OpenLink Community Blog

Problem:

Your Life, Profession, Web, and Internet do not need to become mutually exclusive due to "information overload".

Solution:

A platform or service that delivers a point of online presence that embodies the fundamental separation of: Identity, Data Access, Data Representation, Data Presentation, by adhering to Web and Internet protocols.

How:

Typical post installation (Local or Cloud) task sequence:

1. Identify myself (happens automatically by way of registration)
2. If in an LDAP environment, import accounts or associate system with LDAP for account lookup and authentication
3. Identify Online Accounts (by fleshing out profile) which also connects system to online accounts and their data
4. Use Profile for granular description (Biography, Interests, WishList, OfferList, etc.)
5. Optionally upstream or downstream data to and from my online accounts
6. Create content Tagging Rules
7. Create rules for associating Tags with formal URIs
8. Create automatic Hyperlinking Rules for reuse when new content is created (e.g. Blog posts)
9. Exploit Data Portability virtues of RSS, Atom, OPML, RDFa, RDF/XML, and other formats for imports and exports
10. Automatically tag imported content
11. Use function-specific helper application UIs for domain specific data generation e.g. AddressBook (optionally use vCard import), Calendar (optionally use iCalendar import), Email, File Storage (use WebDAV mount with copy and paste or HTTP GET), Feed Subscriptions (optionally import RSS/Atom/OPML feeds), Bookmarking (optionally import bookmark.html or XBEL) etc..
12. Optionally enable "Conversation" feature (today: Social Media feature) across the relevant application domains (manage conversations under covers using NNTP, the standard for this functionality realm)
13. Generate HTTP based Entity IDs (URIs) for every piece of data in this burgeoning data space
14. Use REST based APIs to perform CRUD tasks against my data (local and remote) (SPARQL, GData, Ubiquity Commands, Atom Publishing)
15. Use OpenID, OAuth, FOAF+SSL, FOAF+SSL+OpenID for accessing data elsewhere
16. Use OpenID, OAuth, FOAF+SSL, FOAF+SSL+OpenID for Controlling access to my data (Self Signed Certificate Generation, Browser Import of said Certificate & associated Private Key, plus persistence of Certificate to FOAF based profile data space in "one click")
17. Have a simple UI for Entity-Attribute-Value or Subject-Predicate-Object arbitrary data annotations and creation since you can't pre model an "Open World" where the only constant is data flow
18. Have my Personal URI (Web ID) as the single entry point for controlled access to my HTTP accessible data space

I've just outlined a snippet of the capabilities of the OpenLink Data Spaces platform. A platform built using OpenLink Virtuoso, architected to deliver: open, platform independent, multi-model, data access and data management across heterogeneous data sources.

All you need to remember is your URI when seeking to interact with your data space.

Related

1. Get Yourself a URI (Web ID) in 5 Minutes or Less!
2. Various posts over the years about Data Spaces
3. Future of Desktop Post
4. Simplify My Life Post by Bengee Nowack

Problem:

Your Life, Profession, Web, and Internet do not need to become mutually exclusive due to "information overload".

Solution:

A platform or service that delivers a point of online presence that embodies the fundamental separation of: Identity, Data Access, Data Representation, Data Presentation, by adhering to Web and Internet protocols.

How:

Typical post installation (Local or Cloud) task sequence:

1. Identify myself (happens automatically by way of registration)
2. If in an LDAP environment, import accounts or associate system with LDAP for account lookup and authentication
3. Identify Online Accounts (by fleshing out profile) which also connects system to online accounts and their data
4. Use Profile for granular description (Biography, Interests, WishList, OfferList, etc.)
5. Optionally upstream or downstream data to and from my online accounts
6. Create content Tagging Rules
7. Create rules for associating Tags with formal URIs
8. Create automatic Hyperlinking Rules for reuse when new content is created (e.g. Blog posts)
9. Exploit Data Portability virtues of RSS, Atom, OPML, RDFa, RDF/XML, and other formats for imports and exports
10. Automatically tag imported content
11. Use function-specific helper application UIs for domain specific data generation e.g. AddressBook (optionally use vCard import), Calendar (optionally use iCalendar import), Email, File Storage (use WebDAV mount with copy and paste or HTTP GET), Feed Subscriptions (optionally import RSS/Atom/OPML feeds), Bookmarking (optionally import bookmark.html or XBEL) etc..
12. Optionally enable "Conversation" feature (today: Social Media feature) across the relevant application domains (manage conversations under covers using NNTP, the standard for this functionality realm)
13. Generate HTTP based Entity IDs (URIs) for every piece of data in this burgeoning data space
14. Use REST based APIs to perform CRUD tasks against my data (local and remote) (SPARQL, GData, Ubiquity Commands, Atom Publishing)
15. Use OpenID, OAuth, FOAF+SSL, FOAF+SSL+OpenID for accessing data elsewhere
16. Use OpenID, OAuth, FOAF+SSL, FOAF+SSL+OpenID for Controlling access to my data (Self Signed Certificate Generation, Browser Import of said Certificate & associated Private Key, plus persistence of Certificate to FOAF based profile data space in "one click")
17. Have a simple UI for Entity-Attribute-Value or Subject-Predicate-Object arbitrary data annotations and creation since you can't pre model an "Open World" where the only constant is data flow
18. Have my Personal URI (Web ID) as the single entry point for controlled access to my HTTP accessible data space

I've just outlined a snippet of the capabilities of the OpenLink Data Spaces platform. A platform built using OpenLink Virtuoso, architected to deliver: open, platform independent, multi-model, data access and data management across heterogeneous data sources.

All you need to remember is your URI when seeking to interact with your data space.

Related

1. Get Yourself a URI (Web ID) in 5 Minutes or Less!
2. Various posts over the years about Data Spaces
3. Future of Desktop Post
4. Simplify My Life Post by Bengee Nowack

What is it?

A pre-installed edition of Virtuoso for Amazon's EC2 Cloud platform.

What does it offer?

1. Low cost entry point to a game-changing Web 3.0+ (and beyond) platform that combines SQL, RDF, XML, and Web Services functionality
2. Flexible variable cost model (courtesy of EC2 DevPay) tightly bound to revenue generated by your services
3. Delivers federated and/or centralized model flexibility for you SaaS based solutions
4. Simple entry point for developing and deploying sophisticated database driven applications (SQL or RDF Linked Data Web oriented)
5. Complete framework for exploiting OpenID, OAuth (including Role enhancements) that simplifies exploitation of these vital Identity and Data Access technologies
6. Easily implement RDF Linked Data based Mail, Blogging, Wikis, Bookmarks, Calendaring, Discussion Forums, Tagging, Social-Networking as Data Space (data containers) features of your application or service offering
7. Instant alleviation of challenges (e.g. service costs and agility) associated with Data Portability and Open Data Access across Web 2.0 data silos
8. LDAP integration for Intranet / Extranet style applications.

From the DBMS engine perspective it provides you with one or more pre-configured instances of Virtuoso that enable immediate exploitation of the following services:

1. RDF Database (a Quad Store with SPARQL & SPARUL Language & Protocol support)
2. SQL Database (with ODBC, JDBC, OLE-DB, ADO.NET, and XMLA driver access)
3. XML Database (XML Schema, XQuery/Xpath, XSLT, Full Text Indexing)
4. Full Text Indexing.

From a Middleware perspective it provides:

1. RDF Views (Wrappers / Semantic Covers) over SQL, XML, and other data sources accessible via SOAP or REST style Web Services
2. Sponger Service for converting non RDF information resources into RDF Linked Data "on the fly" via a large collection of pre-installed RDFizer Cartridges.

