Fusion Tables: Google's approach to sharing data on the Web

>
> Hi all,
>
> I’m regularly following Alon Halevy blog as I really like his thoughts
> on dataspaces [1].
>
> Today, I discovered this post about Google Fusion Tables
>
> http://alonhalevy.blogspot.com/2009/06/fusion-tables-third-piece-of-puzzle.html
>
> “The main goal of Fusion Tables is to make it easier for people to
> create, manage and share on structured data on the Web. Fusion Tables
> is a new kind of data management system that focuses on features that
> /enable collaboration/. […] In a nutshell, Fusion Tables enables you
> to upload tabular data (up to 100MB per table) from spreadsheets and
> CSV files. You can filter and aggregate the data and visualize it in
> several ways, such as maps and time lines. The system will try to
> recognize columns that represent geographical locations and suggest
> appropriate visualizations. To collaborate, you can share a table with
> a select set of collaborators or make it public. One of the reasons to
> collaborate is to enable /fusing/ data from multiple tables, which is
> a simple yet powerful form of data integration. If you have a table
> about water resources in the countries of the world, and I have data
> about the incidence of malaria in various countries, we can fuse our
> data on the country column, and see our data side by side.”
>
> See also
>
> Google announcement
> http://googleresearch.blogspot.com/2009/06/google-fusion-tables.html
>
> Water data example
> http://www.circleofblue.org/waternews/2009/world/google-brings-water-data-to-life/
>
> Taken this together with Google Squared and the recent announcement
> that Google is going to crawl microformats and RDFa,
>
> it starts to look like the folks at Google are working in the same
> direction as the Linking Open Data community, but as usual a bit more
> centralized and less webish.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Chris
>
> [1] http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~franklin/Papers/dataspaceSR.pdf
>
> --
>
> Prof. Dr. Christian Bizer
>
> Web-based Systems Group
>
> Freie Universität Berlin
>
> +49 30 838 55509
>
> http://www.bizer.de
>
> chris@... <mailto:chris@...>
>

> Chris Bizer wrote:
>> I’m regularly following Alon Halevy blog as I really like his
>> thoughts on dataspaces [1].
>
> I've the impression that's pretty much what DabbleDB [1] and others
> already do for ages even better than Google. Or am I wrong?
>
> --Sören
>
> [1] http://dabbledb.com/
>
>

>
> Cheers,
> François
>
> On Fri, Jul 3, 2009 at 2:28 PM, Chris Bizer <chris@...
> <mailto:chris@...>> wrote:
>
>      
>
>     Hi all,
>
>      
>
>     I’m regularly following Alon Halevy blog as I really like his
>     thoughts on dataspaces [1].
>
>      
>
>     Today, I discovered this post about Google Fusion Tables
>
>      
>
>     http://alonhalevy.blogspot.com/2009/06/fusion-tables-third-piece-of-puzzle.html
>
>      
>
>     “The main goal of Fusion Tables is to make it easier for people to
>     create, manage and share on structured data on the Web. Fusion
>     Tables is a new kind of data management system that focuses on
>     features that /enable collaboration/. […] In a nutshell, Fusion
>     Tables enables you to upload tabular data (up to 100MB per table)
>     from spreadsheets and CSV files. You can filter and aggregate the
>     data and visualize it in several ways, such as maps and time
>     lines. The system will try to recognize columns that represent
>     geographical locations and suggest appropriate visualizations. To
>     collaborate, you can share a table with a select set of
>     collaborators or make it public. One of the reasons to collaborate
>     is to enable /fusing/ data from multiple tables, which is a simple
>     yet powerful form of data integration. If you have a table about
>     water resources in the countries of the world, and I have data
>     about the incidence of malaria in various countries, we can fuse
>     our data on the country column, and see our data side by side.”
>
>      
>
>     See also
>
>      
>
>     Google announcement
>     http://googleresearch.blogspot.com/2009/06/google-fusion-tables.html
>
>     Water data example
>     http://www.circleofblue.org/waternews/2009/world/google-brings-water-data-to-life/
>
>      
>
>     Taken this together with Google Squared and the recent
>     announcement that Google is going to crawl microformats and RDFa,
>
>     it starts to look like the folks at Google are working in the same
>     direction as the Linking Open Data community, but as usual a bit
>     more centralized and less webish.
>
>      
>
>     Cheers,
>
>      
>
>     Chris
>
>      
>
>      
>
>     [1] http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~franklin/Papers/dataspaceSR.pdf
>     <http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/%7Efranklin/Papers/dataspaceSR.pdf>
>
>      
>
>     --
>
>     Prof. Dr. Christian Bizer
>
>     Web-based Systems Group
>
>     Freie Universität Berlin
>
>     +49 30 838 55509
>
>     http://www.bizer.de
>
>     chris@... <mailto:chris@...>
>
>      
>
>

> Kingsley,
>
> Looks like you're imagining a scenario in which Wolfram Alpha, after
> having done its mathematical computation relevant to a particular user
> query, would expose its result in a format that would enrich the web
> of data. I agree that this would indeed be pretty nice but I wasn't
> asking for so much: I was more thinking of Alpha as an application at
> the end of the data processing pipeline (for instance, for data
> visualisation), not so much as an application that produces reusable
> output.

