.htaccess a major bottleneck to Semantic Web adoption / Was: Re: RDFa vs RDF/XML and content negotiation

[Martin Hepp (UniBW)]

Hi all:

After about two months of helping people generate RDF/XML metadata for
their businesses using the GoodRelations annotator [1],
I have quite some evidence that the current best practices of using
.htaccess are a MAJOR bottleneck for the adoption of Semantic Web
technology.

Just some data:
- We have several hundred entries in the annotator log - most people
spend 10 or more minutes to create a reasonable description of themselves.
- Even though they all operate some sort of Web sites, less than 30 % of
them manage to upload/publish a single *.rdf file in their root directory.
- Of those 30%, only a fraction manage to set up content negotiation
properly, even though we provide a step-by-step recipe.

The effects are
- URIs that are not dereferencable,
- incorrect media types and
and other problems.

When investigating the causes and trying to help people, we encountered
a variety of configurations and causes that we did not expect. It turned
out that helping people just managing this tiny step of publishing  
Semantic Web data would turn into a full-time job for 1 - 2 administrators.

Typical causes of problems are
- Lack of privileges for .htaccess (many cheap hosting packages give
limited or no access to .htaccess)
- Users without Unix background had trouble name a file so that it
begins with a dot
- Microsoft IIS require completely different recipes
- Many users have access just at a CMS level

Bottomline:
- For researchers in the field, it is a doable task to set up an Apache
server so that it serves RDF content according to current best practices.
- For most people out there in reality, this is regularly a
prohibitively difficult task, both because of a lack of skills and a
variety in the technical environments that turns into an engineering
challenge what is easy on the textbook-level.

As a consequence, we will modify our tool so that it generates "dummy"
RDFa code with span/div that *just* represents the meta-data without
interfering with the presentation layer.
That can then be inserted as code snippets via copy-and-paste to any
XHTML document.

Any opinions?

Best
Martin

[1]  http://www.ebusiness-unibw.org/tools/goodrelations-annotator/

Danny Ayers wrote:

> Thank you for the excellent questions, Bill.
>
> Right now IMHO the best bet is probably just to pick whichever format
> you are most comfortable with (yup "it depends") and use that as the
> single source, transforming perhaps with scripts to generate the
> alternate representations for conneg.
>
> As far as I'm aware we don't yet have an easy templating engine for
> RDFa, so I suspect having that as the source is probably a good choice
> for typical Web applications.
>
> As mentioned already GRDDL is available for transforming on the fly,
> though I'm not sure of the level of client engine support at present.
> Ditto providing a SPARQL endpoint is another way of maximising the
> surface area of the data.
>
> But the key step has clearly been taken, that decision to publish data
> directly without needing the human element to interpret it.
>
> I claim *win* for the Semantic Web, even if it'll still be a few years
> before we see applications exploiting it in a way that provides real
> benefit for the end user.
>
> my 2 cents.
>
> Cheers,
> Danny.
>
>
>  

--
--------------------------------------------------------------
martin hepp
e-business & web science research group
universitaet der bundeswehr muenchen

e-mail:  mhepp@...
phone:   [phone]
fax:     [phone]
www:     http://www.unibw.de/ebusiness/ (group)
         http://www.heppnetz.de/ (personal)
skype:   mfhepp
twitter: mfhepp

Check out the GoodRelations vocabulary for E-Commerce on the Web of Data!
========================================================================

Webcast:
http://www.heppnetz.de/projects/goodrelations/webcast/

Talk at the Semantic Technology Conference 2009:
"Semantic Web-based E-Commerce: The GoodRelations Ontology"
http://tinyurl.com/semtech-hepp

Tool for registering your business:
http://www.ebusiness-unibw.org/tools/goodrelations-annotator/

Overview article on Semantic Universe:
http://tinyurl.com/goodrelations-universe

Project page and resources for developers:
http://purl.org/goodrelations/

Tutorial materials:
Tutorial at ESWC 2009: The Web of Data for E-Commerce in One Day: A Hands-on Introduction to the GoodRelations Ontology, RDFa, and Yahoo! SearchMonkey

http://www.ebusiness-unibw.org/wiki/GoodRelations_Tutorial_ESWC2009





[martin_hepp.vcf]

---

begin:vcard
fn:Martin Hepp
n:Hepp;Martin
org:Bundeswehr University Munich;E-Business and Web Science Research Group
adr:;;Werner-Heisenberg-Web 39;Neubiberg;;D-85577;Germany
email;internet:mhepp@...
tel;work:[phone]
tel;pager:skype: mfhepp
url:http://www.heppnetz.de
version:2.1
end:vcard

---

[Jeff Finkelstein, Customer Paradigm]

Martin-

I agree that the .htaccess file is a big stumbling block for many people
with low-cost hosting.  Would a lightweight php-based application that could
write to the .htaccess  / create the RDF file work to solve this easily?

Thanks,

-- Jeff
________________________________________
Jeff Finkelstein
303.499.9318 x 8282
mailto:jeff@...
http://www.customerparadigm.com

Customer Paradigm
5353 Manhattan Circle, Suite 103
Boulder, Colorado 80303

Recently Featured Websites:
http://www.adventurerabbi.org
http://www.boulderjews.org



-----Original Message-----
From: semantic-web-request@... [mailto:semantic-web-request@...] On
Behalf Of Martin Hepp (UniBW)
Sent: Thursday, June 25, 2009 10:44 AM
To: Danny Ayers
Cc: bill.roberts@...; public-lod@...; semantic-web at W3C
Subject: .htaccess a major bottleneck to Semantic Web adoption / Was: Re:
RDFa vs RDF/XML and content negotiation

Hi all:

After about two months of helping people generate RDF/XML metadata for their
businesses using the GoodRelations annotator [1], I have quite some evidence
that the current best practices of using .htaccess are a MAJOR bottleneck
for the adoption of Semantic Web technology.

Just some data:
- We have several hundred entries in the annotator log - most people spend
10 or more minutes to create a reasonable description of themselves.
- Even though they all operate some sort of Web sites, less than 30 % of
them manage to upload/publish a single *.rdf file in their root directory.
- Of those 30%, only a fraction manage to set up content negotiation
properly, even though we provide a step-by-step recipe.

The effects are
- URIs that are not dereferencable,
- incorrect media types and
and other problems.

When investigating the causes and trying to help people, we encountered a
variety of configurations and causes that we did not expect. It turned out
that helping people just managing this tiny step of publishing Semantic Web
data would turn into a full-time job for 1 - 2 administrators.

Typical causes of problems are
- Lack of privileges for .htaccess (many cheap hosting packages give limited
or no access to .htaccess)
- Users without Unix background had trouble name a file so that it begins
with a dot
- Microsoft IIS require completely different recipes
- Many users have access just at a CMS level

Bottomline:
- For researchers in the field, it is a doable task to set up an Apache
server so that it serves RDF content according to current best practices.
- For most people out there in reality, this is regularly a prohibitively
difficult task, both because of a lack of skills and a variety in the
technical environments that turns into an engineering challenge what is easy
on the textbook-level.

As a consequence, we will modify our tool so that it generates "dummy"
RDFa code with span/div that *just* represents the meta-data without
interfering with the presentation layer.
That can then be inserted as code snippets via copy-and-paste to any XHTML
document.

Any opinions?

Best
Martin

[1]  http://www.ebusiness-unibw.org/tools/goodrelations-annotator/

Danny Ayers wrote:

> Thank you for the excellent questions, Bill.
>
> Right now IMHO the best bet is probably just to pick whichever format
> you are most comfortable with (yup "it depends") and use that as the
> single source, transforming perhaps with scripts to generate the
> alternate representations for conneg.
>
> As far as I'm aware we don't yet have an easy templating engine for
> RDFa, so I suspect having that as the source is probably a good choice
> for typical Web applications.
>
> As mentioned already GRDDL is available for transforming on the fly,
> though I'm not sure of the level of client engine support at present.
> Ditto providing a SPARQL endpoint is another way of maximising the
> surface area of the data.
>
> But the key step has clearly been taken, that decision to publish data
> directly without needing the human element to interpret it.
>
> I claim *win* for the Semantic Web, even if it'll still be a few years
> before we see applications exploiting it in a way that provides real
> benefit for the end user.
>
> my 2 cents.
>
> Cheers,
> Danny.
>
>
>  

--
--------------------------------------------------------------
martin hepp
e-business & web science research group
universitaet der bundeswehr muenchen

e-mail:  mhepp@...
phone:   [phone]
fax:     [phone]
www:     http://www.unibw.de/ebusiness/ (group)
         http://www.heppnetz.de/ (personal)
skype:   mfhepp
twitter: mfhepp

Check out the GoodRelations vocabulary for E-Commerce on the Web of Data!
========================================================================

Webcast:
http://www.heppnetz.de/projects/goodrelations/webcast/

Talk at the Semantic Technology Conference 2009:
"Semantic Web-based E-Commerce: The GoodRelations Ontology"
http://tinyurl.com/semtech-hepp

Tool for registering your business:
http://www.ebusiness-unibw.org/tools/goodrelations-annotator/

Overview article on Semantic Universe:
http://tinyurl.com/goodrelations-universe

Project page and resources for developers:
http://purl.org/goodrelations/

Tutorial materials:
Tutorial at ESWC 2009: The Web of Data for E-Commerce in One Day: A Hands-on
Introduction to the GoodRelations Ontology, RDFa, and Yahoo! SearchMonkey

http://www.ebusiness-unibw.org/wiki/GoodRelations_Tutorial_ESWC2009





 
 
****************************************************************************
********
This footnote confirms that this email message has been scanned by PineApp
Mail-SeCure for the presence of malicious code, vandals & computer viruses.
****************************************************************************
********

[Knud Hinnerk Möller]

Hi Martin,

On 25.06.2009, at 17:44, Martin Hepp (UniBW) wrote:

> Hi all:
>
> After about two months of helping people generate RDF/XML metadata  
> for their businesses using the GoodRelations annotator [1],
> I have quite some evidence that the current best practices of  
> using .htaccess are a MAJOR bottleneck for the adoption of Semantic  
> Web technology.
>
> Just some data:
> - We have several hundred entries in the annotator log - most people  
> spend 10 or more minutes to create a reasonable description of  
> themselves.
> - Even though they all operate some sort of Web sites, less than 30  
> % of them manage to upload/publish a single *.rdf file in their root  
> directory.
> - Of those 30%, only a fraction manage to set up content negotiation  
> properly, even though we provide a step-by-step recipe.

These are interesting statistics, maybe you want to blog about them or  
publish them in some other way?

