The BBC is starting to embrace the Semantic Web. We were recently commissioned to create links between DBpedia and an internal BBC vocabulary, which enable the BBC to use DBpedia/Wikipedia as a controlled vocabulary. This allows them to suggest related content to their users across their multitude of content management systems (we hear there are 36 systems in use at the moment) and better integrate content from the web into their properties. This also means that third parties will gain access to BBC metadata and content in the very near future. Skeptics beware, this is reaching a tipping point!
BBC interlinks with DBpedia
09Sep08I recently had a guest appearance at the Semantic Web Gang podcast. Together with MIT’s David Karger and the regular “gang members”, we discussed interfaces to the Semantic Web. The discussion was really intense at points as the participants had very differentiated standpoints.
It was largely agreed that visualization is a key factor to show the benefits of the Semantic Web and to foster industry adoption. Some key discussions: Should we worry about applications first, or step back and consider visualization at this early stage? How many forms of visualizations are there for one ‘thing’? Who builds them? Where do you get data from? Should users worry about that? How are queries expressed?
The participants also agreed that there will be an industry of people that build visualization widgets for specific things, which I thought is a really interesting scenario.
I talked a bit about Marbles and DBpedia Mobile and pleaded for open environments where data published by anyone can be taken into account. (Podcast)