>
> Regards,
> François
>
> 2009/7/3 Kingsley Idehen <kidehen@...
> <mailto:kidehen@...>>
>
>     François Dongier wrote:
>
>         I wonder how Wolfram|Alpha could take advantage of all this
>         data made available both by Google Fusion Tables and by the
>         Linked Data project. Will Alpha just try to slowly integrate
>         it through its "curation pipeline"? Wouldn't it be better to
>         introduce something like "curation coefficients" that would
>         allow computation to be done by Alpha on imperfect data? This
>         would make it possible to quickly catch up on the published
>         data, while introducing some uncertainty in the results Alpha
>         returns.
>
>     Francois,
>
>     Since the overall theme is Linked Data (HTTP URIs for data
>     objects), how does WolframAlpha add any value if the end result is
>     an opaque HTML resource (one that lacks structure data granularity
>     or pointers to structured data sources)?
>
>     Value comes if Google exposes its Dataspace GUIDs as HTTP URIs,
>     and then WolframAlpha (or anyone else in the data processing
>     pipeline) does the same, then you get something that is truly
>     valuable i.e.:
>
>     1. Computation Answer Engine that emits its Linked Data (as per
>     Linked Data meme)
>     2. Google's contribution to the Linked Data Web realm via Data
>     Spaces / Virtual Database technology that also emits Linked Data.
>
>     The ultimate value of the Web remains the fundamental separation
>     of the following re. data:
>
>     1. Identity
>     2. Storage
>     3. Access
>     4. Representation
>     5. Presentation.
>
>     We cannot see, comprehend, and appreciate the Web via item #5
>     solely, which is always the case when the output representation
>     from a Web service lacks pointers (HTTP URIs)  to  RDF model based
>     structured and interlinked data  in line with Linked Data meme.
>
>     To conclude, things will more than likely get better now that
>      Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft (naturally) are beginning to see
>     alignment between their respective customer-driven technology
>     adoption strategies and the virtues of Linked Data, thanks to RDFa
>     and the GoodRelations vocabulary.
>
>
>     Kingsley
>
>
>         Cheers,
>         François
>
>
>         On Fri, Jul 3, 2009 at 2:28 PM, Chris Bizer <chris@...
>         <mailto:chris@...> <mailto:chris@...
>         <mailto:chris@...>>> wrote:
>
>            
>            Hi all,
>
>            
>            I’m regularly following Alon Halevy blog as I really like his
>            thoughts on dataspaces [1].
>
>            
>            Today, I discovered this post about Google Fusion Tables
>
>            
>          
>          http://alonhalevy.blogspot.com/2009/06/fusion-tables-third-piece-of-puzzle.html
>
>            
>            “The main goal of Fusion Tables is to make it easier for
>         people to
>            create, manage and share on structured data on the Web. Fusion
>            Tables is a new kind of data management system that focuses on
>            features that /enable collaboration/. […] In a nutshell, Fusion
>            Tables enables you to upload tabular data (up to 100MB per
>         table)
>            from spreadsheets and CSV files. You can filter and
>         aggregate the
>            data and visualize it in several ways, such as maps and time
>            lines. The system will try to recognize columns that represent
>            geographical locations and suggest appropriate
>         visualizations. To
>            collaborate, you can share a table with a select set of
>            collaborators or make it public. One of the reasons to
>         collaborate
>            is to enable /fusing/ data from multiple tables, which is a
>         simple
>            yet powerful form of data integration. If you have a table
>         about
>            water resources in the countries of the world, and I have data
>            about the incidence of malaria in various countries, we can
>         fuse
>            our data on the country column, and see our data side by side.”
>
>            
>            See also
>
>            
>            Google announcement
>          
>          http://googleresearch.blogspot.com/2009/06/google-fusion-tables.html
>
>            Water data example
>          
>          http://www.circleofblue.org/waternews/2009/world/google-brings-water-data-to-life/
>
>            
>            Taken this together with Google Squared and the recent
>            announcement that Google is going to crawl microformats and
>         RDFa,
>
>            it starts to look like the folks at Google are working in
>         the same
>            direction as the Linking Open Data community, but as usual
>         a bit
>            more centralized and less webish.
>
>            
>            Cheers,
>
>            
>            Chris
>
>            
>            
>            [1]
>         http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~franklin/Papers/dataspaceSR.pdf
>         <http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/%7Efranklin/Papers/dataspaceSR.pdf>
>          
>          <http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/%7Efranklin/Papers/dataspaceSR.pdf>
>
>
>            
>            --
>
>            Prof. Dr. Christian Bizer
>
>            Web-based Systems Group
>
>            Freie Universität Berlin
>
>            +49 30 838 55509
>
>            http://www.bizer.de
>
>            chris@... <mailto:chris@...>
>         <mailto:chris@... <mailto:chris@...>>
>
>            
>
>
>
>     --
>
>
>     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
>
>
>
>
>