> The effects are
> - URIs that are not dereferencable,
> - incorrect media types and
> and other problems.
>
> When investigating the causes and trying to help people, we  
> encountered a variety of configurations and causes that we did not  
> expect. It turned out that helping people just managing this tiny  
> step of publishing  Semantic Web data would turn into a full-time  
> job for 1 - 2 administrators.
>
> Typical causes of problems are
> - Lack of privileges for .htaccess (many cheap hosting packages give  
> limited or no access to .htaccess)
> - Users without Unix background had trouble name a file so that it  
> begins with a dot
> - Microsoft IIS require completely different recipes
> - Many users have access just at a CMS level
>
> Bottomline:
> - For researchers in the field, it is a doable task to set up an  
> Apache server so that it serves RDF content according to current  
> best practices.
> - For most people out there in reality, this is regularly a  
> prohibitively difficult task, both because of a lack of skills and a  
> variety in the technical environments that turns into an engineering  
> challenge what is easy on the textbook-level.

For the cases where people still want to serve RDF documents, it would  
be neat if various CMSes had a simple way of handling content-
negotiation. What I'm thinking of is e.g. a module for Drupal which  
would allow the Drupal admin to specify that, if rdf/xml for node X is  
requested (a page), serve RDF document Y. The content negotiation  
would be handled by php code in the module, hence no fiddling  
with .htaccess required.

> As a consequence, we will modify our tool so that it generates  
> "dummy" RDFa code with span/div that *just* represents the meta-data  
> without interfering with the presentation layer.
> That can then be inserted as code snippets via copy-and-paste to any  
> XHTML document.

I like it! It's similar to what our Shift tool [2] does for other  
kinds of data. However, this might lead to other problems: many CMSes  
only allow a subset of HTML in their input forms, so some of the RDFa  
could get lost. I remember this was a problem with Blogger in the past  
(not sure if this problem persists).

Cheers,
Knud

[1] http://kantenwerk.org/shift/

>
>
> Any opinions?
>
> Best
> Martin
>
> [1]  http://www.ebusiness-unibw.org/tools/goodrelations-annotator/
>
> Danny Ayers wrote:
>> Thank you for the excellent questions, Bill.
>>
>> Right now IMHO the best bet is probably just to pick whichever format
>> you are most comfortable with (yup "it depends") and use that as the
>> single source, transforming perhaps with scripts to generate the
>> alternate representations for conneg.
>>
>> As far as I'm aware we don't yet have an easy templating engine for
>> RDFa, so I suspect having that as the source is probably a good  
>> choice
>> for typical Web applications.
>>
>> As mentioned already GRDDL is available for transforming on the fly,
>> though I'm not sure of the level of client engine support at present.
>> Ditto providing a SPARQL endpoint is another way of maximising the
>> surface area of the data.
>>
>> But the key step has clearly been taken, that decision to publish  
>> data
>> directly without needing the human element to interpret it.
>>
>> I claim *win* for the Semantic Web, even if it'll still be a few  
>> years
>> before we see applications exploiting it in a way that provides real
>> benefit for the end user.
>>
>> my 2 cents.
>>
>> Cheers,
>> Danny.
>>
>>
>>
>
> --
> --------------------------------------------------------------
> martin hepp
> e-business & web science research group
> universitaet der bundeswehr muenchen
>
> e-mail:  mhepp@...
> phone:   [phone]
> fax:     [phone]
> www:     http://www.unibw.de/ebusiness/ (group)
>        http://www.heppnetz.de/ (personal)
> skype:   mfhepp twitter: mfhepp
>
> Check out the GoodRelations vocabulary for E-Commerce on the Web of  
> Data!
> =
> =
> ======================================================================
>
> Webcast:
> http://www.heppnetz.de/projects/goodrelations/webcast/
>
> Talk at the Semantic Technology Conference 2009: "Semantic Web-based  
> E-Commerce: The GoodRelations Ontology"
> http://tinyurl.com/semtech-hepp
>
> Tool for registering your business:
> http://www.ebusiness-unibw.org/tools/goodrelations-annotator/
>
> Overview article on Semantic Universe:
> http://tinyurl.com/goodrelations-universe
>
> Project page and resources for developers:
> http://purl.org/goodrelations/
>
> Tutorial materials:
> Tutorial at ESWC 2009: The Web of Data for E-Commerce in One Day: A  
> Hands-on Introduction to the GoodRelations Ontology, RDFa, and  
> Yahoo! SearchMonkey
>
> http://www.ebusiness-unibw.org/wiki/GoodRelations_Tutorial_ESWC2009
>
>
>
>
> <martin_hepp.vcf>

-------------------------------------------------
Knud Möller, MA
+353 - 91 - 495086
Smile Group: http://smile.deri.ie
Digital Enterprise Research Institute
   National University of Ireland, Galway
Institiúid Taighde na Fiontraíochta Digití
   Ollscoil na hÉireann, Gaillimh

[Giovanni Tummarello]

> That can then be inserted as code snippets via copy-and-paste to any XHTML
> document.
>
> Any opinions?

Great, why bother with any other solution.
even talking about any other solution is extraordinarely bad for the
public perception of the semantic web community.

Giovanni

[Pat Hayes]

On Jun 25, 2009, at 11:44 AM, Martin Hepp (UniBW) wrote:

> Hi all:
>
> After about two months of helping people generate RDF/XML metadata  
> for their businesses using the GoodRelations annotator [1],
> I have quite some evidence that the current best practices of  
> using .htaccess are a MAJOR bottleneck for the adoption of Semantic  
> Web technology.

I agree, and raised this issue with the W3C TAG some time ago. It was  
apparently not taken seriously. The general consensus seemed to be  
that any normal adult should be competent to manipulate an Apache  
server. My own company, however, refuses to allow its employees to  
have access to .htaccess files, and I am therefore quite unable to  
conform to the current best practice from my own work situation. I  
believe that this situation is not uncommon.

Pat Hayes

>
> Just some data:
> - We have several hundred entries in the annotator log - most people  
> spend 10 or more minutes to create a reasonable description of  
> themselves.
> - Even though they all operate some sort of Web sites, less than 30  
> % of them manage to upload/publish a single *.rdf file in their root  
> directory.
> - Of those 30%, only a fraction manage to set up content negotiation  
> properly, even though we provide a step-by-step recipe.
>
> The effects are
> - URIs that are not dereferencable,
> - incorrect media types and
> and other problems.
>
> When investigating the causes and trying to help people, we  
> encountered a variety of configurations and causes that we did not  
> expect. It turned out that helping people just managing this tiny  
> step of publishing  Semantic Web data would turn into a full-time  
> job for 1 - 2 administrators.
>
> Typical causes of problems are
> - Lack of privileges for .htaccess (many cheap hosting packages give  
> limited or no access to .htaccess)
> - Users without Unix background had trouble name a file so that it  
> begins with a dot
> - Microsoft IIS require completely different recipes
> - Many users have access just at a CMS level
>
> Bottomline:
> - For researchers in the field, it is a doable task to set up an  
> Apache server so that it serves RDF content according to current  
> best practices.
> - For most people out there in reality, this is regularly a  
> prohibitively difficult task, both because of a lack of skills and a  
> variety in the technical environments that turns into an engineering  
> challenge what is easy on the textbook-level.
>
> As a consequence, we will modify our tool so that it generates  
> "dummy" RDFa code with span/div that *just* represents the meta-data  
> without interfering with the presentation layer.
> That can then be inserted as code snippets via copy-and-paste to any  
> XHTML document.
>
> Any opinions?
>
> Best
> Martin
>
> [1]  http://www.ebusiness-unibw.org/tools/goodrelations-annotator/
>
> Danny Ayers wrote:
>> Thank you for the excellent questions, Bill.
>>
>> Right now IMHO the best bet is probably just to pick whichever format
>> you are most comfortable with (yup "it depends") and use that as the
>> single source, transforming perhaps with scripts to generate the
>> alternate representations for conneg.
>>
>> As far as I'm aware we don't yet have an easy templating engine for
>> RDFa, so I suspect having that as the source is probably a good  
>> choice
>> for typical Web applications.
>>
>> As mentioned already GRDDL is available for transforming on the fly,
>> though I'm not sure of the level of client engine support at present.
>> Ditto providing a SPARQL endpoint is another way of maximising the
>> surface area of the data.
>>
>> But the key step has clearly been taken, that decision to publish  
>> data
>> directly without needing the human element to interpret it.
>>
>> I claim *win* for the Semantic Web, even if it'll still be a few  
>> years
>> before we see applications exploiting it in a way that provides real
>> benefit for the end user.
>>
>> my 2 cents.
>>
>> Cheers,
>> Danny.
>>
>>
>>
>
> --
> --------------------------------------------------------------
> martin hepp
> e-business & web science research group
> universitaet der bundeswehr muenchen
>
> e-mail:  mhepp@...
> phone:   [phone]
> fax:     [phone]
> www:     http://www.unibw.de/ebusiness/ (group)
>        http://www.heppnetz.de/ (personal)
> skype:   mfhepp twitter: mfhepp
>
> Check out the GoodRelations vocabulary for E-Commerce on the Web of  
> Data!
> =
> =
> ======================================================================
>
> Webcast:
> http://www.heppnetz.de/projects/goodrelations/webcast/
>
> Talk at the Semantic Technology Conference 2009: "Semantic Web-based  
> E-Commerce: The GoodRelations Ontology"
> http://tinyurl.com/semtech-hepp
>
> Tool for registering your business:
> http://www.ebusiness-unibw.org/tools/goodrelations-annotator/
>
> Overview article on Semantic Universe:
> http://tinyurl.com/goodrelations-universe
>
> Project page and resources for developers:
> http://purl.org/goodrelations/
>
> Tutorial materials:
> Tutorial at ESWC 2009: The Web of Data for E-Commerce in One Day: A  
> Hands-on Introduction to the GoodRelations Ontology, RDFa, and  
> Yahoo! SearchMonkey
>
> http://www.ebusiness-unibw.org/wiki/GoodRelations_Tutorial_ESWC2009
>
>
>
>
> <martin_hepp.vcf>

------------------------------------------------------------
IHMC                                     [phone] or [phone]
40 South Alcaniz St.           [phone]   office
Pensacola                            [phone]   fax
FL 32502                              [phone]   mobile
phayesAT-SIGNihmc.us       http://www.ihmc.us/users/phayes

[Juan Sequeda]

So... then from what I understand.. why bother with content negotiation, right?

Just do everything in RDFa, right?

