Re: .htaccess a major bottleneck to Semantic Web adoption / Was: Re: RDFa vs RDF/XML and content negotiation

Juan Sequeda wrote:
> Just confirming. I really want to start getting things done!

So get going :-)
> [SNIP]
>
>  I agree. I think I had this discussion with Peter Mika and Tom Heath 
> before. Don't take me literally but the conclusion was that RDFa is 
> Linked Data once it shows up in the best practices and people know how 
> to do it.
>
> but oh my... it's already here:
>
> http://ld2sd.deri.org/lod-ng-tutorial/
Yep, so you found the nugget :-)

Kingsley
>
> Thanks Michael and Richard!
>
>
>
>     Kingsley
>
>
>         We are planning to deploy soon the linked data version of
>         Turn2Live.com. And we are in the discussion of doing the
>         content negotiation (a la BBC). But if we can KISS, then all
>         we should do is RDFa, right?
>
>         Juan Sequeda, Ph.D Student
>         Dept. of Computer Sciences
>         The University of Texas at Austin
>         www.juansequeda.com <http://www.juansequeda.com>
>         <http://www.juansequeda.com>
>         www.semanticwebaustin.org <http://www.semanticwebaustin.org>
>         <http://www.semanticwebaustin.org>
>
>
>
>         On Thu, Jun 25, 2009 at 7:29 PM, Pat Hayes <phayes@ihmc.us
>         <mailto:phayes@ihmc.us> <mailto:phayes@ihmc.us
>         <mailto:phayes@ihmc.us>>> wrote:
>
>
>            On Jun 25, 2009, at 11:44 AM, Martin Hepp (UniBW) wrote:
>
>                Hi all:
>
>                After about two months of helping people generate RDF/XML
>                metadata for their businesses using the GoodRelations
>                annotator [1],
>                I have quite some evidence that the current best
>         practices of
>                using .htaccess are a MAJOR bottleneck for the adoption of
>                Semantic Web technology.
>
>
>            I agree, and raised this issue with the W3C TAG some time
>         ago. It
>            was apparently not taken seriously. The general consensus
>         seemed
>            to be that any normal adult should be competent to
>         manipulate an
>            Apache server. My own company, however, refuses to allow its
>            employees to have access to .htaccess files, and I am therefore
>            quite unable to conform to the current best practice from
>         my own
>            work situation. I believe that this situation is not uncommon.
>
>            Pat Hayes
>
>
>                Just some data:
>                - We have several hundred entries in the annotator log
>         - most
>                people spend 10 or more minutes to create a reasonable
>                description of themselves.
>                - Even though they all operate some sort of Web sites, less
>                than 30 % of them manage to upload/publish a single
>         *.rdf file
>                in their root directory.
>                - Of those 30%, only a fraction manage to set up content
>                negotiation properly, even though we provide a step-by-step
>                recipe.
>
>                The effects are
>                - URIs that are not dereferencable,
>                - incorrect media types and
>                and other problems.
>
>                When investigating the causes and trying to help people, we
>                encountered a variety of configurations and causes that
>         we did
>                not expect. It turned out that helping people just managing
>                this tiny step of publishing  Semantic Web data would turn
>                into a full-time job for 1 - 2 administrators.
>
>                Typical causes of problems are
>                - Lack of privileges for .htaccess (many cheap hosting
>                packages give limited or no access to .htaccess)
>                - Users without Unix background had trouble name a file so
>                that it begins with a dot
>                - Microsoft IIS require completely different recipes
>                - Many users have access just at a CMS level
>
>                Bottomline:
>                - For researchers in the field, it is a doable task to
>         set up
>                an Apache server so that it serves RDF content according to
>                current best practices.
>                - For most people out there in reality, this is regularly a
>                prohibitively difficult task, both because of a lack of
>         skills
>                and a variety in the technical environments that turns
>         into an
>                engineering challenge what is easy on the textbook-level.
>
>                As a consequence, we will modify our tool so that it
>         generates
>                "dummy" RDFa code with span/div that *just* represents the
>                meta-data without interfering with the presentation layer.
