RE: XULing or Grueling

Hi Bijan, (CC Linking Open Data list),

Nice. I think we could all use more prompts to stop and reflect. Some
comments inline...

> Now some of these may have had other factors as well (RSS 1.0 is an  
> obvious example). But it's not clear to me that RSS 1.0 is such a  
> great idea. If we could press a button and eliminate all the other  
> flavors and Atom, or RDFize all of them, would we do so? Would it be  
> a good idea?

Yes. Speaking purely at a practical level I really appreciate being able
to manipulate RSS data using a common set of RDF tools, and wish I could
do this more often. Finding non-RSS1.0 feeds is always kind of annoying.
I'm sure there's a stack of other reasons related to the innate
linky-ness of RDF that sets it apart from other syndication formats.

> The linked data stuff seems harmless in that afaict it doesn't hork  
> anyone off and seems sorta neat (though I've personally not read a  
> lot of excitement about it from outside our community; pointers are  
> welcome).

I'm guessing you didn't make it to the two Linked Data sessions at
WWW2007 ;) Both the official Dev Track session and the informal BOF
packed out the room, and there was a *lot* of excitement on both
occasions; not just from the core Linked Data community, but from many
(from inside and outside the SW world) who had heard Tim use the phrase
in his keynote and came along to find out more. Paul Miller and Peter
Murray-Rust captured some of this at [1-6]. The number of people who
went away saying "ah, I get it [the Semantic Web] now" was both sobering
and exciting.
 
> Sorry to ramble: My question is whether we can or should come 
> up with an analysis of these cases. Both the tactics of pushing 
> adoption and the actual technological solutions.

Yes, to all those points.

> BTW, this isn't meant as a nay-saying bit, but as a wanting 
> to derive useful lessons from past experience. The above links *do* 
> contain nay-saying, but I'm less interested in refuting that than 
> understanding what drove it and if there is any way to do better.

Is there a secular equivalent of "amen"?!

Cheers,

Tom.

[1]
http://blogs.talis.com/nodalities/2007/05/linked_data_bof_www2007.php
[2]
http://blogs.talis.com/nodalities/2007/05/www2007_linked_data_once_again
.php
[3] http://wwmm.ch.cam.ac.uk/blogs/murrayrust/?p=316
[4] http://wwmm.ch.cam.ac.uk/blogs/murrayrust/?p=315
[5] http://wwmm.ch.cam.ac.uk/blogs/murrayrust/?p=325
[6] http://wwmm.ch.cam.ac.uk/blogs/murrayrust/?p=337


-- 
Tom Heath
PhD Student
Knowledge Media Institute
The Open University
Walton Hall
Milton Keynes
MK7 6AA
United Kingdom

Tel: +44 (0)1908 653565
Fax: +44 (0)1908 653169
Web/URI: http://kmi.open.ac.uk/people/tom/
Jabber: t.heath%open.ac.uk@buddyspace.org  

Received on Friday, 5 October 2007 10:10:25 UTC