very flat view (you don’t even want to think about creating nested or linked structures on your file system).

Then, I soon found out that every digicam image has embedded EXIF meta data, which proved to be of huge value for tracing back those lost images. If I know that a shot was made during some event, I only need to look up the events’ date and browse all images shot during that period.

Then iPhoto came around, with the possibility to add tags (with a terrible interface, use Keyword Assistant instead!), ratings and multiple album folders. Providing even more metadata and control to find your images at a later time.

There’s just one problem left: entering and assigning all that meta data by hand is still much work if you have hundreds of images to go. Errors are quickly made and hard to detect when you’re focused on other things, such as composition and image quality.

So, what I really need is as many context facts as I can automatically gather. For instance, having GPS location data is invaluable if I have no idea about the date I’m looking for, or to select the best image from over many years. Need a sunset sky reflected in a window of your home and you know that you might have a photo around? Good luck without location data.

I could add more: an outside shot with freezing ambient temperature gives a much improved chance to find that icy skating scene some winters ago. Best of all, there are numerous applications for combining simple, trivial meta data facts that I now can not even imagine I will ever need. But if the time comes that I’m looking for that very specific image, I’ll be glad that I have all that context data stored.

Linking things, facts and events on unimagined context attributes will provide real value, which a rich data web will provide. Just start adding context just because we can, the applications will follow rather sooner than later.

Standardized semantic web tools and technologies provide a sound basis for this whole idea. For example, use RDF triples for all those context metadata. Then a SPARQL query can be used to hunt for any data you might get interested in later on.

[ratings]

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This whole movement has led to another change as well. That is, as I see it, people getting to finally understand what the meaning of the original HTML specification was all about: it is the semantics, not the presentation in the first place.

In short, that specification meant to say that a <h1> element should convey the meaning of a top/document title, followed hierarchically by <h2> for chapter titles, <h3> for subtitles and <h4> for section titles and so on. Thus a <p> marked a paragraph, and more interesting, things like <cite> would mark a literal citation. This is called semantic markup.

So far so good, the resulting presentation in the browsers of those days was very bland and we needed a more sexy look for marketing purposes. Thus the markup was pushed towards the presentational limits – presentational markup indeed, where elements were used for their look, rather than their semantic meaning. A <blockquote> element no longer meant some sort of citation, but rather an indented paragraph of text. HTML itsel suffered from presentational elements as well: the <b>old tag and the <i>talics define presentation. For meaning, we have <strong> (rendered as bold type) and <em>phasis (rendered in italics). Quite a mess.

OK, so right now, the POSH movement has come to life. Where POSH stands for Plain Old Semantic Html. It all originated from within the Microformats movement, but discussions on the mailing list indicate that most microformat advocates think of POSH as being not related to microformats in general.

And I agree. Sure, good to see semantic correct use of html on the web, but this approach is way too simple in general to extract real meaning. If the web only existed of sceintific papers and novels, then maybe we could rely on the stricture of html as originally specified. And write a GRDDL transformation, which then says as much as: this <blockquote> is a citation of something else. Of what exactly, would still be left up for guessing.

All in all, using POSH wherever you can is good practice. But this has almost nothing to do with real semantic web. And could someone please help me to explain what the semantic meaning of <strong> versus <em>phasis is?

To finish with a famous qoute:

[Solutions should be] as simple as possible, but no simpler.

– Albert Einstein.

[ratings]

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