How about a DJ rather than a Genius?

There's been plenty of commentary about the new Genius feature in iTunes. A recommendation engine is a nice new feature, but personally there's a couple of other features I'd like to see on my iPod, or in iTunes. These are more in the "reacquaint yourself with the music you already own" category rather than recommending … Continue reading How about a DJ rather than a Genius? →

The Web’s Rich Tapestry

This week I co-chaired a plenary session at the ALPSP International Conference. The goal of the session, titled "The Web's Rich Tapestry" (abstract), was to discuss the continuing evolution of the web from a document-centric view of the world to one that was more data and link centric. The first half of the session was … Continue reading The Web’s Rich Tapestry →

Pastures New

Its been 9.5 years since I first started working for Ingenta. Over those years I've been presented with some fantastic opportunities and worked on some great projects with great people. From a technical perspective I've developed a deep appreciation for hypertext, web architecture, XML, and semantic web technologies. I've spent the last 18 months or … Continue reading Pastures New →

Ants, Overlays and Open Data

Whilst standing behind the yellow line on the platform this morning, waiting for a train to Oxford, I noticed an ant on the floor wending its way along the tarmac, within the bounds of the thick yellow paint. The little black speck stood out quite sharply against the bright yellow. Obviously the ant wasn't following … Continue reading Ants, Overlays and Open Data →

Say Everything

Reading this interesting post containing lessons for ontology writers by Ian Davis this morning, it occured to me that the key lesson is applicable to open data publishing in general and not just to ontology design. Ian's post describes some of the techniques introduced in the Taming the Open World session at SemTech. I won't … Continue reading Say Everything →

Google AppEngine for Personal Web Presence?

Some thinking aloud... I've browsed through the Google App Engine gallery and the applications you can find there at the moment are pretty much what you'd expect: lots of Web 2.0 "share this, share that" sites. These are what you'd expect because firstly they're the kind of simple application you'd build whilst exploring any new … Continue reading Google AppEngine for Personal Web Presence? →

Teaching a Six Year Old About Triples

I've written in the past about how both of my kids are star wars geeks thanks to Lego Star Wars. My son had a Star Wars Annual for Christmas which he's been poring over, in that obsessive way that young boys do. Anyway, we got to talking about some of the relationships between the different … Continue reading Teaching a Six Year Old About Triples →

Twinkle on code.google.com

I've created a Google Code project for Twinkle. It's called twinkle-sparql-tools. If you're a Java developer and/or a user of the tool and are interesting in contributing code then drop me a mail and I'll set up you up with source access.

Set Algebra For Updating a Triple Store

Lets assume we have a stored graph Gstore. Also that we have been given another graph of incoming data Gin that contains some modifications to a specific sub-graph. Lets also assume that we have a function view() that can extract the "equivalent" sub-graph (i.e. equivalent view) of the original data. In pseudo code to apply … Continue reading Set Algebra For Updating a Triple Store →

Graph Shape Sorting

On Sunday I posted about how constrained views of RDF can be useful in order to document the inputs into an application, validate those inputs, and also manage updates via application of set algebra. I explored the idea that a system may support many such views or "document types" without blessing any as the primary … Continue reading Graph Shape Sorting →