Re: DBpedia Lookup RE: Can we lower the LD entry cost please (part 1)?

Georgi,

Great news indeed, thanks for letting us know. Now also available as an
ubiquity [1] command at [2].

Cheers,
      Michael

[1] https://wiki.mozilla.org/Labs/Ubiquity
[2] http://gist.github.com/59915

-- 
Dr. Michael Hausenblas
DERI - Digital Enterprise Research Institute
National University of Ireland, Lower Dangan,
Galway, Ireland, Europe
Tel. +353 91 495730
http://sw-app.org/about.html


> From: Georgi Kobilarov <georgi.kobilarov@gmx.de>
> Date: Sat, 7 Feb 2009 16:18:35 +0100
> To: Hugh Glaser <hg@ecs.soton.ac.uk>, Linked Data community
> <public-lod@w3.org>
> Subject: DBpedia Lookup RE: Can we lower the LD entry cost please (part 1)?
> Resent-From: Linked Data community <public-lod@w3.org>
> Resent-Date: Sat, 07 Feb 2009 15:19:30 +0000
> 
> 
>> dbpedia: wanted Tim again. After clicking on a few web pages, none of
>> which
>> seemed to provide a search facility, I resorted to my usual method:-
>> look it
>> up in wikipedia and then hack the URI and hope it works in dbpedia.
>> (Sorry to name specific sites, guys, but I needed a few examples.
>> And I am only asking for a little more, so that the fruits of your
>> amazing
>> labours can be more widely appreciated!)
> 
> oh, it was my laziness that kept me from announcing it publically yet,
> but since Hugh is complaining about the lack of URI search functionality
> in DBpedia, here it is:
> 
> http://lookup.dbpedia.org
> 
> and web service at http://lookup.dbpedia.org/api/search.asmx
> 
> KeywordSearch method is for searching full titles, PrefixSearch is for
> auto-completion style search. If you want to use that in a productive
> system (i.e. putting high load on my server), please drop me a message.
> 
> Best,
> Georgi 
> 
> --
> Georgi Kobilarov
> Freie Universität Berlin
> www.georgikobilarov.com
> 
> 
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: public-lod-request@w3.org [mailto:public-lod-request@w3.org] On
>> Behalf Of Hugh Glaser
>> Sent: Saturday, February 07, 2009 2:24 PM
>> To: public-lod@w3.org
>> Subject: Can we lower the LD entry cost please (part 1)?
>> 
>> 
>> My proposal:
>> *We should not permit any site to be a member of the Linked Data cloud
>> if it
>> does not provide a simple way of finding URIs from natural language
>> identifiers.*
>> 
>> Rationale:
>> One aspect of our Linking Data (not to mention our Linking Open Data)
>> world
>> is that we want people to link to our data - that is, I have published
>> some
>> stuff about something, with a URI, and I want people to be able to use
>> that
>> URI.
>> 
>> So my question to you, the publisher, is: "How easy is it for me to
>> find the
>> URI your users want?"
>> 
>> My experience suggests it is not always very easy.
>> What is required at the minimum, I suggest, is a text search, so that
>> if I
>> have a (boring string version of a) name that refers in my mind to
>> something, I can hope to find an (exciting Linked Data) URI of that
>> thing.
>> I call this a projection from the Web to the Semantic Web.
>> rdfs:label or equivalent usually provides the other one.
>> 
>> At the risk of being seen as critical of the amazing efforts of all my
>> colleagues (if not also myself), this is rarely an easy thing to do.
>> 
>> Some recent experiences:
>> OpenCalais: as in my previous message on this list, I tried hard to
>> find a
>> URI for Tim, but failed.
>> dbtune: Saw a Twine message about dbtune, trundled over there, and
>> tried to
>> find a URI for a Telemann, but failed.
>> dbpedia: wanted Tim again. After clicking on a few web pages, none of
>> which
>> seemed to provide a search facility, I resorted to my usual method:-
>> look it
>> up in wikipedia and then hack the URI and hope it works in dbpedia.
>> (Sorry to name specific sites, guys, but I needed a few examples.
>> And I am only asking for a little more, so that the fruits of your
>> amazing
