Re: overstock.com adds GoodRelations in RDFa to 900,000 item pages

Michael,

I had a look at some of the examples. Noteworthy is the apparent lack of any
product ontology.  Martin's example example is for a camera with housing. An
obvious way to model this is as a bundle with two things: one of type Video
Camera and one off type UnderWaterHousing.  There is nothing of this sort.
Rather, this and perhaps all 900,000 items are of type: Product.  In other
words, there is no semantics at all for the products, no types, no features,
no constraints, nothing.

Have I missed something?

If this is true, the question is why.  Possibilities include:

   - *Expedience**: * It is conceptually trivial to convert the catalog to
   RDFa this way.
   - *First things first*: it was just a first step, more semantics is on
   the way...
   - *Lack of perceived value: *Does it cost too much for what value there
   may be?

I wonder what the value is for this first step.
I wonder whether there are plans for adding semantics to the products
themselves.

Any thoughts?
Michael





On Wed, Oct 6, 2010 at 5:39 AM, Martin Hepp <martin.hepp@ebusiness-unibw.org
> wrote:

> Dear all:
>
> I am happy to announce that overstock.com, one of the major US online
> retailers, has just added GoodRelations rich meta-data in RDFa to ALL ca.
> 900,000 item pages.
>
> Example:
>
> http://www.overstock.com/Electronics/Bell-and-Howell-DV550UW-12MP-Digital-Video-Camera-with-Underwater-Housing/4450313/product.html
>
> Sitemap:
>  http://www.overstock.com/googlemap.xml
>
> There is still a minor bug in the markup (regarding the position of the
> rdf:type gr:UnitPriceSpecification statement), but I will notify them
> immediately; the bug will also not break typical GoodRelations queries.
>
> Best wishes
> Martin
>
> --------------------------------------------------------
> martin hepp
> e-business & web science research group
> universitaet der bundeswehr muenchen
>
> e-mail:  hepp@ebusiness-unibw.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 GoodRelations for E-Commerce on the Web of Linked Data!
> =================================================================
> * Project Main Page: http://purl.org/goodrelations/
> * Quickstart Guide for Developers: http://bit.ly/quickstart4gr
> * Vocabulary Reference: http://purl.org/goodrelations/v1
> * Developer's Wiki: http://www.ebusiness-unibw.org/wiki/GoodRelations
> * Examples: http://bit.ly/cookbook4gr
> * Presentations: http://bit.ly/grtalks
> * Videos: http://bit.ly/grvideos
>
>
>


-- 
Michael Uschold, PhD
   LinkedIn: http://tr.im/limfu
   Skype: UscholdM