In this Talking with Talis podcast, Paul Miller talks with Semantic Web startup Metaweb's Minister of Information, Jamie Taylor. Best known for Freebase which, although only in limited alpha release, has already attracted the admiration of such commentators as Tim O'Reilly, Jon Udell, and OpenBusiness, Metaweb has the goal of 'build[ing] a better infrastructure for the Web.' Freebase's online help describes Metaweb's vision thus;

“We aspire to be the center of a new Web by being a critical piece of infrastructure for businesses, organizations and people that want to use, present and manipulate information. We've started by building a working system and a single example application. Over the next few months, we will work to demonstrate our larger vision by integrating Metaweb into other applications, websites, blogs... anywhere there is a need for structured information. Right now only a few thousand websites are 'database driven'. If we succeed, millions will be.

We will be compared to Google, Yahoo!, Wikipedia and other information driven sites, but such a comparison misses our real purpose: we are trying to enable thousands of organizations and millions of people to build their own Web. Paradoxically, we are decentralizing the experience of information by centralizing the storage of it.”
During theconversation, they discuss Freebase, Metaweb's wider goals, and the way in which both fit within the wider notion of a Semantic - or Data - Web.

In this Talking with Talis podcast, Paul Miller talks with Amit Kothari of QuotationsBook.com.

During the conversation,they explore some of the background to QuotationsBook and touch upon Amit's plans for the future. Theye also address the recent Creative Commons-licensed release of QuotationsBook data in RDF, and investigate some of the risks and opportunities posed by this open approach to data sharing.

Innovative technology company Talis is at the cutting edge of efforts to harness the capabilities of the Semantic Web in connecting globally distributed information resources. We recognise opportunities to radically improve online collaboration on a massive scale. The Talis Platform offers a sophisticated means whereby developers may harness and deliver upon this potential. Talis are delighted to welcome Danny Ayers to the role of Platform Community Manager, a key position as we take the Talis Platform forward to the next stage of its development and implementation. Danny is a well known and respected figure in the Semantic Web community and he will be primarily responsible for seeding and nurturing our early platform developer community. As well as providing assistance to those building applications and services using the Talis Platform, he will continue to connect people, projects and technologies together across the Semantic Web.

Danny Ayers, Platform Community Manager, Talis commented “I’ve long had high regard for the innovative work done by Talis, so I was delighted to have the opportunity to join the company. From a personal perspective, the role I will be taking on puts me in a position which perfectly captures my own ambitions. I'd like to see the potential of the Semantic Web realised sooner rather than later, but this is dependent on raising awareness in the developer community at large. I can't think of a better way of achieving that than through building a community around an environment like the Talis Platform that takes the hard work out of Semantic Web development.”

Ian Davis, Chief Technology Officer, Talis commented "We're very excited that Danny is able come and work with us within the Platform Group. He has a worldwide reputation for his inquisitive mind and desire to see the Semantic Web succeed in its mission to connect people to all of the world's information. We aim for the Talis Platform to play a leading role in achieving that goal and, with Danny’s help, enable developers to liberate and connect their data.”

In previous positions, Danny has played a leading role in developing an agile approach to Semantic Web application development.  For years, he has had a keen interest in knowledge representation and machine learning.  Danny blogs prolifically at http://dannyayers.com/ on a broad range of topics and writes a regular column “Websense” for IEEE Network Computing. Danny is an invited expert on the W3C’s GRDDL Working Group, and Semantic Web Education and Outreach Interest Group.

If you would like to receive regular updates about the Talis Platform, email platform@talis.com or visit www.talis.com/platform.  In his new role Danny will be blogging regularly on Talis’ Nodalities blog; to contact Danny Ayers email danny.ayers@talis.com.

 

In our latest Talking with Talis podcast, I talk with David Wood of Zepheira. Founder of Semantic Web database company Tucana Technologies Inc., David is more recently a founding member of the Kowari Metastore and Mulgara Semantic Store Open Source Software projects.

During our conversation, David discusses the relationship between these three well known examples of Semantic Web data management, before going on to address some of the opportunities created by building a capability to manipulate massive bodies of Semantic Web data within and between organisations.