We are planning to deploy soon the linked data version of Turn2Live.com. And we are in the discussion of doing the content negotiation (a la BBC). But if we can KISS, then all we should do is RDFa, right?

Juan Sequeda, Ph.D Student
Dept. of Computer Sciences
The University of Texas at Austin
www.juansequeda.com
www.semanticwebaustin.org

On Thu, Jun 25, 2009 at 7:29 PM, Pat Hayes <phayes@...> wrote:

On Jun 25, 2009, at 11:44 AM, Martin Hepp (UniBW) wrote:

Hi all:

After about two months of helping people generate RDF/XML metadata for their businesses using the GoodRelations annotator [1],
I have quite some evidence that the current best practices of using .htaccess are a MAJOR bottleneck for the adoption of Semantic Web technology.

I agree, and raised this issue with the W3C TAG some time ago. It was apparently not taken seriously. The general consensus seemed to be that any normal adult should be competent to manipulate an Apache server. My own company, however, refuses to allow its employees to have access to .htaccess files, and I am therefore quite unable to conform to the current best practice from my own work situation. I believe that this situation is not uncommon.

Pat Hayes

Just some data:
- We have several hundred entries in the annotator log - most people spend 10 or more minutes to create a reasonable description of themselves.
- Even though they all operate some sort of Web sites, less than 30 % of them manage to upload/publish a single *.rdf file in their root directory.
- Of those 30%, only a fraction manage to set up content negotiation properly, even though we provide a step-by-step recipe.

The effects are
- URIs that are not dereferencable,
- incorrect media types and
and other problems.

When investigating the causes and trying to help people, we encountered a variety of configurations and causes that we did not expect. It turned out that helping people just managing this tiny step of publishing  Semantic Web data would turn into a full-time job for 1 - 2 administrators.

Typical causes of problems are
- Lack of privileges for .htaccess (many cheap hosting packages give limited or no access to .htaccess)
- Users without Unix background had trouble name a file so that it begins with a dot
- Microsoft IIS require completely different recipes
- Many users have access just at a CMS level

Bottomline:
- For researchers in the field, it is a doable task to set up an Apache server so that it serves RDF content according to current best practices.
- For most people out there in reality, this is regularly a prohibitively difficult task, both because of a lack of skills and a variety in the technical environments that turns into an engineering challenge what is easy on the textbook-level.

As a consequence, we will modify our tool so that it generates "dummy" RDFa code with span/div that *just* represents the meta-data without interfering with the presentation layer.
That can then be inserted as code snippets via copy-and-paste to any XHTML document.

Any opinions?

Best
Martin

[1]  http://www.ebusiness-unibw.org/tools/goodrelations-annotator/

Danny Ayers wrote:

Thank you for the excellent questions, Bill.

Right now IMHO the best bet is probably just to pick whichever format
you are most comfortable with (yup "it depends") and use that as the
single source, transforming perhaps with scripts to generate the
alternate representations for conneg.

As far as I'm aware we don't yet have an easy templating engine for
RDFa, so I suspect having that as the source is probably a good choice
for typical Web applications.

As mentioned already GRDDL is available for transforming on the fly,
though I'm not sure of the level of client engine support at present.
Ditto providing a SPARQL endpoint is another way of maximising the
surface area of the data.

But the key step has clearly been taken, that decision to publish data
directly without needing the human element to interpret it.

I claim *win* for the Semantic Web, even if it'll still be a few years
before we see applications exploiting it in a way that provides real
benefit for the end user.

my 2 cents.

Cheers,
Danny.

--
--------------------------------------------------------------
martin hepp
e-business & web science research group
universitaet der bundeswehr muenchen

e-mail:  mhepp@...
phone:   [phone]
fax:     [phone]
www:     http://www.unibw.de/ebusiness/ (group)
      http://www.heppnetz.de/ (personal)
skype:   mfhepp twitter: mfhepp

Check out the GoodRelations vocabulary for E-Commerce on the Web of Data!
========================================================================

Webcast:
http://www.heppnetz.de/projects/goodrelations/webcast/

Talk at the Semantic Technology Conference 2009: "Semantic Web-based E-Commerce: The GoodRelations Ontology"
http://tinyurl.com/semtech-hepp

Tool for registering your business:
http://www.ebusiness-unibw.org/tools/goodrelations-annotator/

Overview article on Semantic Universe:
http://tinyurl.com/goodrelations-universe

Project page and resources for developers:
http://purl.org/goodrelations/

Tutorial materials:
Tutorial at ESWC 2009: The Web of Data for E-Commerce in One Day: A Hands-on Introduction to the GoodRelations Ontology, RDFa, and Yahoo! SearchMonkey

http://www.ebusiness-unibw.org/wiki/GoodRelations_Tutorial_ESWC2009

<martin_hepp.vcf>

------------------------------------------------------------
IHMC                                     [phone] or [phone]
40 South Alcaniz St.           [phone]   office
Pensacola                            [phone]   fax
FL 32502                              [phone]   mobile
phayesAT-SIGNihmc.us       http://www.ihmc.us/users/phayes

[kidehen]

Juan Sequeda wrote:
> So... then from what I understand.. why bother with content
> negotiation, right?
No, it means content negotiation is an option, albeit a tough one when
".htaccess" and Apache are ground zero.
>
> Just do everything in RDFa, right?
Of course, if it works for your circumstances :-)

Basically, we need to tweak the Linked Data Best Practices guides and
general messaging by adding  RDFa to the conversation -- as an *option*
for Linked Data Deployment. I believe I expressed this sentiment a while
back.

Kingsley

>
> We are planning to deploy soon the linked data version of
> Turn2Live.com. And we are in the discussion of doing the content
> negotiation (a la BBC). But if we can KISS, then all we should do is
> RDFa, right?
>
> Juan Sequeda, Ph.D Student
> Dept. of Computer Sciences
> The University of Texas at Austin
> www.juansequeda.com <http://www.juansequeda.com>
> www.semanticwebaustin.org <http://www.semanticwebaustin.org>
>
>
> On Thu, Jun 25, 2009 at 7:29 PM, Pat Hayes <phayes@...
> <mailto:phayes@...>> wrote:
>
>
>     On Jun 25, 2009, at 11:44 AM, Martin Hepp (UniBW) wrote:
>
>         Hi all:
>
>         After about two months of helping people generate RDF/XML
>         metadata for their businesses using the GoodRelations
>         annotator [1],
>         I have quite some evidence that the current best practices of
>         using .htaccess are a MAJOR bottleneck for the adoption of
>         Semantic Web technology.
>
>
>     I agree, and raised this issue with the W3C TAG some time ago. It
>     was apparently not taken seriously. The general consensus seemed
>     to be that any normal adult should be competent to manipulate an
>     Apache server. My own company, however, refuses to allow its
>     employees to have access to .htaccess files, and I am therefore
>     quite unable to conform to the current best practice from my own
>     work situation. I believe that this situation is not uncommon.
>
>     Pat Hayes
>
>
>         Just some data:
>         - We have several hundred entries in the annotator log - most
>         people spend 10 or more minutes to create a reasonable
>         description of themselves.
>         - Even though they all operate some sort of Web sites, less
>         than 30 % of them manage to upload/publish a single *.rdf file
>         in their root directory.
>         - Of those 30%, only a fraction manage to set up content
>         negotiation properly, even though we provide a step-by-step
>         recipe.
>
>         The effects are
>         - URIs that are not dereferencable,
>         - incorrect media types and
>         and other problems.
>
>         When investigating the causes and trying to help people, we
>         encountered a variety of configurations and causes that we did
>         not expect. It turned out that helping people just managing
>         this tiny step of publishing  Semantic Web data would turn
>         into a full-time job for 1 - 2 administrators.
>
>         Typical causes of problems are
>         - Lack of privileges for .htaccess (many cheap hosting
>         packages give limited or no access to .htaccess)
>         - Users without Unix background had trouble name a file so
>         that it begins with a dot
>         - Microsoft IIS require completely different recipes
>         - Many users have access just at a CMS level
>
>         Bottomline:
>         - For researchers in the field, it is a doable task to set up
>         an Apache server so that it serves RDF content according to
>         current best practices.
>         - For most people out there in reality, this is regularly a
>         prohibitively difficult task, both because of a lack of skills
>         and a variety in the technical environments that turns into an
>         engineering challenge what is easy on the textbook-level.
>
>         As a consequence, we will modify our tool so that it generates
>         "dummy" RDFa code with span/div that *just* represents the
>         meta-data without interfering with the presentation layer.
>         That can then be inserted as code snippets via copy-and-paste
>         to any XHTML document.
>
>         Any opinions?
>
>         Best
>         Martin
>
>         [1]  http://www.ebusiness-unibw.org/tools/goodrelations-annotator/
>
>         Danny Ayers wrote:
>
>             Thank you for the excellent questions, Bill.
>
>             Right now IMHO the best bet is probably just to pick
>             whichever format
>             you are most comfortable with (yup "it depends") and use
>             that as the
>             single source, transforming perhaps with scripts to
>             generate the
>             alternate representations for conneg.
>
>             As far as I'm aware we don't yet have an easy templating
>             engine for
>             RDFa, so I suspect having that as the source is probably a
>             good choice
>             for typical Web applications.
>
>             As mentioned already GRDDL is available for transforming
>             on the fly,
>             though I'm not sure of the level of client engine support
>             at present.
>             Ditto providing a SPARQL endpoint is another way of
>             maximising the
>             surface area of the data.
>
>             But the key step has clearly been taken, that decision to
>             publish data
>             directly without needing the human element to interpret it.
>
>             I claim *win* for the Semantic Web, even if it'll still be
>             a few years
>             before we see applications exploiting it in a way that
>             provides real
>             benefit for the end user.
>
>             my 2 cents.
>
>             Cheers,
>             Danny.
>
>
>
>
>         --
>         --------------------------------------------------------------
>         martin hepp
>         e-business & web science research group
>         universitaet der bundeswehr muenchen
>
>         e-mail:  mhepp@... <mailto:mhepp@...>
>         phone:   [phone]
>         fax:     [phone]
>         www:     http://www.unibw.de/ebusiness/ (group)
>               http://www.heppnetz.de/ (personal)
>         skype:   mfhepp twitter: mfhepp
>
>         Check out the GoodRelations vocabulary for E-Commerce on the
>         Web of Data!
>         ========================================================================
>
>         Webcast:
>         http://www.heppnetz.de/projects/goodrelations/webcast/
>
>         Talk at the Semantic Technology Conference 2009: "Semantic
>         Web-based E-Commerce: The GoodRelations Ontology"
>         http://tinyurl.com/semtech-hepp
>
>         Tool for registering your business:
>         http://www.ebusiness-unibw.org/tools/goodrelations-annotator/
>
>         Overview article on Semantic Universe:
>         http://tinyurl.com/goodrelations-universe
>
>         Project page and resources for developers:
>         http://purl.org/goodrelations/
>
>         Tutorial materials:
>         Tutorial at ESWC 2009: The Web of Data for E-Commerce in One
>         Day: A Hands-on Introduction to the GoodRelations Ontology,
>         RDFa, and Yahoo! SearchMonkey
>
>         http://www.ebusiness-unibw.org/wiki/GoodRelations_Tutorial_ESWC2009
>
>
>
>
>         <martin_hepp.vcf>
>
>
>     ------------------------------------------------------------
>     IHMC                                     [phone] or (650)494
>     3973
>     40 South Alcaniz St.           [phone]   office
>     Pensacola                            [phone]   fax
>     FL 32502                              [phone]   mobile
>     phayesAT-SIGNihmc.us       http://www.ihmc.us/users/phayes
>
>
>
>
>
>
>