From the Web Server Platform perspective it provides an alternative to LAMP stack components such as MySQL and Apace by offering

1. HTTP Web Server
2. WebDAV Server
3. Web Application Server (includes PHP runtime hosting)
4. SOAP or REST style Web Services Deployment
5. RDF Linked Data Deployment
6. SPARQL (SPARQL Query Language) and SPARUL (SPARQL Update Language) endpoints
7. Virtuoso Hosted PHP packages for MediaWiki, Drupal, Wordpress, and phpBB3 (just install the relevant Virtuoso Distro. Package).

From the general System Administrator's perspective it provides:

1. Online Backups (Backup Set dispatched to S3 buckets, FTP, or HTTP/WebDAV server locations)
2. Synchronized Incremental Backups to Backup Set locations
3. Backup Restore from Backup Set location (without exiting to EC2 shell).

Higher level user oriented offerings include:

1. OpenLink Data Explorer front-end for exploring the burgeoning Linked Data Web
2. Ajax based SPARQL Query Builder (iSPARQL) that enables SPARQL Query construction by Example
3. Ajax based SQL Query Builder (QBE) that enables SQL Query construction by Example.

For Web 2.0 / 3.0 users, developers, and entrepreneurs it offers it includes Distributed Collaboration Tools & Social Media realm functionality courtesy of ODS that includes:

1. Point of presence on the Linked Data Web that meshes your Identity and your Data via URIs
2. System generated Social Network Profile & Contact Data via FOAF?
3. System generated SIOC (Semantically Interconnected Online Community) Data Space (that includes a Social Graph) exposing all your Web data in RDF Linked Data form
4. System generated OpenID and automatic integration with FOAF
5. Transparent Data Integration across Facebook, Digg, LinkedIn, FriendFeed, Twitter, and any other Web 2.0 data space equipped with RSS / Atom support and/or REST style Web Services
6. In-built support for SyncML which enables data synchronization with Mobile Phones.

How Do I Get Going with It?

• Standard Installation Guide
• Personal or Service Specific DBpedia Installation Guide

Now that the virtues of dynamic generation of RDF based Linked Data are becoming clearer, I guess it's time to unveil the Virtuoso Sponger driven Dynamic Linked Data constellation diagram.

Our diagram depicts the myriad of data sources from which RDF Linked Data is generated "on the fly" via our data source specific RDF-zation cartridges/drivers. It also unveils how the sponger leverages the Linked Data constellations of UMBEL, DBpedia, Bio2Rdf, and others for lookups.

RDF-ization is a term used by the Semantic Web community to describe the process of generating RDF from non RDF Data Sources such as (X)HTML, Weblogs, Shared Bookmark Collections, Photo Galleries, Calendars, Contact Managers, Feed Subscriptions, Wikis, and other information resource collections.

If the RDF generated, results in an entity-to-entity level network (graph) in which each entity is endowed with a de-referencable HTTP based ID (a URI), we end up with an enhancement to the Web that adds Hyperdata linking across extracted entities, to the existing Hypertext based Web of linked documents (pages, images, and other information resource types). Thus, I can use the same URL linking mechanism to reference a broader range of "Things" i.e., documents, things that documents are about, or things loosely associated with documents.

The Virtuoso Sponger is an example of an RDF Middleware solution from OpenLink Software. It's an in-built component of the Virtuoso Universal Server, and deployable in many forms e.g., Software as Service (SaaS) or traditional software installation. It delivers RDF-ization services via a collection of Web information resource specific Cartridges/Providers/Drivers covering Wikipedia, Freebase, CrunchBase, WikiCompany, OpenLibrary, Digg, eBay, Amazon, RSS/Atom/OPML feed sources, XBRL, and many more.

RDF-ization alone doesn't ensure valuable RDF based Linked Data on the Web. The process of producing RDF Linked Data is ultimately about the art of effectively describing resources with an eye for context.

RDF-ization Processing Steps

1. Entity Extraction
2. Vocabulary/Schema/Ontology (Data Dictionary) mapping
3. HTTP based Proxy URI generation
4. Linked Data Cloud Lookups (e.g., perform UMBEL lookup to add "isAbout" fidelity to graph and then lookup DBpedia and other LOD instance data enclaves for Identical individuals and connect via "owl:sameAs")
5. RDF Linked Data Graph projection that uses the description of the container information resource to expose the URIs of the distilled entities.

