[rdfweb-dev] RDF / Semantic Web going mainstream?

[Hendy Irawan]

On 4/15/05, Christopher Schmidt <crschmidt at crschmidt.net> wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 15, 2005 at 09:26:11PM +0700, Hendy Irawan wrote:
> > Semantic Web seems promising, but to tell you the hard truth it
> > doesn't really tickle me...
> > I guess some other people do feel the same. I wonder why?
> 
> You haven't said why this is the case for you: is there a reason?

I'm not sure. Perhaps we're already using RDF without realizing it?
(like, Firefox uses RDF for its 'package format', dmoz.org exports in
RDF, and stuff)

I guess it's because doing RDF means one would have to "learn
something" (i.e. the RDF data model, the RDF XML, the toolkit[s] to
parse/generate/process RDF, etc.) when considered from the developer
point of view... The power of RDF lies in its interoperability, but
currently the only mainstream interoperability in this sense is RSS
(which isn't always RDF).

Many sites are RDF-able, they generally do have the whatever they need
to export or provide RDF data. Friendster can easily generate FOAF
documents from their members, but why it doesn't? Aside from privacy
issues, I think the most significant factor is benefit... Had
Friendster produced FOAF documents... what is the benefit to them?
Especially, the business/commercial benefit..? (or, at least, growth
in user base)

I don't really matter with Friendster. Something like del.icio.us
strikes me more, it seems that there are currently no way to download
dumps from it... kinda' makes you think. (you can export from Furl, by
the way, so I prefer Furl for my bookmarking needs)

And then there is Wikipedia. Instead of exporting RDF, it exports in
its native format... Well, it's hard to represent a encyclopedia
entirely in RDF anyway... (without using format-rich literals of some
kind, possibly the Wiki format itself)

And what's the "target market/audience" of RDF/Semantic Web
technologies? The Internet users are so diverse.... but in my
observation semweb seems to be targeted more at "geeks" than ordinary
users... I am definitely incorrect though.

> > Even the latest and greatest Firefox only bundled with a mere Live
> > Bookmark supporting the very basic RSS functionality. If Semantic Web
> > is going to be mainstream, at least something like Google or the
> > mainstream end-user browser (and I'm not talking about plugins here)
> > should support it in some way (at least generically).
> 
> The semantic web, for the most part, is not designed to be something
> that you "See". It's designed to describe repurposable data, and that
> means that a visible representation of the raw RDF really isn't worth
> that much.

I agree. But I think there should be something that we can "see" from
that. When you look at a profile in Friendster, you're basically
seeing a bunch of information. That information could easily be
representable in RDF, in which it can be consumed by others,
processed, and displayed in some other manner, etc. but it's not. And
we're displaying it in the old proven HTML way...

Also things like searches... Does everybody know Google? Perhaps.
Yahoo? Definitely. Blogdigger? Bloglines? Feedster? Technorati? Not
very likely. "RDF search engine?" Very likely not. But I guess it
might be useful though...

I'm interested to see where Semantic Web is evolving.....

> More and more tools are moving towards solutions like this, where RDF
> and other semantic web tech are not shoved in your face, but they exist
> in the background of these applications.

Interesting...

> There doesn't really need to be much news there: It's a self supporting
> site, which doesn't need active maintenance. The vocabulary list it
> maintains tends to be relatively complete. What news were you expecting,
> really? "Site is still up?" :)

Yeah :-)

Really, it's a psychological effect. When I see a project and there is
anything displayed at least a month ago, then I see the project is
maintained. When there's nothing new it gives the impression that the
project is either dead or just unmaintained. True, the project may be
so good that it deserves no maintenance, but this rarely gets into my
head.

-- 
Hendy Irawan
http://www.gauldong.net
http://dev.gauldong.net