--


Regards,

Kingsley Idehen      Weblog: http://www.openlinksw.com/blog/~kidehen
President & CEO
OpenLink Software     Web: http://www.openlinksw.com

[kidehen]

Jeff Finkelstein, Customer Paradigm wrote:
> Martin-
>
> I agree that the .htaccess file is a big stumbling block for many people
> with low-cost hosting.  Would a lightweight php-based application that could
> write to the .htaccess  / create the RDF file work to solve this easily?
>  
Sorry, it won't. The issue is actual access to the .htaccess file. Thus,
you have to move the metadata expressed in RDF into the (X)HTML docs
that are being published based on the existing .htaccess config.

Even when the above is done, you will need RDFa processors within user
agents (or standalone) for the Linked Data deployment to fully materialize.

Kingsley

> Thanks,
>
> -- Jeff
> ________________________________________
> Jeff Finkelstein
> 303.499.9318 x 8282
> mailto:jeff@...
> http://www.customerparadigm.com
>
> Customer Paradigm
> 5353 Manhattan Circle, Suite 103
> Boulder, Colorado 80303
>
> Recently Featured Websites:
> http://www.adventurerabbi.org
> http://www.boulderjews.org
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: semantic-web-request@... [mailto:semantic-web-request@...] On
> Behalf Of Martin Hepp (UniBW)
> Sent: Thursday, June 25, 2009 10:44 AM
> To: Danny Ayers
> Cc: bill.roberts@...; public-lod@...; semantic-web at W3C
> Subject: .htaccess a major bottleneck to Semantic Web adoption / Was: Re:
> RDFa vs RDF/XML and content negotiation
>
> Hi all:
>
> After about two months of helping people generate RDF/XML metadata for their
> businesses using the GoodRelations annotator [1], I have quite some evidence
> that the current best practices of using .htaccess are a MAJOR bottleneck
> for the adoption of Semantic Web technology.
>
> Just some data:
> - We have several hundred entries in the annotator log - most people spend
> 10 or more minutes to create a reasonable description of themselves.
> - Even though they all operate some sort of Web sites, less than 30 % of
> them manage to upload/publish a single *.rdf file in their root directory.
> - Of those 30%, only a fraction manage to set up content negotiation
> properly, even though we provide a step-by-step recipe.
>
> The effects are
> - URIs that are not dereferencable,
> - incorrect media types and
> and other problems.
>
> When investigating the causes and trying to help people, we encountered a
> variety of configurations and causes that we did not expect. It turned out
> that helping people just managing this tiny step of publishing Semantic Web
> data would turn into a full-time job for 1 - 2 administrators.
>
> Typical causes of problems are
> - Lack of privileges for .htaccess (many cheap hosting packages give limited
> or no access to .htaccess)
> - Users without Unix background had trouble name a file so that it begins
> with a dot
> - Microsoft IIS require completely different recipes
> - Many users have access just at a CMS level
>
> Bottomline:
> - For researchers in the field, it is a doable task to set up an Apache
> server so that it serves RDF content according to current best practices.
> - For most people out there in reality, this is regularly a prohibitively
> difficult task, both because of a lack of skills and a variety in the
> technical environments that turns into an engineering challenge what is easy
> on the textbook-level.
>
> As a consequence, we will modify our tool so that it generates "dummy"
> RDFa code with span/div that *just* represents the meta-data without
> interfering with the presentation layer.
> That can then be inserted as code snippets via copy-and-paste to any XHTML
> document.
>
> Any opinions?
>
> Best
> Martin
>
> [1]  http://www.ebusiness-unibw.org/tools/goodrelations-annotator/
>
> Danny Ayers wrote:
>  
>> Thank you for the excellent questions, Bill.
>>
>> Right now IMHO the best bet is probably just to pick whichever format
>> you are most comfortable with (yup "it depends") and use that as the
>> single source, transforming perhaps with scripts to generate the
>> alternate representations for conneg.
>>
>> As far as I'm aware we don't yet have an easy templating engine for
>> RDFa, so I suspect having that as the source is probably a good choice
>> for typical Web applications.
>>
>> As mentioned already GRDDL is available for transforming on the fly,
>> though I'm not sure of the level of client engine support at present.
>> Ditto providing a SPARQL endpoint is another way of maximising the
>> surface area of the data.
>>
>> But the key step has clearly been taken, that decision to publish data
>> directly without needing the human element to interpret it.
>>
>> I claim *win* for the Semantic Web, even if it'll still be a few years
>> before we see applications exploiting it in a way that provides real
>> benefit for the end user.
>>
>> my 2 cents.
>>
>> Cheers,
>> Danny.
>>
>>
>>  
>>    
>
> --
> --------------------------------------------------------------
> martin hepp
> e-business & web science research group
> universitaet der bundeswehr muenchen
>
> e-mail:  mhepp@...
> phone:   [phone]
> fax:     [phone]
> www:     http://www.unibw.de/ebusiness/ (group)
>          http://www.heppnetz.de/ (personal)
> skype:   mfhepp
> twitter: mfhepp
>
> Check out the GoodRelations vocabulary for E-Commerce on the Web of Data!
> ========================================================================
>
> Webcast:
> http://www.heppnetz.de/projects/goodrelations/webcast/
>
> Talk at the Semantic Technology Conference 2009:
> "Semantic Web-based E-Commerce: The GoodRelations Ontology"
> http://tinyurl.com/semtech-hepp
>
> Tool for registering your business:
> http://www.ebusiness-unibw.org/tools/goodrelations-annotator/
>
> Overview article on Semantic Universe:
> http://tinyurl.com/goodrelations-universe
>
> Project page and resources for developers:
> http://purl.org/goodrelations/
>
> Tutorial materials:
> Tutorial at ESWC 2009: The Web of Data for E-Commerce in One Day: A Hands-on
> Introduction to the GoodRelations Ontology, RDFa, and Yahoo! SearchMonkey
>
> http://www.ebusiness-unibw.org/wiki/GoodRelations_Tutorial_ESWC2009
>
>
>
>
>
>  
>  
> ****************************************************************************
> ********
> This footnote confirms that this email message has been scanned by PineApp
> Mail-SeCure for the presence of malicious code, vandals & computer viruses.
> ****************************************************************************
> ********
>
>
>
>
>
>
>  

--


Regards,

Kingsley Idehen      Weblog: http://www.openlinksw.com/blog/~kidehen
President & CEO
OpenLink Software     Web: http://www.openlinksw.com

[kidehen]

Giovanni Tummarello wrote:

>> That can then be inserted as code snippets via copy-and-paste to any XHTML
>> document.
>>
>> Any opinions?
>>    
>
> Great, why bother with any other solution.
> even talking about any other solution is extraordinarely bad for the
> public perception of the semantic web community.
>
> Giovanni
>
>
>  

Giovanni,

We don't need mutual exclusivity re. Linked Data Deployment.

There's nothing wrong with an array of options that cover a broad range
of Linked Data deployment circumstances.

HTTP is the essence of the Web (what makes it what it is), and Content
Negotiation is intrinsic to HTTP.

Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater, really.


--


Regards,

Kingsley Idehen      Weblog: http://www.openlinksw.com/blog/~kidehen
President & CEO
OpenLink Software     Web: http://www.openlinksw.com

[Juan Sequeda]

Just confirming. I really want to start getting things done!

On Thu, Jun 25, 2009 at 8:08 PM, Kingsley Idehen <kidehen@...> wrote:

Juan Sequeda wrote:

So... then from what I understand.. why bother with content negotiation, right?

No, it means content negotiation is an option, albeit a tough one when ".htaccess" and Apache are ground zero.

Just do everything in RDFa, right?

Of course, if it works for your circumstances :-)

Basically, we need to tweak the Linked Data Best Practices guides and general messaging by adding  RDFa to the conversation -- as an *option* for Linked Data Deployment. I believe I expressed this sentiment a while back.

 I agree. I think I had this discussion with Peter Mika and Tom Heath before. Don't take me literally but the conclusion was that RDFa is Linked Data once it shows up in the best practices and people know how to do it.

but oh my... it's already here:

http://ld2sd.deri.org/lod-ng-tutorial/

Thanks Michael and Richard!

Kingsley

We are planning to deploy soon the linked data version of Turn2Live.com. And we are in the discussion of doing the content negotiation (a la BBC). But if we can KISS, then all we should do is RDFa, right?

Juan Sequeda, Ph.D Student
Dept. of Computer Sciences
The University of Texas at Austin

www.juansequeda.com <http://www.juansequeda.com>
www.semanticwebaustin.org <http://www.semanticwebaustin.org>

On Thu, Jun 25, 2009 at 7:29 PM, Pat Hayes <phayes@... <mailto:phayes@...>> wrote:


   On Jun 25, 2009, at 11:44 AM, Martin Hepp (UniBW) wrote:

       Hi all:

       After about two months of helping people generate RDF/XML
       metadata for their businesses using the GoodRelations
       annotator [1],
       I have quite some evidence that the current best practices of
       using .htaccess are a MAJOR bottleneck for the adoption of
       Semantic Web technology.


   I agree, and raised this issue with the W3C TAG some time ago. It
   was apparently not taken seriously. The general consensus seemed
   to be that any normal adult should be competent to manipulate an
   Apache server. My own company, however, refuses to allow its
   employees to have access to .htaccess files, and I am therefore
   quite unable to conform to the current best practice from my own
   work situation. I believe that this situation is not uncommon.

