The upcoming user interface "Dizmo" and the Semantic Web, any Ideas?

Hi together

A company located in an office on the same floor I am working on is creating a
new graphical touch/desktop/whatever user interface called Dizmo[1] and I
intend to persuade them to incorporate support for the Semantic Web. Obviously, I
also like to promote their Kickstarter campaign[2].

Their user interface is optimized for touch and also various pointing devices.
It runs HTML/JavaScript applications called Dizmos which can be freely placed
and rotated on the screen (or table or fridge or whatever the display surface
may be). It supports multitouch in a way that allows several users to work on
the same display, only limited by the hardware's capabilities. Dizmos can be
shared among different devices and they are synchronised in real time.
Additionally, two dizmos can be connected in a way similar to a UNIX pipe.

It would be nice if there were Dizmos presenting data from the Semantic Web,
allowing one to interact with and modify this data.

I would be interested in your ideas for use cases of Dizmo in context of the
Semantic Web. Two ideas I have come up with:
1. I could imagine Dizmo being used at meetings: Each participant brings a
tablet or laptop with a Dizmo cotaining his FOAF profile. At the beginning of
the meeting, everyone would transfer his Dizmo onto the meeting table and move
it onto a meeting minutes Dizmo in order to store who attended the meeting.
The graph created by this procedure could then later be published on a web
site.
2. A Dizmo could show the newest entry in an RSS feed and another Dizmo
connected to it could show the FOAF profile of the respective author.

Additionally, I'd like to collect some Ideas from a more technical point of
view: The Dizmos are written in JavaScript and can of course make HTTP
requests. So, an obvious way to go would be to run a HTTP service that stores
RDF and allows the Dizmos to query it. This service could be enhanced with a
reasoner. This would make it straight forward to use existing tools such as
Sgvizler[3] inside a Dizmo.
Another tempting idea would be to integrate RDF and a reasoner directly into
the Dizmo core. Every Dizmo could be described in RDF. This would allow one to
do reasoning about the Dizmos themselves and maybe even influence them this
way.

I also accept any further hints on how to get the developers of Dizmo
interested in the Semantic Web. (mindblowing presentations, papers, existing
applications that could appeal these guys.)

I am greatful for any smart ideas so I can try to move Dizmo a bit towards the
Semantic Web.

Greetings
Urs

[1]: http://www.dizmo.com/
[2]: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/114216817/dizmo-a-new-revolutionary-user-interface
[3]: http://dev.data2000.no/sgvizler/

Received on Monday, 24 February 2014 21:15:41 UTC