The animation that follows illustrates the process (5,000 feet view), from grabbing resources via HTTP GET, to injecting RDF Linked Data back into the Web cloud:

Note: the Shredder is a Generic Cartridge, so you would have one of these per data source type (information resource type).

The sweet spot of Web 3.0 (or any other Web.vNext moniker) is all about providing Web Users with a structured and interlinked data substrate that facilitates serendipitous discovery of relevant "Things" i.e., a Linked Data Web -- a Web of Linkable Entities that goes beyond documents and other information resource (data containers) types.

Understanding potential Linked Data Web business models, relative to other Web based market segments, is best pursued via a BCG Matrix diagram, such as the one I've constructed below:

Notes:

Link Density

• Web 1.0's collection of "Web Sites" have relatively low link density relative to Web 2.0's user-activity driven generation of semi-structured linked data spaces (e.g., Blogs, Wikis, Shared Bookmarks, RSS/Atom Feeds, Photo Galleries, Discussion Forums etc..)
• Semantic Technologies (i.e. "Semantics Inside style solutions") which are primarily about "Semantic Meaning" culled from Web 1.0 Pages also have limited linked density relative to Web 2.0
• The Linked Data Web, courtesy of the open-ended linking capacity of URIs, matches and ultimately exceeds Web 2.0 link density.

Relevance

• Web 1.0 and 2.0 are low relevance realms driven by hyperlinks to information resources ((X)HTML, RSS, Atom, OPML, XML, Images, Audio files etc.) associated with Literal Labels and Tagging schemes devoid of explicit property based resource description thereby making the pursuit of relevance mercurial at best
• Semantic Technologies offer more relevance than Web 1.0 and 2.0 based on the increased context that semantic analysis of Web pages accords
• The Linked Data Web, courtesy of URIs that expose self-describing data entities, match the relevance levels attained by Semantic Technologies.

Serendipity Quotient (SDQ)

• Web 1.0 has next to no serendipity, the closest thing is Google's "I'm Feeling Lucky" button
• Web 2.0 possess higher potential for serendipitous discovery than Web 1.0, but such potential is neutralized by inherent subjectivity due to its human-interaction-focused literal foundation (e.g., tags, voting schemes, wiki editors etc.)
• Semantic Technologies produce islands-of-relevance with little scope for serendipitous discovery due to URI invisibility, since the prime focus is delivering more context to Web search relative to traditional Web 1.0 search engines.
• The Linked Data Web's use of URIs as the naming and resolution mechanism for exposing structured and interlinked resources provides the highest potential for serendipitous discovery of relevant "Things"

To conclude, the Linked Data Web's market opportunities are all about the evolution of the Web into a powerful substrate that offers a unique intersection of "Link Density" and "Relevance", exploitable across horizontal and vertical market segments to solutions providers. Put differently, SDQ is how you take "The Ad" out of "Advertising" when matching Web users to relevant things :-)

Unfortunately, I could only spend 4 days at the recent WWW2008 event in Beijing (I departed the morning following the Linked Data Workshop), so I couldn't take my slot on the "Commercializing the Semantic Web panel" etc.. Anyway, thanks to the Web I can still inject my points of view in the broad Web based discourse. Well so I hoped, when I attempted to post a comment to Paul Miller's ZDNet domain hosted blog thread titled: Commercialising the Semantic Web.

Unfortunately, the cost of completing ZDNet's unwieldy signup process simply exceeded the benefits of dropping my comments in their particular space :-( Thus, I'll settle for a trackback ping instead.

What follows is the cut and paste of my intended comment contributions to Paul's post.

Paul,

As discussed earlier this week during our podcast session, commercialization of Semantic Web technology shouldn't be a mercurial matter at this stage in the game :-) It's all about looking at how it provides value :-)

From the Linked Data angle, the ability to produce, dispatch, and exploit "Context" across an array of "Perspectives" from a plethora of disparate data sources on the Web and/or behind corporate firewalls, offers immense commercial value.