   Pat Hayes


       Just some data:
       - We have several hundred entries in the annotator log - most
       people spend 10 or more minutes to create a reasonable
       description of themselves.
       - Even though they all operate some sort of Web sites, less
       than 30 % of them manage to upload/publish a single *.rdf file
       in their root directory.
       - Of those 30%, only a fraction manage to set up content
       negotiation properly, even though we provide a step-by-step
       recipe.

       The effects are
       - URIs that are not dereferencable,
       - incorrect media types and
       and other problems.

       When investigating the causes and trying to help people, we
       encountered a variety of configurations and causes that we did
       not expect. It turned out that helping people just managing
       this tiny step of publishing  Semantic Web data would turn
       into a full-time job for 1 - 2 administrators.

       Typical causes of problems are
       - Lack of privileges for .htaccess (many cheap hosting
       packages give limited or no access to .htaccess)
       - Users without Unix background had trouble name a file so
       that it begins with a dot
       - Microsoft IIS require completely different recipes
       - Many users have access just at a CMS level

       Bottomline:
       - For researchers in the field, it is a doable task to set up
       an Apache server so that it serves RDF content according to
       current best practices.
       - For most people out there in reality, this is regularly a
       prohibitively difficult task, both because of a lack of skills
       and a variety in the technical environments that turns into an
       engineering challenge what is easy on the textbook-level.

       As a consequence, we will modify our tool so that it generates
       "dummy" RDFa code with span/div that *just* represents the
       meta-data without interfering with the presentation layer.
       That can then be inserted as code snippets via copy-and-paste
       to any XHTML document.

       Any opinions?

       Best
       Martin

       [1]  http://www.ebusiness-unibw.org/tools/goodrelations-annotator/

       Danny Ayers wrote:

           Thank you for the excellent questions, Bill.

           Right now IMHO the best bet is probably just to pick
           whichever format
           you are most comfortable with (yup "it depends") and use
           that as the
           single source, transforming perhaps with scripts to
           generate the
           alternate representations for conneg.

           As far as I'm aware we don't yet have an easy templating
           engine for
           RDFa, so I suspect having that as the source is probably a
           good choice
           for typical Web applications.

           As mentioned already GRDDL is available for transforming
           on the fly,
           though I'm not sure of the level of client engine support
           at present.
           Ditto providing a SPARQL endpoint is another way of
           maximising the
           surface area of the data.

           But the key step has clearly been taken, that decision to
           publish data
           directly without needing the human element to interpret it.

           I claim *win* for the Semantic Web, even if it'll still be
           a few years
           before we see applications exploiting it in a way that
           provides real
           benefit for the end user.

           my 2 cents.

           Cheers,
           Danny.




       --        --------------------------------------------------------------
       martin hepp
       e-business & web science research group
       universitaet der bundeswehr muenchen

       e-mail:  mhepp@... <mailto:mhepp@...>

       phone:   [phone]
       fax:     [phone]
       www:     http://www.unibw.de/ebusiness/ (group)
             http://www.heppnetz.de/ (personal)
       skype:   mfhepp twitter: mfhepp

       Check out the GoodRelations vocabulary for E-Commerce on the
       Web of Data!
       ========================================================================

       Webcast:
       http://www.heppnetz.de/projects/goodrelations/webcast/

       Talk at the Semantic Technology Conference 2009: "Semantic
       Web-based E-Commerce: The GoodRelations Ontology"
       http://tinyurl.com/semtech-hepp

       Tool for registering your business:
       http://www.ebusiness-unibw.org/tools/goodrelations-annotator/

       Overview article on Semantic Universe:
       http://tinyurl.com/goodrelations-universe

       Project page and resources for developers:
       http://purl.org/goodrelations/

       Tutorial materials:
       Tutorial at ESWC 2009: The Web of Data for E-Commerce in One
       Day: A Hands-on Introduction to the GoodRelations Ontology,
       RDFa, and Yahoo! SearchMonkey

       http://www.ebusiness-unibw.org/wiki/GoodRelations_Tutorial_ESWC2009




       <martin_hepp.vcf>


   ------------------------------------------------------------
   IHMC                                     [phone] or (650)494
   3973
   40 South Alcaniz St.           [phone]   office
   Pensacola                            [phone]   fax
   FL 32502                              [phone]   mobile
   phayesAT-SIGNihmc.us       http://www.ihmc.us/users/phayes

--


Regards,

Kingsley Idehen       Weblog: http://www.openlinksw.com/blog/~kidehen
President & CEO OpenLink Software     Web: http://www.openlinksw.com

[John Graybeal]

This is a principal reason MMI decided to offer a vocabulary server  
for its community. The idea that 1000 different providers would all  
develop a level of web competency (for which there is evidence at only  
a minority of providers) for serving their RDF and OWL content -- let  
alone the capability to do versioning, adopt best practices, learn  
SKOS, and whatever other nuances are called for -- seemed like a non-
starter.

This is not exactly the same problem you're facing, but something to  
consider (if the model allows it) is creating a way to serve the  
annotations from another place than the host institution.  The  
institution can refer to those served files from their own sites, and  
even update them remotely, but not have to incur all the management  
overhead as standards improve, files change, authorship changes, etc.

(Which is not to disagree with your plan either. That sounds fine.)

One other delivery model could be for them to give you an existing  
HTML, you give them back the modified HTML (saves them cutting and  
pasting steps?).

I'm a little ignorant on your tools and processes, so apologies if  
these are non-starters.

John


On Jun 25, 2009, at 9:44 AM, Martin Hepp (UniBW) wrote:

> Hi all:
>
> After about two months of helping people generate RDF/XML metadata  
> for their businesses using the GoodRelations annotator [1],
> I have quite some evidence that the current best practices of  
> using .htaccess are a MAJOR bottleneck for the adoption of Semantic  
> Web technology.
>
> Just some data:
> - We have several hundred entries in the annotator log - most people  
> spend 10 or more minutes to create a reasonable description of  
> themselves.
> - Even though they all operate some sort of Web sites, less than 30  
> % of them manage to upload/publish a single *.rdf file in their root  
> directory.
> - Of those 30%, only a fraction manage to set up content negotiation  
> properly, even though we provide a step-by-step recipe.
>
> The effects are
> - URIs that are not dereferencable,
> - incorrect media types and
> and other problems.
>
> When investigating the causes and trying to help people, we  
> encountered a variety of configurations and causes that we did not  
> expect. It turned out that helping people just managing this tiny  
> step of publishing  Semantic Web data would turn into a full-time  
> job for 1 - 2 administrators.
>
> Typical causes of problems are
> - Lack of privileges for .htaccess (many cheap hosting packages give  
> limited or no access to .htaccess)
> - Users without Unix background had trouble name a file so that it  
> begins with a dot
> - Microsoft IIS require completely different recipes
> - Many users have access just at a CMS level
>
> Bottomline:
> - For researchers in the field, it is a doable task to set up an  
> Apache server so that it serves RDF content according to current  
> best practices.
> - For most people out there in reality, this is regularly a  
> prohibitively difficult task, both because of a lack of skills and a  
> variety in the technical environments that turns into an engineering  
> challenge what is easy on the textbook-level.
>
> As a consequence, we will modify our tool so that it generates  
> "dummy" RDFa code with span/div that *just* represents the meta-data  
> without interfering with the presentation layer.
> That can then be inserted as code snippets via copy-and-paste to any  
> XHTML document.
>
> Any opinions?
>
> Best
> Martin
>
> [1]  http://www.ebusiness-unibw.org/tools/goodrelations-annotator/
>
> Danny Ayers wrote:
>> Thank you for the excellent questions, Bill.
>>
>> Right now IMHO the best bet is probably just to pick whichever format
>> you are most comfortable with (yup "it depends") and use that as the
>> single source, transforming perhaps with scripts to generate the
>> alternate representations for conneg.
>>
>> As far as I'm aware we don't yet have an easy templating engine for
>> RDFa, so I suspect having that as the source is probably a good  
>> choice
>> for typical Web applications.
>>
>> As mentioned already GRDDL is available for transforming on the fly,
>> though I'm not sure of the level of client engine support at present.
>> Ditto providing a SPARQL endpoint is another way of maximising the
>> surface area of the data.
>>
>> But the key step has clearly been taken, that decision to publish  
>> data
>> directly without needing the human element to interpret it.
>>
>> I claim *win* for the Semantic Web, even if it'll still be a few  
>> years
>> before we see applications exploiting it in a way that provides real
>> benefit for the end user.
>>
>> my 2 cents.
>>
>> Cheers,
>> Danny.
>>
>>
>>
>
> --
> --------------------------------------------------------------
> martin hepp
> e-business & web science research group
> universitaet der bundeswehr muenchen
>
> e-mail:  mhepp@...
> phone:   [phone]
> fax:     [phone]
> www:     http://www.unibw.de/ebusiness/ (group)
>        http://www.heppnetz.de/ (personal)
> skype:   mfhepp twitter: mfhepp
>
> Check out the GoodRelations vocabulary for E-Commerce on the Web of  
> Data!
> =
> =
> ======================================================================
>
> Webcast:
> http://www.heppnetz.de/projects/goodrelations/webcast/
>
> Talk at the Semantic Technology Conference 2009: "Semantic Web-based  
> E-Commerce: The GoodRelations Ontology"
> http://tinyurl.com/semtech-hepp
>
> Tool for registering your business:
> http://www.ebusiness-unibw.org/tools/goodrelations-annotator/
>
> Overview article on Semantic Universe:
> http://tinyurl.com/goodrelations-universe
>
> Project page and resources for developers:
> http://purl.org/goodrelations/
>
> Tutorial materials:
> Tutorial at ESWC 2009: The Web of Data for E-Commerce in One Day: A  
> Hands-on Introduction to the GoodRelations Ontology, RDFa, and  
> Yahoo! SearchMonkey
>
> http://www.ebusiness-unibw.org/wiki/GoodRelations_Tutorial_ESWC2009
>
>
>
>
> <martin_hepp.vcf>

John

--------------
John Graybeal   <mailto:graybeal@...>  -- 831-775-1956
Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute
Marine Metadata Interoperability Project: http://marinemetadata.org

[Knud Hinnerk Möller]

On 25.06.2009, at 19:11, Kingsley Idehen wrote:

> Jeff Finkelstein, Customer Paradigm wrote:
>> Martin-
>>
>> I agree that the .htaccess file is a big stumbling block for many  
>> people
>> with low-cost hosting.  Would a lightweight php-based application  
>> that could
>> write to the .htaccess  / create the RDF file work to solve this  
>> easily?
>>
> Sorry, it won't. The issue is actual access to the .htaccess file.  
> Thus, you have to move the metadata expressed in RDF into the  
> (X)HTML docs that are being published based on the  
> existing .htaccess config.

