Vortragsdetails

Semantic Web, Wiki and Mashup: how they can all work together

von Nicolas Vandenberghe (ITerating)

Samstag, 02.06.2007, Saal 3: Berlin, 10:00-11:00 Uhr

ITerating started with an ambitous goal: build a directory of all open source and commercial software, and add user reviews. A wiki appeared the only solution to be comprehensive and up to date. At the same time, a mash up could take advantage of the many existing software listings. Open source tools from the semantic web made the wiki-mashup combination possible and even harmonious.

Semantic Wiki Most wikis are based on the concept of an article. The content of an article is a large chunk of formatted text. The data is un-structured. Yet in many cases, entities would be better described in a structured approach that takes into account their attributes. For example, an article about a software product should “know” the operating systems and programming languages. The Semantic Web offers an approach to work with such attributes. A wiki can then be implemented as a set of editable attributes, as opposed to a single, editable article.

Semantic Mashup There are many sources of information on the same topic on the web, sometimes hard to reconcile. The Semantic Web provides a framework to enable parties to agree on a single vocabulary to exchange data. Several vocabularies can be combined to cover different aspects of the data. ITerating uses Description Of A Project (DOAP) for project data, Friend Of A Friend (FOAF) for user data, and Review for reviews.

The combination of a semantic wiki and a semantic mashup offers a very powerful solution when combining heterogenous data sources with user-generated content. No wonder more and more players, including google, are increasingly relying on semantic approaches.

Über den Autor Nicolas Vandenberghe:

Nicolas Vandenberghe is Founder & CEO of ITerating, a wiki-based software guide.

Nicolas previously founded and led three software companies:
- Delean Vision, developer of a breakthrough biometric technology, acquired by Identix (IDNX) in March 2004.
- RedCart, a web-based universal shopping cart, based on Linux and open source components, acquired by MSN in 2000
- LivePix, a digital imaging software company, nominated for the prestigious Coddie Award for best consumer software in 1999

Nicolas has been a public speaker at PC Expo, Comdex, the Harvard Business School symposium and the Biometric Consortium Conference.

He holds a BSc in Mathematics from Ecole Polytechnique in Paris and an MBA from Stanford University.