Re: Semantic Web pneumonia and the Linked Data flu (was: Can we lower the LD entry cost please (part 1)?)

Dear Kingsley,

We talked with Sybase, and they are not DBMS platform dependent, but moving.towards a mobile and wireless corporate business services support model.

Second, we agree that they and Sun lack for now most of the functionality we are looking for, but they are willing to talk and collaborate to a very large extent, to explore new avenues.

I totally agree with you on cloud computing in combination with linked data technologies providing solutions.

But most of the potential users out there would not understand an iota of the basics of semantic web technology.

They want the functionality right now on their Android powered (Google and other Open Handset Alliance brand) phones, Eclipse platform based mobile devices, netbooks, notebooks, iPhones, Blackberries, 3G GSM phones etc.

In my daily work I deal with specialists and non-specialists alike and the most telling sign in the use of the internet is that the internet access is taking place at an increasing rate by people on the move, requiring sophisticated solutions.

E.g. someone working in the rain forest (a pharmaceutical industry scout, geologist, conservationist, biologist, reporter, park ranger) will want to digitally acquire data, upload it somewhere and have it processed into predefined data sets, which can then "by Live Update" be retrieved from the repository used by his company or institute by some "cloud computing" component, processed and the reference information of the updated linked data published on some internet cloud for linked data, and possibly the linked data itself residing somewhere on the web itself too!.

I have taken the time to check out just about every company or institute of which there are subscribers to these w3 lists, and the products and services they provide.

Lots of good stuff out there, but the numbers of users who may want something else cannot be ignored.

There are approximately 1,000,000 non-profits worldwide dedicated to sustainable development and the environment, of these maybe 25,000 may have the resources to consider Virtuoso or other products, most however don't and will only be willing to consider FREE open access, open source, or cloud computing solutions, where they may be willing to pay subscriptions and some Premium Services.

And I do not think that in academic circles money is available in abundance either.

For the next two years the non-profit sector, or civil society at large and the services sector are going to be in the driver's seat, determining the fate of a lot of new emerging technologies in the field of internet services and mobile computing.

The reason being that both industry/economic sectors are very large in the developed, industrial countries, resilient and relatively recession proof and will need to "rationalize" operations even more in these lean times.

Companies like Microsoft, IBM, Google, Yahoo etc. may need to adjust to these new realities.

Milton Ponson
GSM: +297 747 8280
Rainbow Warriors Core Foundation
PO Box 1154, Oranjestad
Aruba, Dutch Caribbean
www.rainbowwarriors.net
Project Paradigm: A structured approach to bringing the tools for sustainable development to all stakeholders worldwide
www.projectparadigm.info
NGO-Opensource: Creating ICT tools for NGOs worldwide for Project Paradigm
www.ngo-opensource.org
MetaPortal: providing online access to web sites and repositories of data and information for sustainable development
www.metaportal.info
SemanticWebSoftware, part of NGO-Opensource to enable SW technologies in the Metaportal project
www.semanticwebsoftware.info


--- On Mon, 2/9/09, Kingsley Idehen <kidehen@openlinksw.com> wrote:
From: Kingsley Idehen <kidehen@openlinksw.com>
Subject: Re: Semantic Web pneumonia and the Linked Data flu (was: Can we lower the   LD entry cost please (part 1)?)
To: metadataportals@yahoo.com
Cc: "public-lod@w3.org" <public-lod@w3.org>, "Yves Raimond" <yves.raimond@gmail.com>, "semantic-web" <semantic-web@w3.org>
Date: Monday, February 9, 2009, 4:49 PM

On 2/9/09 11:33 AM, Semantics-ProjectParadigm wrote:
> 
> For the storage and cloud computing I have found that e.g. Sun
MicroSystems and Sybase are willing to listen to all ideas about open source
reference architectures and cloud computing, including for the semantic web.
At the current time, I can't make a DevPay AMI for Solaris on Amazon EC2.

As for Sybase, I don't see why DBMS specificity offers any form of clarity
re. Cloud Computing which is ultimately about using the cloud to virtualize
computing resources (machine, os, dbms, and apps as components).

Cloud Computing makes "Data as a Service" by way of virtual
machinery.
Linked Data makes "Data as a Service" viable through the use of
de-referencable URIs as mechanism for Attribution and brand management.

Collectively, Cloud Computing and Linked Data offer a solution to:

1.  "Sweat & Brow" conundrum of yore re. publishing databases
2.  Tedium associated with publishing databases or knowledgebases - example
DBpedia, Bio2Rdf, NeuroCommons, and MusicBrainz could each be assembled for
immediate use in 1.5hrs or less compared to an error prone 16 - 22hr odyssey.

The incentive to publish/expose data in Linked Data form -- for any entity --
is inextricably bound to the fundamental reason for being part of the World Wide
Web in the first place i.e. to discover and be discovered with increasing
degrees of serendipity.

Links:

1. http://virtuoso.openlinksw.com/dataspace/dav/wiki/Main/VirtuosoEC2AMI

-- 

Regards,

Kingsley Idehen	      Weblog: http://www.openlinksw.com/blog/~kidehen
President&  CEO
OpenLink Software     Web: http://www.openlinksw.com