>> labours can be more widely appreciated!)
>> wordnet: [2] below
>> 
>> So I have access to Linked Data sites that I know (or at least
> strongly
>> suspect) have URIs I might want, but I can't find them.
>> How on earth do we expect your average punter to join this world?
>> 
>> What have I missed?
>> Searching, such as Sindice: Well yes, but should I really have to go
>> off to
>> a search engine to find a dbpedia URI? And when I look up "Telemann
>> dbtune"
>> I don't get any results. And I wanted the dbtune link, not some other
>> link.
>> Did I miss some links on web pages? Quite probably, but the basic
>> problem
>> still stands.
>> SPARQL: Well, yes. But we cannot seriously expect our users to
>> formulate a
>> SPARQL query simply to find out the dbpedia URI for Tim. What is the
>> regexp
>> I need to put in? (see below [1])
>> A foaf file: Well Tim's dbpedia URI is probably in his foaf file
>> (although
>> possibly there are none of Tim's URIs in his foaf file), if I can
>> actually
>> find the file; but for some reason I can't seem to find Telemann's
> foaf
>> file.
>> 
>> If you are still doubting me, try finding a URI for Telemann in
> dbpedia
>> without using an external link, just by following stuff from the home
>> page.
>> I managed to get a Telemann by using SPARQL without a regexp (it times
>> out
>> on any regexp), but unfortunately I get the asteroid.
>> 
>> Again, my proposal:
>> *We should not permit any site to be a member of the Linked Data cloud
>> if it
>> does not provide a simple way of finding URIs from natural language
>> identifiers.*
>> Otherwise we end up in a silo, and the world passes us by.
>> 
>> Very best
>> Hugh
>> 
>> [And since we have to take our own medicine, I have added a "Just
>> search"
>> box right at the top level of all the rkbexplorer.com domains, such as
>> http://wordnet.rkbexplorer.com/ ]
>> 
>> 
>> [1]
>> Dbtune finding of Telemann:
>> SELECT * WHERE {?s ?p ?name .
>> FILTER regex(?name, "Telemann$") }
>> 
>> I tried
>> SELECT * WHERE {?s ?p ?name .
>> FILTER regex(?name, "telemann$", "i") }
>> first, but got no results - not sure why.
>> 
>> [2]
>> <rant>
>> I cannot believe just how frustrating this stuff can be when you
> really
>> try
>> to use it.
>> Because I looked at Sindice for telemann, I know that it is a word in
>> wordnet ( http://sindice.com/search?q=Telemann reports loads of
>> http://wordnet.rkbexplorer.com/ links).
>> Great, he thinks, I can get a wordnet link from a "proper" wordnet
>> publisher
>> (ie not me).
>> Goes to
>> 
> http://esw.w3.org/topic/SweoIG/TaskForces/CommunityProjects/LinkingOpen
>> Data
>> to find wordnet.
>> The link there is dead.
>> Strips off the last bit, to get to the home princeton wordnet page,
> and
>> clicks on the browser link I find - also dead.
>> Go back and look on the
>> 
> http://esw.w3.org/topic/TaskForces/CommunityProjects/LinkingOpenData/Da
>> taSet
>> s page, and find the link to http://esw.w3.org/topic/WordNet , but
> that
>> doesn't help.
>> So finally, I do the obvious - google "wordnet rdf".
>> Of course I get lots of pages saying how available it is, and how
>> exciting
>> it is that we have it, and how it was produced; and somewhere in there
>> I
>> find a link: "Wordnet-RDF/RDDL Browser" at
>> www.openhealth.org/RDDL/wnbrowse
>> Almost unable to contain myself with excitement, I click on the link
> to
>> find
>> a text box, and with trembling hands I type "Telemann" and click
>> submit.
>> If I show you what I got, you can come some way to imagining my
>> devastation:
>> "Using org.apache.xerces.parsers.SAXParser
>> Exception net.sf.saxon.trans.DynamicError:
>> org.xml.sax.SAXParseException:
>> White spaces are required between publicId and systemId.
>> org.xml.sax.SAXParseException: White spaces are required between
>> publicId
>> and systemId."
>> 
>> Does the emperor have any clothes at all?
>> </rant>
> 
>

Received on Saturday, 7 February 2009 16:06:15 UTC