Archive for October, 2008

Social Web Incubator Group

October 23, 2008 at 8:19 am · Filed under Semantic web, social semantic web, social software, social web, Web 2.0 ·Tagged , , ,

Social Web Incubator Group

Good to see the Social Web incubator group charter. Great start! Harry Halpin had talked about it when he visited Tokyo and had a meeting with some W3C members here along with prof. Hideaki Takeda and I from NII.  I feel that a group like this can play a very important role in identifying and addressing practical challenges that are still hindering the adoption of open semantic standards in the social web. While movements like Data portability, SIOC and FOAF have been very successful in the Semantic Web world, many issues like privacy, authentication, ownership, security, trust etc should still be addressed if such standards are to be publicly accepted. Otherwise, people feel safe and comfortable within walled data gardens while social web companies prefer to hold their customers and their data.

The mission of the Social Web Incubator Group, part of the Incubator Activity, is to explore the development of open standards for social data portability built on existing W3C standards and standards developed by the community, and to promote these solutions within the W3C.

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StYLiD presented in the Japanese Business Model Society

October 15, 2008 at 5:05 am · Filed under Information sharing, Semantic web, social software, social web, Web 2.0 ·Tagged , , ,

I got an opportunity to present my paper titled “StYLiD: Structured Information Sharing with User-defined Concepts” in the annual conference of Japanese Business Model Society (Biz-model 2008) held at the university of Tokyo, October 11, 2008. Thanks to assoc. prof. Yutaka Matsuo for organizing the session on “Web technology and business models”. My presentation was special because it was the only presentation in English in the conference :-P. However, the audience seemed to be quite interested and I received some important questions, including some in Japanese that were translated to me in English 🙂

It would be interesting to explore business models or practical applications for StYLiD and receive suggestions from the business community in the future as well. It would be better to serve applications to targeted groups who are really in need rather than trying hard to motivate general people to contribute.

Here are my paper and presentation slides.

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Presenting the social Semantic Web to Nepali Engineers in Japan

October 13, 2008 at 4:33 am · Filed under Information sharing, Semantic web, social semantic web, social web, Uncategorized, Web 2.0 ·Tagged , ,

Yesterday I presented my paper titled “Information Sharing on the Social Semantic Web” in the Second NEA-JC Workshop on Current and Future Technologies. NEA-JC stands for Nepal Engineers’ Association – Japan Chapter. I made a general introduction to the social web and the Semantic Web, with the general audience from all backgrounds in mind. The paper has been written for non-technical audience. I am glad to see the interest shown by all in this area.

In general people understand what is the social web as there are many example sites many of them are actually using today. However, people find it hard to imagine what the Semantic Web is really like. There are rarely any sites that ordinary people are really using that could be used to cite examples of Semantic Web technologies. People are not satisfied by just understanding the vision and principles of the Semantic Web. People want to see the Semantic Web but its still hard to show to non-technical people.

I hope in the near future we will also have enough Semantic Web sites, just like the social or Web 2.0 sites today, so that people really see, understand and benefit from the Semantic Web. I feel that day will come soon with the social Semantic web, rather than pure Semantic Web technologies only. The social Semantic Web can be as common as the social web today if the social web community and the Semantic Web community work in cooperation.

Below are the links for the PDF and presentation slides.

paper

slides

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