Yahoo's Searchmonkey effort will certainly bring clarity to some of the points I made during the podcast re. the role of URIs as "value consumption tickets" (Data Services are exposed via URIs). There has to be a trigger (in user space) that compels Web users to seek broader, or simply varied, perspectives as a response to data encountered on the Web. Yahoo! is about to put this light on in a big way (imho).

The "self annotating" nature of the Web is what ultimately drives the manifestation of the long awaited Semantic Web. I believe I postulated about "Self Annotation & the Semantic Web" in a number of prior posts which, by the way, should be DataRSS compatible right now due to Yahoo's support of OpenSearch Data Providers (which this Blog Space has been for eons).

Today, have many communities adding strucuture to the Web (via their respective tools of preference) without explicitly realizing what they are contributing. Every RSS/Atom feed, Tag, Weblog, Shared Bookmark, Wikiword, Microformat, Microformat++ (eRDF or RDFa), GRDDL stylesheet, and RDFizer etc.. is a piece of structured data.

Finally, the different communities are all finding ways to work together (thank heavens!) and the results are going to be cataclysmic when it all plays out :-)

Data, Structure, and Extraction are the keys to the Semantic Life! First you get the Data in a container (information resource), and then you add Structure to the information resource (RSS, Atom, microformats, RDFa, eRDF, SIOC, FOAF, etc.), once you have Structure RDFization (i.e. transformation to Linked Data) is a synch thanks to RDF Middleware (as per earlier RDF middleware posts).

For all the one-way feed consumers and aggregators, and readers of the original post, here is a variant equipped hyperlinked phrases as opposed to words. As I stated in the prior post, the post (like most of my posts) was part experiment / dog-fodding of automatic tagging and hyper-linking functionality in OpenLink Data Spaces.

ReadWriteWeb via Alex Iskold's post have delivered another iteration of their "Guide to Semantic Technologies".

If you look at the title of this post (and their article) they seem to be accurately providing a guide to Semantic Technologies, so no qualms there. If on the other hand, this is supposed to he a guide to the "Semantic Web" as prescribed by TimBL then they are completely missing the essence of the whole subject, and demonstrably so I may add, since the entities: "ReadWriteWeb" and "Alex Iskold" are only describable today via the attributes of the documents they publish i.e their respective blogs and hosted blog posts.

Preoccupation with Literal objects as describe above, implies we can only take what "ReadWriteWeb" and "Alex Iskold" say "Literally" (grep, regex, and XPath/Xquery are the only tools for searching deeper in this Literal realm), we have no sense of what makes them tick or where they come from, no history (bar "About Page" blurb), no data connections beyond anchored text (more pointers to opaque data sources) in post and blogrolls. The only connection between this post and them is the my deliberate use of the same literal text in the Title of this post.

TimBL's vision as espoused via the "Semantic Web" vision is about the production, consumption, and sharing of Data Objects via HTTP based Identifiers called URIs/IRIs (Hyperdata Links / Linked Data). It's how we use the Web as a Distributed Database where (as Jim Hendler once stated with immense clarity): I can point to records (entity instances) in your database (aka Data Space) from mine. Which is to say that if we can all point to data entities/objects (not just data entities of type "Document") using these Location, Value, and Structure independent Object Identifiers (courtesy of HTTP) we end up with a much more powerful Web, and one that is closer to the "Federated and Open" nature of the Web.

As I stated in a prior post, if you or your platform of choice aren't producing de-referencable URIs for your data objects, you may be Semantic (this data model predates the Web), but there is no "World Wide Web" in what you are doing.

What are the Benefits of the Semantic Web?

Consumer - "Discovery of relevant things" and be being "Discovered by relevant things" (people, places, events, and other things)

Enterprise - ditto plus the addition of enterprise domain specific things such as market opportunities, product portfolios, human resources, partners, customers, competitors, co-opetitors, acquisition targets, new regulation etc..)