What I meant in my earlier mail is that we can have content  
negotiation even without manipulating .htaccess (as far as I  
understand, content negotiation through .htaccess is imperfect  
anyway). It can be done in code, e.g. in php. The SW Dog Food site [1]  
uses a third-party php class [2] for this, I think Neologism [3] uses  
the same. Of course, a solution based on this would still require to  
be able to upload files to the server.

Knud

[1] http://data.semanticweb.org
[2] http://ptlis.net/source/php-content-negotiation/
[3] http://neologism.deri.ie

>
> Even when the above is done, you will need RDFa processors within  
> user agents (or standalone) for the Linked Data deployment to fully  
> materialize.
>
>
> Kingsley
>> Thanks,
>>
>> -- Jeff
>> ________________________________________
>> Jeff Finkelstein 303.499.9318 x 8282
>> mailto:jeff@...
>> http://www.customerparadigm.com
>>
>> Customer Paradigm
>> 5353 Manhattan Circle, Suite 103 Boulder, Colorado 80303
>> Recently Featured Websites:
>> http://www.adventurerabbi.org
>> http://www.boulderjews.org
>>
>>
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: semantic-web-request@... [mailto:semantic-web-
>> request@...] On
>> Behalf Of Martin Hepp (UniBW)
>> Sent: Thursday, June 25, 2009 10:44 AM
>> To: Danny Ayers
>> Cc: bill.roberts@...; public-lod@...; semantic-web at W3C
>> Subject: .htaccess a major bottleneck to Semantic Web adoption /  
>> Was: Re:
>> RDFa vs RDF/XML and content negotiation
>> Hi all:
>>
>> After about two months of helping people generate RDF/XML metadata  
>> for their
>> businesses using the GoodRelations annotator [1], I have quite some  
>> evidence
>> that the current best practices of using .htaccess are a MAJOR  
>> bottleneck
>> for the adoption of Semantic Web technology.
>>
>> Just some data:
>> - We have several hundred entries in the annotator log - most  
>> people spend
>> 10 or more minutes to create a reasonable description of themselves.
>> - Even though they all operate some sort of Web sites, less than 30  
>> % of
>> them manage to upload/publish a single *.rdf file in their root  
>> directory.
>> - Of those 30%, only a fraction manage to set up content negotiation
>> properly, even though we provide a step-by-step recipe.
>>
>> The effects are
>> - URIs that are not dereferencable,
>> - incorrect media types and
>> and other problems.
>>
>> When investigating the causes and trying to help people, we  
>> encountered a
>> variety of configurations and causes that we did not expect. It  
>> turned out
>> that helping people just managing this tiny step of publishing  
>> Semantic Web
>> data would turn into a full-time job for 1 - 2 administrators.
>>
>> Typical causes of problems are
>> - Lack of privileges for .htaccess (many cheap hosting packages  
>> give limited
>> or no access to .htaccess)
>> - Users without Unix background had trouble name a file so that it  
>> begins
>> with a dot
>> - Microsoft IIS require completely different recipes
>> - Many users have access just at a CMS level
>>
>> Bottomline:
>> - For researchers in the field, it is a doable task to set up an  
>> Apache
>> server so that it serves RDF content according to current best  
>> practices.
>> - For most people out there in reality, this is regularly a  
>> prohibitively
>> difficult task, both because of a lack of skills and a variety in the
>> technical environments that turns into an engineering challenge  
>> what is easy
>> on the textbook-level.
>>
>> As a consequence, we will modify our tool so that it generates  
>> "dummy" RDFa code with span/div that *just* represents the meta-
>> data without
>> interfering with the presentation layer.
>> That can then be inserted as code snippets via copy-and-paste to  
>> any XHTML
>> document.
>>
>> Any opinions?
>>
>> Best
>> Martin
>>
>> [1]  http://www.ebusiness-unibw.org/tools/goodrelations-annotator/
>>
>> Danny Ayers wrote:
>>
>>> Thank you for the excellent questions, Bill.
>>>
>>> Right now IMHO the best bet is probably just to pick whichever  
>>> format you are most comfortable with (yup "it depends") and use  
>>> that as the single source, transforming perhaps with scripts to  
>>> generate the alternate representations for conneg.
>>>
>>> As far as I'm aware we don't yet have an easy templating engine  
>>> for RDFa, so I suspect having that as the source is probably a  
>>> good choice for typical Web applications.
>>>
>>> As mentioned already GRDDL is available for transforming on the  
>>> fly, though I'm not sure of the level of client engine support at  
>>> present.
>>> Ditto providing a SPARQL endpoint is another way of maximising the  
>>> surface area of the data.
>>>
>>> But the key step has clearly been taken, that decision to publish  
>>> data directly without needing the human element to interpret it.
>>>
>>> I claim *win* for the Semantic Web, even if it'll still be a few  
>>> years before we see applications exploiting it in a way that  
>>> provides real benefit for the end user.
>>>
>>> my 2 cents.
>>>
>>> Cheers,
>>> Danny.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>> --
>> --------------------------------------------------------------
>> martin hepp
>> e-business & web science research group
>> universitaet der bundeswehr muenchen
>>
>> e-mail:  mhepp@...
>> phone:   [phone]
>> fax:     [phone]
>> www:     http://www.unibw.de/ebusiness/ (group)
>>         http://www.heppnetz.de/ (personal)
>> skype:   mfhepp twitter: mfhepp
>>
>> Check out the GoodRelations vocabulary for E-Commerce on the Web of  
>> Data!
>> =
>> =
>> =
>> =====================================================================
>>
>> Webcast:
>> http://www.heppnetz.de/projects/goodrelations/webcast/
>>
>> Talk at the Semantic Technology Conference 2009: "Semantic Web-
>> based E-Commerce: The GoodRelations Ontology"
>> http://tinyurl.com/semtech-hepp
>>
>> Tool for registering your business:
>> http://www.ebusiness-unibw.org/tools/goodrelations-annotator/
>>
>> Overview article on Semantic Universe:
>> http://tinyurl.com/goodrelations-universe
>>
>> Project page and resources for developers:
>> http://purl.org/goodrelations/
>>
>> Tutorial materials:
>> Tutorial at ESWC 2009: The Web of Data for E-Commerce in One Day: A  
>> Hands-on
>> Introduction to the GoodRelations Ontology, RDFa, and Yahoo!  
>> SearchMonkey
>>
>> http://www.ebusiness-unibw.org/wiki/GoodRelations_Tutorial_ESWC2009
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>  
>> ****************************************************************************
>> ********
>> This footnote confirms that this email message has been scanned by  
>> PineApp
>> Mail-SeCure for the presence of malicious code, vandals & computer  
>> viruses.
>> ****************************************************************************
>> ********
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>
>
> --
>
>
> Regards,
>
> Kingsley Idehen      Weblog: http://www.openlinksw.com/blog/~kidehen
> President & CEO OpenLink Software     Web: http://www.openlinksw.com
>
>
>
>
>

-------------------------------------------------
Knud Möller, MA
+353 - 91 - 495086
Smile Group: http://smile.deri.ie
Digital Enterprise Research Institute
   National University of Ireland, Galway
Institiúid Taighde na Fiontraíochta Digití
   Ollscoil na hÉireann, Gaillimh

[Tom Heath]

Hi Martin, all,

2009/6/25 Martin Hepp (UniBW) <martin.hepp@...>:
> Hi all:
>
> After about two months of helping people generate RDF/XML metadata for their
> businesses using the GoodRelations annotator [1],
> I have quite some evidence that the current best practices of using
> .htaccess are a MAJOR bottleneck for the adoption of Semantic Web
> technology.

Are you referring to the best practices at [1]? Unfortunately the
recipes in that document that use .htaccess and mod_rewrite for conneg
no longer count as best practices, precisely due to mod_rewrite and
.htaccess not being adequate for the conneg/303-redirects pattern.
This has been a known issue since WWW2007 at least, and documented at
[2] in July 2007. As far as I know, that recipes document hasn't yet
been updated/deprecated :( (please someone correct me if I'm wrong).

The easiest pattern I've found is to use a RewriteRule to catch all
incoming requests and pass them through a small PHP script that
examines the Accept header and sends back 303s (or 200s) as
appropriate. The code is about 6 lines; I'll publish it somewhere if I
didn't already.

Admittedly, this doesn't solve the problem of access to .htaccess
files. This bottleneck sounds to me like someone circa mid-1990s
saying "my sysadmins won't let me have access to space on the web
server". I guess we need to use lessons learned from that era to
address the problems of this one. Anyway fancy doing a Linked Data for
Sysadmins tutorial at a sysadmin conference?

Cheers,

Tom.

[1] http://www.w3.org/TR/swbp-vocab-pub/
[2] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-swbp-wg/2007Jul/0001.html

[kidehen]

Juan Sequeda wrote:
> Just confirming. I really want to start getting things done!

So get going :-)

> [SNIP]
>
>  I agree. I think I had this discussion with Peter Mika and Tom Heath
> before. Don't take me literally but the conclusion was that RDFa is
> Linked Data once it shows up in the best practices and people know how
> to do it.
>
> but oh my... it's already here:
>
> http://ld2sd.deri.org/lod-ng-tutorial/

Yep, so you found the nugget :-)

