Layered Data: A Paper & Some Commentary

Two years ago I wrote a short paper about "layering" data but for various reasons never got round to putting it online. The paper tried to capture some of my thinking at the time about the opportunities and approaches for publishing and aggregating data on the web. I've finally got around to uploading it and … Continue reading Layered Data: A Paper & Some Commentary →

The Open Data Revolution

This post was originally published as an article for The Kernel. Open data is now mainstream. Spurred on by the US and UK governments vying over who could be the most open, there are now open data activities in many regions around the globe. Under the “Government as Platform” rubric, you can find the public … Continue reading The Open Data Revolution →

Lego Minecraft Building Tips

The official Lego Minecraft set looks really good and does a great job at capturing the feel of a Minecraft environment. However having looked at various pictures of the set, I realised that apart from the couple of custom pieces with faces printed on them, we had the majority of the pieces for the set … Continue reading Lego Minecraft Building Tips →

Beyond the Triple Count

This post was originally published on the Kasabi product blog. On Monday I gave a talk at the SemTechBiz conference: "The RDF Report Card: Beyond the Triple Count". I've published the slides on Slideshare which I've embedded below, but I thought I'd also post some of my notes here. The RDF Report Card: Beyond the Triple Count … Continue reading Beyond the Triple Count →

Giving RDF Datasets more Affordance

This post was originally published on the Kasabi product blog. The following is a version of the talk on Creating APIs over RDF I gave at SemTech 2011. I've pruned some of the technical details in favour of linking out to other sources and concentrated here on the core message I was trying to get across. Comments … Continue reading Giving RDF Datasets more Affordance →

SemTech Thoughts

This post was originally published on the Kasabi product blog. Attending SemTech 2011 last week I was struck by a shift in emphasis from "What If?" to "Here's How". I think there were more people sharing their experiences, technical & business approaches, and general war stories than on previous years. I think this reflects both the extent … Continue reading SemTech Thoughts →

Custom Lego Sets

For a couple of years now I've tried to do something a little different for Christmas presents for the kids. I'm not particularly good with my hands but I've always wanted to be able to make them things: something that will hopefully mean a little more than the average gift. For example one year I … Continue reading Custom Lego Sets →

RDF Data Access Options, or Isn’t HTTP already the API?

This is a follow-up to my blog post from yesterday about RDF and JSON. Ed Summers tweeted to say: ...your blog post suggests that an API for linked data is needed; isn't http already the API? I couldn't answer that in 140 characters, so am writing this post to elaborate a little on the last … Continue reading RDF Data Access Options, or Isn’t HTTP already the API? →

RDF and JSON: A Clash of Model and Syntax

I had been meaning to write this post for some time. After reading Jeni Tennison's post from earlier this week I had decided that I didn't need too, but Jeni and Thomas Roessler suggested I publish my thoughts. So here they are. I've got more things to say about where efforts should be expended in … Continue reading RDF and JSON: A Clash of Model and Syntax →

Gridworks Reconciliation API Implementation

Gridworks is a really fantastic tool and there's scope to extend it in all kinds of interesting ways. Jeni Tennison has recently published a great blog post describing how to use Gridworks for generating Linked Data. I strongly encourage you to read her posting as it not only provides a good introduction to Gridworks itself, … Continue reading Gridworks Reconciliation API Implementation →