Simple demo:

I am a Kingsley Idehen, a Person who authors this weblog. I also share bookmarks gathered over the years across an array of subjects via my bookmark data space. I also subscribe to a number of RSS/Atom/RDF feeds, which I share via my feeds subscription data space. Of course, all of these data sources have Tags which are collectively exposed via my weblog tag-cloud, feeds subscriptions tag-cloud, and bookmarks tag-cloud data spaces.

As I don't like repeating myself, and I hate wasting my time or the time of others, I simply share my Data Space (a collection of all of my purpose specific data spaces) via the Web so that others (friends, family, employees, partners, customers, project collaborators, competitors, co-opetitors etc.) can can intentionally or serendipitously discover relevant data en route to creating new information (perspectives) that is hopefully exposed others via the Web.

Bottom-line, the Semantic Web is about adding the missing "Open Data Access & Connectivity" feature to the current Document Web (we have to beyond regex, grep, xpath, xquery, full text search, and other literal scrapping approaches). The Linked Data Web of de-referencable data object URIs is the critical foundation layer that makes this feasible.

Remember, It's not about "Applications" it's about Data and actually freeing Data from the "tyranny of Applications". Unfortunately, application inadvertently always create silos (esp. on the Web) since entity data modeling, open data access, and other database technology realm matters, remain of secondary interest to many application developers.

Final comment, RDF facilitates Linked Data on the Web, but all RDF isn't endowed with de-referencable URIs (a major source of confusion and misunderstanding). Thus, you can have RDF Data Source Providers that simply project RDF data silos via Web Services APIs if RDF output emanating from a Web Service doesn't provide out-bound pathways to other data via de-referencable URIs. Of course the same also applies to Widgets that present you with all the things they've discovered without exposing de-referencable URIs for each item.

BTW - my final comments above aren't in anyway incongruent with devising successful business models for the Web. As you may or may not know, OpenLink is not only a major platform provider for the Semantic Web (expressed in our UDA, Virtuoso, OpenLink Data Spaces, and OAT products), we are also actively seeding Semantic Web (tribe: Linked Data of course) startups. For instance, Zitgist, which now has Mike Bergman as it's CEO alongside Frederick Giasson as CTO. Of course, I cannot do Zitgist justice via a footnote in a blog post, so I will expand further in a separate post.

Additional information about this blog post:

1. I didn't spent hours looking for URIs used in my hyperlinks
2. The post is best viewed via an RDF Linked Data aware user agents (OpenLink RDF Browser, Zitgist Data Viewer, DISCO Hyperdata Browser, Tabulator).

ReadWriteWeb via Alex Iskold have delivered another iteration of their "Guide to Semantic Technologies".

If you look at the title of this post (and their article) they seem to be accurately providing a guide to Semantic Technologies, so no qualms there. If on the other hand, this is supposed to he a guide to the "Semantic Web" as prescribed by TimBL then they are completely missing the essence of the whole subject, and demonstrably so I may add, since the entities: "ReadWriteWeb" and "Alex Iskold" are only describable today via the attributes of the documents they publish i.e their respective blogs and hosted blog posts.

Preoccupation with Literal objects as describe above, implies we can only take what "ReadWriteWeb" and "Alex Iskold" say "Literally" (grep, regex, and XPath/Xquery are the only tools for searching deeper in this Literal realm), we have no sense of what makes them tick or where they come from, no history (bar "About Page" blurb), no data connections beyond anchored text (more pointers to opaque data sources) in post and blogrolls. The only connection between this post and them is the my deliberate use of the same literal text in the Title of this post.

TimBL's vision as espoused via the "Semantic Web" vision is about the production, consumption, and sharing of Data Objects via HTTP based Identifiers called URIs/IRIs (Hyperdata Links / Linked Data). It's how we use the Web as a Distributed Database where (as Jim Hendler once stated with immense clarity): I can point to records (entity instances) in your database (aka Data Space) from mine. Which is to say that if we can all point to data entities/objects (not just data entities of type "Document") using these Location, Value, and Structure independent Object Identifiers (courtesy of HTTP) we end up with a much more powerful Web, and one that is closer to the "Federated and Open" nature of the Web.