>                That can then be inserted as code snippets via
>         copy-and-paste
>                to any XHTML document.
>
>                Any opinions?
>
>                Best
>                Martin
>
>                [1]
>          http://www.ebusiness-unibw.org/tools/goodrelations-annotator/
>
>                Danny Ayers wrote:
>
>                    Thank you for the excellent questions, Bill.
>
>                    Right now IMHO the best bet is probably just to pick
>                    whichever format
>                    you are most comfortable with (yup "it depends")
>         and use
>                    that as the
>                    single source, transforming perhaps with scripts to
>                    generate the
>                    alternate representations for conneg.
>
>                    As far as I'm aware we don't yet have an easy
>         templating
>                    engine for
>                    RDFa, so I suspect having that as the source is
>         probably a
>                    good choice
>                    for typical Web applications.
>
>                    As mentioned already GRDDL is available for
>         transforming
>                    on the fly,
>                    though I'm not sure of the level of client engine
>         support
>                    at present.
>                    Ditto providing a SPARQL endpoint is another way of
>                    maximising the
>                    surface area of the data.
>
>                    But the key step has clearly been taken, that
>         decision to
>                    publish data
>                    directly without needing the human element to
>         interpret it.
>
>                    I claim *win* for the Semantic Web, even if it'll
>         still be
>                    a few years
>                    before we see applications exploiting it in a way that
>                    provides real
>                    benefit for the end user.
>
>                    my 2 cents.
>
>                    Cheers,
>                    Danny.
>
>
>
>
>                --      
>          --------------------------------------------------------------
>                martin hepp
>                e-business & web science research group
>                universitaet der bundeswehr muenchen
>
>                e-mail:  mhepp@computer.org <mailto:mhepp@computer.org>
>         <mailto:mhepp@computer.org <mailto:mhepp@computer.org>>
>
>                phone:   +49-(0)89-6004-4217
>                fax:     +49-(0)89-6004-4620
>                www:     http://www.unibw.de/ebusiness/ (group)
>                      http://www.heppnetz.de/ (personal)
>                skype:   mfhepp twitter: mfhepp
>
>                Check out the GoodRelations vocabulary for E-Commerce
>         on the
>                Web of Data!
>              
>          ========================================================================
>
>                Webcast:
>                http://www.heppnetz.de/projects/goodrelations/webcast/
>
>                Talk at the Semantic Technology Conference 2009: "Semantic
>                Web-based E-Commerce: The GoodRelations Ontology"
>                http://tinyurl.com/semtech-hepp
>
>                Tool for registering your business:
>              
>          http://www.ebusiness-unibw.org/tools/goodrelations-annotator/
>
>                Overview article on Semantic Universe:
>                http://tinyurl.com/goodrelations-universe
>
>                Project page and resources for developers:
>                http://purl.org/goodrelations/
>
>                Tutorial materials:
>                Tutorial at ESWC 2009: The Web of Data for E-Commerce
>         in One
>                Day: A Hands-on Introduction to the GoodRelations Ontology,
>                RDFa, and Yahoo! SearchMonkey
>
>              
>          http://www.ebusiness-unibw.org/wiki/GoodRelations_Tutorial_ESWC2009
>
>
>
>
>                <martin_hepp.vcf>
>
>
>            ------------------------------------------------------------
>            IHMC                                     (850)434 8903 or
>         (650)494
>            3973
>            40 South Alcaniz St.           (850)202 4416   office
>            Pensacola                            (850)202 4440   fax
>            FL 32502                              (850)291 0667   mobile
>            phayesAT-SIGNihmc.us       http://www.ihmc.us/users/phayes
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>     -- 
>
>
>     Regards,
>
>     Kingsley Idehen       Weblog:
>     http://www.openlinksw.com/blog/~kidehen
>     <http://www.openlinksw.com/blog/%7Ekidehen>
>     President & CEO OpenLink Software     Web: http://www.openlinksw.com
>
>
>
>
>


-- 


Regards,

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

Received on Thursday, 25 June 2009 18:31:43 UTC