Semantosoph
Semantics, Code and Circumstance
April 10, 2010: This afternoon I recieved a visit from a plushy black cat. I've never seen her before and since she has a collar she may be moved in with her owner in the last days.
Read more about project 365 ...Topic Maps Lab moves
In the past days, the Topic Maps Lab has moved in different ways. First of all, we had to leave our own 9th floor offices in downtown and moved to the ground floor of the computer science department building. The new offices have a sgnificant lack of look-out but give us much shorter paths to the rest of the department. Fotos will follow, but don’t expect something spectacular.
Aside from moving geographically, we constantly move forward to TMRA 2009. With only ten days to go, the conference organization and proceedings are moving towards completion. I, for my part, finished the proceedings on last thursday and will rouse the print office on tuesday, so you all will have a freshly printed proceedings book in your conference package.
NB: If you are coming to TMRA 2009 and are in need of getting something to eat (beyond the great conference catering), I strongly recommend a visit at the newly opened Vapiano Restaurant in downtown Leipzig. They serve great italian food, freshly made before your eyes with fair prizes.
The Semantic Web Landscape 2009
Long time no post. Learning for exams keeps me busy. But while learning, I found this neat presentation that was created by Lee Feigenbaum of Cambridge Semantics.
These slides were originally a tutorial presented for the SIG preceding the May 2009 meeting of the PRISM Forum. They attempt to give a survey of the technologies, tools, and state of the world with respect to the Semantic Web as of the first half of 2009. You may note the complete absence of topic maps, which clearly says, that more topic maps evangelization is needed.
Google accepts RDFa and microformat
On Tuesday, the alpha animal of all search engines – Google – announced a new Feature called “rich snippets”, that will delight the semantic web community in some way.
How come?
With rich snippets, Google jumps on the accelerating bandwagon of linked data and the semantic web. It does so, by reading embedded semantic annotations, that were placed into the HTML code of a site. For now, the Google spiders understand the concepts of People and Reviews and will accept descriptions in RDFa and microformat. After reading, Google will then display so called “rich snippets” on any search result, that points to a site that contains semantic annotations.
For more information, read the original article in the Webmaster Central Blog of Google. Web coders may find this Google support site on marking up structured data helpful.
Topic Maps Lab starts
Today ist the first working day of the new Topic Maps Lab project. We entered the new rooms in downtown Leipzig. They are located in the 9th floor of an university building. The respective look is great. However, as this is the south side of the building, we’ll have heat problems in the summer.
After some celebration with sparkling wine, we gathered together in the meeting room to share our ideas and discuss the next steps on our schedule.
Stay tuned for more information out of Topic Maps Lab pot.
Red Carpet for the Topic Maps Lab
The Topic Maps Lab moves into new offices on Monday. As computers won’t be available due to negotiation issues, at least we have a red carpet.