Kingsley

>
> Thanks Michael and Richard!
>
>
>
>     Kingsley
>
>
>         We are planning to deploy soon the linked data version of
>         Turn2Live.com. And we are in the discussion of doing the
>         content negotiation (a la BBC). But if we can KISS, then all
>         we should do is RDFa, right?
>
>         Juan Sequeda, Ph.D Student
>         Dept. of Computer Sciences
>         The University of Texas at Austin
>         www.juansequeda.com <http://www.juansequeda.com>
>         <http://www.juansequeda.com>
>         www.semanticwebaustin.org <http://www.semanticwebaustin.org>
>         <http://www.semanticwebaustin.org>
>
>
>
>         On Thu, Jun 25, 2009 at 7:29 PM, Pat Hayes <phayes@...
>         <mailto:phayes@...> <mailto:phayes@...
>         <mailto:phayes@...>>> wrote:
>
>
>            On Jun 25, 2009, at 11:44 AM, Martin Hepp (UniBW) wrote:
>
>                Hi all:
>
>                After about two months of helping people generate RDF/XML
>                metadata for their businesses using the GoodRelations
>                annotator [1],
>                I have quite some evidence that the current best
>         practices of
>                using .htaccess are a MAJOR bottleneck for the adoption of
>                Semantic Web technology.
>
>
>            I agree, and raised this issue with the W3C TAG some time
>         ago. It
>            was apparently not taken seriously. The general consensus
>         seemed
>            to be that any normal adult should be competent to
>         manipulate an
>            Apache server. My own company, however, refuses to allow its
>            employees to have access to .htaccess files, and I am therefore
>            quite unable to conform to the current best practice from
>         my own
>            work situation. I believe that this situation is not uncommon.
>
>            Pat Hayes
>
>
>                Just some data:
>                - We have several hundred entries in the annotator log
>         - most
>                people spend 10 or more minutes to create a reasonable
>                description of themselves.
>                - Even though they all operate some sort of Web sites, less
>                than 30 % of them manage to upload/publish a single
>         *.rdf file
>                in their root directory.
>                - Of those 30%, only a fraction manage to set up content
>                negotiation properly, even though we provide a step-by-step
>                recipe.
>
>                The effects are
>                - URIs that are not dereferencable,
>                - incorrect media types and
>                and other problems.
>
>                When investigating the causes and trying to help people, we
>                encountered a variety of configurations and causes that
>         we did
>                not expect. It turned out that helping people just managing
>                this tiny step of publishing  Semantic Web data would turn
>                into a full-time job for 1 - 2 administrators.
>
>                Typical causes of problems are
>                - Lack of privileges for .htaccess (many cheap hosting
>                packages give limited or no access to .htaccess)
>                - Users without Unix background had trouble name a file so
>                that it begins with a dot
>                - Microsoft IIS require completely different recipes
>                - Many users have access just at a CMS level
>
>                Bottomline:
>                - For researchers in the field, it is a doable task to
>         set up
>                an Apache server so that it serves RDF content according to
>                current best practices.
>                - For most people out there in reality, this is regularly a
>                prohibitively difficult task, both because of a lack of
>         skills
>                and a variety in the technical environments that turns
>         into an
>                engineering challenge what is easy on the textbook-level.
>
>                As a consequence, we will modify our tool so that it
>         generates
>                "dummy" RDFa code with span/div that *just* represents the
>                meta-data without interfering with the presentation layer.
>                That can then be inserted as code snippets via
>         copy-and-paste
>                to any XHTML document.
>
>                Any opinions?
>
>                Best
>                Martin
>
>                [1]
>          http://www.ebusiness-unibw.org/tools/goodrelations-annotator/
>
>                Danny Ayers wrote:
>
>                    Thank you for the excellent questions, Bill.
>
>                    Right now IMHO the best bet is probably just to pick
>                    whichever format
>                    you are most comfortable with (yup "it depends")
>         and use
>                    that as the
>                    single source, transforming perhaps with scripts to
>                    generate the
>                    alternate representations for conneg.
>
>                    As far as I'm aware we don't yet have an easy
>         templating
>                    engine for
>                    RDFa, so I suspect having that as the source is
>         probably a
>                    good choice
>                    for typical Web applications.
>
>                    As mentioned already GRDDL is available for
>         transforming
>                    on the fly,
>                    though I'm not sure of the level of client engine
>         support
>                    at present.
>                    Ditto providing a SPARQL endpoint is another way of
>                    maximising the
>                    surface area of the data.
>
>                    But the key step has clearly been taken, that
>         decision to
>                    publish data
>                    directly without needing the human element to
>         interpret it.
>
>                    I claim *win* for the Semantic Web, even if it'll
>         still be
>                    a few years
>                    before we see applications exploiting it in a way that
>                    provides real
>                    benefit for the end user.
>
>                    my 2 cents.
>
>                    Cheers,
>                    Danny.
>
>
>
>
>                --      
>          --------------------------------------------------------------
>                martin hepp
>                e-business & web science research group
>                universitaet der bundeswehr muenchen
>
>                e-mail:  mhepp@... <mailto:mhepp@...>
>         <mailto:mhepp@... <mailto:mhepp@...>>
>
>                phone:   [phone]
>                fax:     [phone]
>                www:     http://www.unibw.de/ebusiness/ (group)
>                      http://www.heppnetz.de/ (personal)
>                skype:   mfhepp twitter: mfhepp
>
>                Check out the GoodRelations vocabulary for E-Commerce
>         on the
>                Web of Data!
>              
>          ========================================================================
>
>                Webcast:
>                http://www.heppnetz.de/projects/goodrelations/webcast/
>
>                Talk at the Semantic Technology Conference 2009: "Semantic
>                Web-based E-Commerce: The GoodRelations Ontology"
>                http://tinyurl.com/semtech-hepp
>
>                Tool for registering your business:
>              
>          http://www.ebusiness-unibw.org/tools/goodrelations-annotator/
>
>                Overview article on Semantic Universe:
>                http://tinyurl.com/goodrelations-universe
>
>                Project page and resources for developers:
>                http://purl.org/goodrelations/
>
>                Tutorial materials:
>                Tutorial at ESWC 2009: The Web of Data for E-Commerce
>         in One
>                Day: A Hands-on Introduction to the GoodRelations Ontology,
>                RDFa, and Yahoo! SearchMonkey
>
>              
>          http://www.ebusiness-unibw.org/wiki/GoodRelations_Tutorial_ESWC2009
>
>
>
>
>                <martin_hepp.vcf>
>
>
>            ------------------------------------------------------------
>            IHMC                                     [phone] or
>         (650)494
>            3973
>            40 South Alcaniz St.           [phone]   office
>            Pensacola                            [phone]   fax
>            FL 32502                              [phone]   mobile
>            phayesAT-SIGNihmc.us       http://www.ihmc.us/users/phayes
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>     --
>
>
>     Regards,
>
>     Kingsley Idehen       Weblog:
>     http://www.openlinksw.com/blog/~kidehen
>     <http://www.openlinksw.com/blog/%7Ekidehen>
>     President & CEO OpenLink Software     Web: http://www.openlinksw.com
>
>
>
>
>

--


Regards,

Kingsley Idehen      Weblog: http://www.openlinksw.com/blog/~kidehen
President & CEO
OpenLink Software     Web: http://www.openlinksw.com

[Tom Heath]

Hi all,

2009/6/25 Kingsley Idehen <kidehen@...>:

> Giovanni Tummarello wrote:
>>>
>>> That can then be inserted as code snippets via copy-and-paste to any
>>> XHTML
>>> document.
>>>
>>> Any opinions?
>>>
>>
>> Great, why bother with any other solution.
>> even talking about any other solution is extraordinarely bad for the
>> public perception of the semantic web community.
>>
>> Giovanni
>>
>>
> Giovanni,
>
> We don't need mutual exclusivity re. Linked Data Deployment.
>
> There's nothing wrong with an array of options that cover a broad range of
> Linked Data deployment circumstances.
>
> HTTP is the essence of the Web (what makes it what it is), and Content
> Negotiation is intrinsic to HTTP.
>
> Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater, really.

+1, with bells on! I'm in complete agreement with Kingsley here which,
as Twitter users will know, isn't something we can always take for
granted ;)

"Many different tools for many different jobs....many different tools
for many different jobs...."

Tom.

[Juan Sequeda]

Tom,

Is there a place in the ESW wiki where people can find these simple tools/scripts to do the rewriting like the one you did and [1]. I'm sure there must be others.

This would be a good resource to have!

[1] http://ptlis.net/source/php-content-negotiation/

The easiest pattern I've found is to use a RewriteRule to catch all
incoming requests and pass them through a small PHP script that
examines the Accept header and sends back 303s (or 200s) as
appropriate. The code is about 6 lines; I'll publish it somewhere if I
didn't already.

[Tom Heath]

Hi Juan,

Not AFAICT, but feel free to search and create one if not. Wherever it
lives this would be a great resource to link to from linkeddata.org

Cheers,

Tom.


2009/6/25 Juan Sequeda <juanfederico@...>:

> Tom,
>
> Is there a place in the ESW wiki where people can find these simple
> tools/scripts to do the rewriting like the one you did and [1]. I'm sure
> there must be others.
>
> This would be a good resource to have!
>
> [1] http://ptlis.net/source/php-content-negotiation/
>>
>>
>> The easiest pattern I've found is to use a RewriteRule to catch all
>> incoming requests and pass them through a small PHP script that
>> examines the Accept header and sends back 303s (or 200s) as
>> appropriate. The code is about 6 lines; I'll publish it somewhere if I
>> didn't already.
>>
>
>
> ______________________________________________________________________
> This email has been scanned by the MessageLabs Email Security System.
> For more information please visit http://www.messagelabs.com/email
> ______________________________________________________________________
>

--
Dr Tom Heath
Researcher
Platform Division
Talis Information Ltd
T: 0870 400 5000
W: http://www.talis.com/

[Martin Hepp (UniBW)]

Hi John:
We also thought of hosting meta-data for the users, but I don't like
that because I want the shop operators to feel ownership for the data:
If the opening hours expressed in RDF are wrong but on the personal Web
page of that restaurant, anybody facing closed doors will blame the
restaurant.
If the outdated opening hours in RDF are on my SW server, the unlucky
customer will blame the Semantic Web for having crappy data.

So maybe the snippet solution in RDFa is the best.