As I stated in a prior post, if you or your platform of choice aren't producing de-referencable URIs for your data objects, you may be Semantic (this data model predates the Web), but there is no "World Wide Web" in what you are doing.

What are the Benefits of the Semantic Web?

Consumer - "Discovery of relevant things" and be being "Discovered by relevant things" (people, places, events, and other things)

Enterprise - ditto plus the addition of enterprise domain specific things such as market opportunities, product portfolios, human resources, partners, customers, competitors, co-opetitors, acquisition targets, new regulation etc..)

Simple demo:

I am a Kingsley Idehen, a Person who authors this weblog. I also share bookmarks gathered over the years across an array of subjects via my bookmark data space. I also subscribe to a number of RSS/Atom/RDF feeds, which I share via my feeds subscription data space. Of course, all of these data sources have Tags which are collectively exposed via my weblog tag-cloud, feeds subscriptions tag-cloud, and bookmarks tag-cloud data spaces.

As I don't like repeating myself, and I hate wasting my time or the time of others, I simply share my Data Space (a collection of all of my purpose specific data spaces) via the Web so that others (friends, family, employees, partners, customers, project collaborators, competitors, co-opetitors etc.) can can intentionally or serendipitously discover relevant data en route to creating new information (perspectives) that is hopefully exposed others via the Web.

Bottom-line, the Semantic Web is about adding the missing "Open Data Access & Connectivity" feature to the current Document Web (we have to beyond regex, grep, xpath, xquery, full text search, and other literal scrapping approaches). The Linked Data Web of de-referencable data object URIs is the critical foundation layer that makes this feasible.

Remember, It's not about "Applications" it's about Data and actually freeing Data from the "tyranny of Applications". Unfortunately, application inadvertently always create silos (esp. on the Web) since entity data modeling, open data access, and other database technology realm matters, remain of secondary interest to many application developers.

Final comment, RDF facilitates Linked Data on the Web, but all RDF isn't endowed with de-referencable URIs (a major source of confusion and misunderstanding). Thus, you can have RDF Data Source Providers that simply project RDF data silos via Web Services APIs if RDF output emanating from a Web Service doesn't provide out-bound pathways to other data via de-referencable URIs. Of course the same also applies to Widgets that present you with all the things they've discovered without exposing de-referencable URIs for each item.

BTW - my final comments above aren't in anyway incongruent with devising successful business models for the Web. As you may or may not know, OpenLink is not only a major platform provider for the Semantic Web (expressed in our UDA, Virtuoso, OpenLink Data Spaces, and OAT products), we are also actively seeding Semantic Web (tribe: Linked Data of course) startups. For instance, Zitgist, which now has Mike Bergman as it's CEO alongside Frederick Giasson as CTO. Of course, I cannot do Zitgist justice via a footnote in a blog post, so I will expand further in a separate post.

Additional information about this blog post:

1. I didn't spent hours looking for URIs used in my hyperlinks
2. The post is best viewed via an RDF Linked Data aware user agents (OpenLink RDF Browser, Zitgist Data Viewer, DISCO Hyperdata Browser, Tabulator).

Post absorption of Web 3G commentary emanating from the Talis blog space. Ian Davis appears to be expending energy on the definition of, and timeframes for, the next Web Frontier (which is actually here btw) :-)

Daniel Lewis also penned an interesting post in response to Ian's, that actually triggered this post.

I think definition time has long expired re. the Web's many interaction dimensions, evolutionary stages, and versions.

On my watch it's simply demo / dog-food time. Or as Dan Brickley states: Just Show It.

Below, I've created a tabulated view of the various lanes on the Web's Information Super Highway. Of course, this is a Linked Data demo should you be interested in the universe of data exposed via the links embedded in this post :-)