Re: Semantic Bridge Project

Hi Mike,

> One of the key aspects of the Semantic Bridge Project is the 
> creation of
> the “Semantic Knowledge Repository”. This repository will be the 
> nexus
> for managing ontologies (including microformats). It will be the
> official “hall of records” for the collaborative efforts made by 
> virtual
> ontology groups.

did you notice the W3C Linking Open Data community project? Within the 
project, many "ontology groups" (if you like to use the term) are 
cooperating in order to massively publish and interlink RDF on the 
Web.

We currently have about one billion triples online (covering domains 
like music, books, publications, geographic locations and wikipedia) 
which are interlinked by around 120 000 RDF links.

Maybe you want to crawl this data to bootstrap your "Semantic 
Knowledge Repository"?

An overview about the datasets is given in our ESWC poster 
http://linkeddata.org/documents/eswc2007-poster-linking-open-data.pdf 
and 
http://sites.wiwiss.fu-berlin.de/suhl/bizer/pub/LinkingOpenData.pdf
as well as on the project's wikipage 
http://esw.w3.org/topic/SweoIG/TaskForces/CommunityProjects/LinkingOpenData

> In essence, this repository will be the source for the
> organization and structure of knowledge, goods and services. The
> “Semantic Knowledge Repository” will be established as a vendor 
> neutral
> non-profit corporation.

Please note that Metaweb does something similar with Freebase 
http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2007/03/freebase_will_p_1.html
Also not to forget Google with Google Base, but which clearly does not 
qualifies as vendor neutral I guess ;-)

Are there any arguments why your store is more open and vendor-neutral 
than Freebase?

> This will most likely be the greatest collaborative endeavor in 
> human history.

Nice goal. A question which pops up in my mind is why does the 
greatest collaborative endeavor in human history need a single point 
of failure?

Therefore, I clearly favour decentral, webby solutions like the one we 
are aiming at in the Linking Open Data project. Meaning, lots of 
independent publishers which publish under open licenses and different 
search engines like Zitgist, SWSE and Swoogle (and maybe a search 
engine from your repository) that crawl the data and provide nice 
search interfaces on top of it.

> We think we have patent rights that will enable us to enforce some
> degree of discipline amongst the major players.

Please note that people talking about patent rights don't have a very 
high standing in the open data and web comunnities.

Cheers

Chris

--
Chris Bizer
Freie Universität Berlin
Phone: +49 30 838 54057
Mail: chris@bizer.de
Web: www.bizer.de


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Mike Duffy" <mduffy@austin.rr.com>
To: <karger@mit.edu>; <em@csail.mit.edu>; <kenzie@mit.edu>; 
<general@simile.mit.edu>
Sent: Monday, June 11, 2007 9:24 AM
Subject: Semantic Bridge Project


We share many of the goals of the SIMILE project. We would like to
explore the possibility for collaboration.

Semantic Bridge Technologies (located in Austin, TX) is creating a 
tool
set and the supporting infrastructure for the implementation of the
Semantic Web. We are taking a very pragmatic approach. Our target
audience is comprised of web designers and software engineers who 
build
Internet applications not theorists who study semantic structures. We
are building a bridge, not an ivory tower.

One of the key aspects of the Semantic Bridge Project is the creation 
of
the “Semantic Knowledge Repository”. This repository will be the nexus
for managing ontologies (including microformats). It will be the
official “hall of records” for the collaborative efforts made by 
virtual
ontology groups. In essence, this repository will be the source for 
the
organization and structure of knowledge, goods and services. The
“Semantic Knowledge Repository” will be established as a vendor 
neutral
non-profit corporation.

In its simplest implementation, a web author or web designer will be
able to use tools to Interact with the "Semantic Knowledge Repository"
and bring semantic structure to the information he or she is creating.
In its eventual application, the “Semantic Knowledge Repository” will
transform enterprise management systems.

We will develop standards for the fair and objective management of the
repository and dynamic interactions with the repository. We intend to
create a management system that will enable the organic development of
ontologies. This is an incredibly grandiose vision - nothing less than
managing the organization, structure and growth of all knowledge. This
will most likely be the greatest collaborative endeavor in human 
history.

While existing lists of ontologies may seem overwhelming, the basic
ontologies for e-commerce applications and most Internet sites will be
quite manageable. It will be interesting to see how the statistics
evolve, but our initial guess is that less than five per cent of the
ontologies will be applied to more than ninety-five percent of 
semantic
classifications on the Internet.

We recognize that, "..central control is stifling, and increasing the
size and scope of such a system rapidly becomes unmanageable." We
believe a non-bureaucratic approach that pushes control down to the
level of the virtual ontology groups will result in an organic
self-regulating system.

We also recognize that some organizations may wish to manage their own
ontologies. For example, the ontology for molecular bio-chemistry 
might
be maintained by a leading research university; specific ontologies 
for
Business Process Management Systems (BPM) might be maintained by the
system provider; organizations may wish to maintain their own private
internal ontologies; etc. One of the most significant aspects of the
Semantic Bridge Project will be the creation of an open-source 
ontology
management framework that can be utilized by any organization. Where
applicable, there will be a mapping of independently created 
ontologies
to the Semantic Knowledge Repository.

We are very aware that a collaborative approach and the implementation
of fair practices are essential to the realization of this vision. We
wish to avoid the possibility of fragmentation (e.g., "The Google
Semantic Repository", "The Microsoft Semantic Repository", etc.) as is
seen with several competing Linux distributions. Our goal is to create 
a
consortium where all members participate equitably.

We think we have patent rights that will enable us to enforce some
degree of discipline amongst the major players.

The creation of a dynamic and interactive, “Semantic Knowledge
Repository”, along with the tools that will allow web designers and
software engineers to easily interact with this repository will have a
profound impact on the rapid deployment of the Semantic Web.

Similar to “Piggy Bank” we are creating an Internet browser plug-in 
that
will enable users to specify RDFa attributes in a web page and 
classify
the web page and/or parts of the web page within a given ontology by
dynamically interacting with the “Semantic Knowledge Repository”.

Unlike “piggy Bank”, we are not attempting to create a “mashup
platform”; rather, our goal is the semantic classification of Internet
knowledge. An easy to use plug-in will harness the creative energy of
millions of Internet users in a collaborative process to classify
billions of existing web pages. This creative energy will impel the 
full
scale deployment of the Semantic Web (The "chicken or egg" question 
will
be answered, and the answer will be, "both".).

The beauty of using an Internet browser plug-in is that existing web
pages and components of web pages can be semantically categorized
without the need to modify the existing page. The semantic knowledge
about the page can exist in an abstraction layer that references the 
page.

One of the key aspects of the Semantic Bridge Project will be a 
royalty
system that will pay individuals a percentage of total revenues for
their collaborative efforts. For example, twenty per cent of total
revenue could be set aside for royalties. Based on some type of 
weighted
contribution mechanism, the software engineers that create the system,
the knowledge engineers who take responsibility for specific 
ontologies
and the individuals who classify specific web pages would receive
payments from the royalty fund.

The technologies of the Semantic Bridge Project could truly transform
the world.

For complete details regarding The Semantic Bridge Project, please 
visit
our website: http://www.semanticbridgetechnologies.com

Please share your thoughts.

We hope you will consider participating in this endeavor. It is going 
to
be an incredible intellectual adventure.

Sincerely,

Mike Duffy
CEO / CTO
Semantic Bridge Technologies
mduffy@austin.rr.com

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Received on Monday, 11 June 2007 08:14:17 UTC