Best
Martin


John Graybeal wrote:

> This is a principal reason MMI decided to offer a vocabulary server
> for its community. The idea that 1000 different providers would all
> develop a level of web competency (for which there is evidence at only
> a minority of providers) for serving their RDF and OWL content -- let
> alone the capability to do versioning, adopt best practices, learn
> SKOS, and whatever other nuances are called for -- seemed like a
> non-starter.
>
> This is not exactly the same problem you're facing, but something to
> consider (if the model allows it) is creating a way to serve the
> annotations from another place than the host institution.  The
> institution can refer to those served files from their own sites, and
> even update them remotely, but not have to incur all the management
> overhead as standards improve, files change, authorship changes, etc.
>
> (Which is not to disagree with your plan either. That sounds fine.)
>
> One other delivery model could be for them to give you an existing
> HTML, you give them back the modified HTML (saves them cutting and
> pasting steps?).
>
> I'm a little ignorant on your tools and processes, so apologies if
> these are non-starters.
>
> John
>
>
> On Jun 25, 2009, at 9:44 AM, Martin Hepp (UniBW) wrote:
>
>> Hi all:
>>
>> After about two months of helping people generate RDF/XML metadata
>> for their businesses using the GoodRelations annotator [1],
>> I have quite some evidence that the current best practices of using
>> .htaccess are a MAJOR bottleneck for the adoption of Semantic Web
>> technology.
>>
>> Just some data:
>> - We have several hundred entries in the annotator log - most people
>> spend 10 or more minutes to create a reasonable description of
>> themselves.
>> - Even though they all operate some sort of Web sites, less than 30 %
>> of them manage to upload/publish a single *.rdf file in their root
>> directory.
>> - Of those 30%, only a fraction manage to set up content negotiation
>> properly, even though we provide a step-by-step recipe.
>>
>> The effects are
>> - URIs that are not dereferencable,
>> - incorrect media types and
>> and other problems.
>>
>> When investigating the causes and trying to help people, we
>> encountered a variety of configurations and causes that we did not
>> expect. It turned out that helping people just managing this tiny
>> step of publishing  Semantic Web data would turn into a full-time job
>> for 1 - 2 administrators.
>>
>> Typical causes of problems are
>> - Lack of privileges for .htaccess (many cheap hosting packages give
>> limited or no access to .htaccess)
>> - Users without Unix background had trouble name a file so that it
>> begins with a dot
>> - Microsoft IIS require completely different recipes
>> - Many users have access just at a CMS level
>>
>> Bottomline:
>> - For researchers in the field, it is a doable task to set up an
>> Apache server so that it serves RDF content according to current best
>> practices.
>> - For most people out there in reality, this is regularly a
>> prohibitively difficult task, both because of a lack of skills and a
>> variety in the technical environments that turns into an engineering
>> challenge what is easy on the textbook-level.
>>
>> As a consequence, we will modify our tool so that it generates
>> "dummy" RDFa code with span/div that *just* represents the meta-data
>> without interfering with the presentation layer.
>> That can then be inserted as code snippets via copy-and-paste to any
>> XHTML document.
>>
>> Any opinions?
>>
>> Best
>> Martin
>>
>> [1]  http://www.ebusiness-unibw.org/tools/goodrelations-annotator/
>>
>> Danny Ayers wrote:
>>> Thank you for the excellent questions, Bill.
>>>
>>> Right now IMHO the best bet is probably just to pick whichever format
>>> you are most comfortable with (yup "it depends") and use that as the
>>> single source, transforming perhaps with scripts to generate the
>>> alternate representations for conneg.
>>>
>>> As far as I'm aware we don't yet have an easy templating engine for
>>> RDFa, so I suspect having that as the source is probably a good choice
>>> for typical Web applications.
>>>
>>> As mentioned already GRDDL is available for transforming on the fly,
>>> though I'm not sure of the level of client engine support at present.
>>> Ditto providing a SPARQL endpoint is another way of maximising the
>>> surface area of the data.
>>>
>>> But the key step has clearly been taken, that decision to publish data
>>> directly without needing the human element to interpret it.
>>>
>>> I claim *win* for the Semantic Web, even if it'll still be a few years
>>> before we see applications exploiting it in a way that provides real
>>> benefit for the end user.
>>>
>>> my 2 cents.
>>>
>>> Cheers,
>>> Danny.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>> --
>> --------------------------------------------------------------
>> martin hepp
>> e-business & web science research group
>> universitaet der bundeswehr muenchen
>>
>> e-mail:  mhepp@...
>> phone:   [phone]
>> fax:     [phone]
>> www:     http://www.unibw.de/ebusiness/ (group)
>>        http://www.heppnetz.de/ (personal)
>> skype:   mfhepp twitter: mfhepp
>>
>> Check out the GoodRelations vocabulary for E-Commerce on the Web of
>> Data!
>> ========================================================================
>>
>> Webcast:
>> http://www.heppnetz.de/projects/goodrelations/webcast/
>>
>> Talk at the Semantic Technology Conference 2009: "Semantic Web-based
>> E-Commerce: The GoodRelations Ontology"
>> http://tinyurl.com/semtech-hepp
>>
>> Tool for registering your business:
>> http://www.ebusiness-unibw.org/tools/goodrelations-annotator/
>>
>> Overview article on Semantic Universe:
>> http://tinyurl.com/goodrelations-universe
>>
>> Project page and resources for developers:
>> http://purl.org/goodrelations/
>>
>> Tutorial materials:
>> Tutorial at ESWC 2009: The Web of Data for E-Commerce in One Day: A
>> Hands-on Introduction to the GoodRelations Ontology, RDFa, and Yahoo!
>> SearchMonkey
>>
>> http://www.ebusiness-unibw.org/wiki/GoodRelations_Tutorial_ESWC2009
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> <martin_hepp.vcf>
>
>
> John
>
> --------------
> John Graybeal   <mailto:graybeal@...>  -- 831-775-1956
> Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute
> Marine Metadata Interoperability Project: http://marinemetadata.org
>
>
>

--
--------------------------------------------------------------
martin hepp
e-business & web science research group
universitaet der bundeswehr muenchen

e-mail:  mhepp@...
phone:   [phone]
fax:     [phone]
www:     http://www.unibw.de/ebusiness/ (group)
         http://www.heppnetz.de/ (personal)
skype:   mfhepp
twitter: mfhepp

Check out the GoodRelations vocabulary for E-Commerce on the Web of Data!
========================================================================

Webcast:
http://www.heppnetz.de/projects/goodrelations/webcast/

Talk at the Semantic Technology Conference 2009:
"Semantic Web-based E-Commerce: The GoodRelations Ontology"
http://tinyurl.com/semtech-hepp

Tool for registering your business:
http://www.ebusiness-unibw.org/tools/goodrelations-annotator/

Overview article on Semantic Universe:
http://tinyurl.com/goodrelations-universe

Project page and resources for developers:
http://purl.org/goodrelations/

Tutorial materials:
Tutorial at ESWC 2009: The Web of Data for E-Commerce in One Day: A Hands-on Introduction to the GoodRelations Ontology, RDFa, and Yahoo! SearchMonkey

http://www.ebusiness-unibw.org/wiki/GoodRelations_Tutorial_ESWC2009





[martin_hepp.vcf]

---

begin:vcard
fn:Martin Hepp
n:Hepp;Martin
org:Bundeswehr University Munich;E-Business and Web Science Research Group
adr:;;Werner-Heisenberg-Web 39;Neubiberg;;D-85577;Germany
email;internet:mhepp@...
tel;work:[phone]
tel;pager:skype: mfhepp
url:http://www.heppnetz.de
version:2.1
end:vcard

---

[Martin Hepp (UniBW)]

As mostly, recently ;-), I agree with Kingsley - I did not want to say
that proper usage of http is bad or obsolete. But it turned out
unfeasible for broad adoption my owners of small Web sites.

For huge data sources and for vocabularies, the current recipes are
fine. But I want every single business in the world to use GoodRelations
for publishing at least their opening hours - 19 Million companies in
Europe alone. I cannot explain to every single one of them how to
configure their server.

Another thing that might have gone lost in the discussion: Even though
we knew the recipes, helping the site owners was difficult, because we
experienced hundreds of different environments - preexisting .htaccess,
MS IIS, hoster-specific scenarios, etc. So the problem is really that
such a low-level technique is not feasible if you face so much diversity
as far as the target system is concerned.

Maybe some day a certain LOD/SW package will be installed by default on
most servers. But we cannot wait till then.

BTW: We did not even require the full beauty of LOD best practices. We
simply want them to do as described here:

http://www.ebusiness-unibw.org/wiki/GoodRelations_Recipe_8

Best
Martin

Kingsley Idehen wrote:

> Giovanni Tummarello wrote:
>>> That can then be inserted as code snippets via copy-and-paste to any
>>> XHTML
>>> document.
>>>
>>> Any opinions?
>>>    
>>
>> Great, why bother with any other solution.
>> even talking about any other solution is extraordinarely bad for the
>> public perception of the semantic web community.
>>
>> Giovanni
>>
>>
>>  
> Giovanni,
>
> We don't need mutual exclusivity re. Linked Data Deployment.
>
> There's nothing wrong with an array of options that cover a broad
> range of Linked Data deployment circumstances.
>
> HTTP is the essence of the Web (what makes it what it is), and Content
> Negotiation is intrinsic to HTTP.
>
> Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater, really.
>
>

--
--------------------------------------------------------------
martin hepp
e-business & web science research group
universitaet der bundeswehr muenchen

e-mail:  mhepp@...
phone:   [phone]
fax:     [phone]
www:     http://www.unibw.de/ebusiness/ (group)
         http://www.heppnetz.de/ (personal)
skype:   mfhepp
twitter: mfhepp

Check out the GoodRelations vocabulary for E-Commerce on the Web of Data!
========================================================================

Webcast:
http://www.heppnetz.de/projects/goodrelations/webcast/

Talk at the Semantic Technology Conference 2009:
"Semantic Web-based E-Commerce: The GoodRelations Ontology"
http://tinyurl.com/semtech-hepp

Tool for registering your business:
http://www.ebusiness-unibw.org/tools/goodrelations-annotator/

Overview article on Semantic Universe:
http://tinyurl.com/goodrelations-universe

Project page and resources for developers:
http://purl.org/goodrelations/

Tutorial materials:
Tutorial at ESWC 2009: The Web of Data for E-Commerce in One Day: A Hands-on Introduction to the GoodRelations Ontology, RDFa, and Yahoo! SearchMonkey

http://www.ebusiness-unibw.org/wiki/GoodRelations_Tutorial_ESWC2009





[martin_hepp.vcf]

---

begin:vcard
fn:Martin Hepp
n:Hepp;Martin
org:Bundeswehr University Munich;E-Business and Web Science Research Group
adr:;;Werner-Heisenberg-Web 39;Neubiberg;;D-85577;Germany
email;internet:mhepp@...
tel;work:[phone]
tel;pager:skype: mfhepp
url:http://www.heppnetz.de
version:2.1
end:vcard

---

[Martin Hepp (UniBW)]

Hi Knut:

Knud Hinnerk Möller wrote:
> Hi Martin,
>
> On 25.06.2009, at 17:44, Martin Hepp (UniBW) wrote:
>
> ...
> These are interesting statistics, maybe you want to blog about them or
> publish them in some other way?
>
Thanks to W3C, my preliminary report was automatically assigned a
dereferencable URI:

http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/semantic-web/2009Jun/0220.html

;-)

Martin



[martin_hepp.vcf]

---

begin:vcard
fn:Martin Hepp
n:Hepp;Martin
org:Bundeswehr University Munich;E-Business and Web Science Research Group
adr:;;Werner-Heisenberg-Web 39;Neubiberg;;D-85577;Germany
email;internet:mhepp@...
tel;work:[phone]
tel;pager:skype: mfhepp
url:http://www.heppnetz.de
version:2.1
end:vcard

---