developing web 2.0 websites and social web strategies; research for next-generation semantic web infrastructures; social semantic applications; e-government and open standards;
Archive for Collaboration
March 20, 2009
Topics: Collaboration, Linked Data, Services, Standards, Updates
Wow. This sounds really great:
In a revolutionary move, Obama’s administration is set to utilise next generation web technologies to bring an unprecedented level of transparency to government. In this case it will shed light on how the roughly US $800 billion dollar economic stimulus will be spent. The recently launched recovery.gov website (powered by nothing other then Drupal) brought with it the promise that citizens would be able to view where the money was going and how it was going to be spent.
To enable the citizen masher to do their wizardry, the administration will be opening up a veritable candy store of goodies: Semantic Web, RDF, Linked Data, SPARQL, RDFa, SIOC, ATOM, RESTful APIs, JSON, Widgets, Wikis, XForms, P2P Networks. Wow. They only forgot the lions and tigers and bears oh my… This is an unbelievable stack of technology. I didn’t think the government even knew what an RSS feed was :)
For more information read the full article on sitepoint.com.
March 17, 2009
Topics: Collaboration, Updates
about 24 hours ago. i asked on #twitter about online social #fundraising — some hours later i was reading a tweet from @zoernert about donating 75$ at Kiva — “anyone who likes to pick a 3rd world entrepreneur to support” was the invitation.
i decided for Fathullo Juraev, Farakh Mansurov and Ikromidin Boboev from Shahrituz, Tajikistan about 11 hour ago. Thorsten Zoerner started the fundraising for 3 micro loans.
Some hours later we had three happy farmers in Tajikistan! 1.400 + 675 + 450 = 2.525 USD — all is donated! Great! Only in a few hours :)
Here are some screens from the start of linking/tracking the 3 sites with bit.ly:
fantastic:
Disbursal Date: Mar 13, 2009
Date Posted: Mar 16, 2009
Date Funded: Mar 17, 2009
Because all three of them now already have all the money needed I’m going to donate my 75$ to female entrepreneurs in Africa fundraising money for food projects. Thanks #Kiva for that service!
Thanks Torsten & all of the donators of Kiva.org! Please spread the word (twitter or reblog) about #Kiva and register now for free at kiva.org! Subscribe also to the Kiva.org RSS/Atom Feed. Thanks.
About Kiva.org
Kiva is a nonprofit, p2p-lending site that facilitates loans between lenders and extremely low-income entrepreneurs in developing countries. Lenders can find the business and entrepreneur they want to lend to based on region, business type, risk level, etc. Each posted loan is accompanied with bios for the respective entrepreneur, details on the why and what the loan is going to be used for, total amount raised from other lenders, loan duration (usually 6-12 months) and loan default risk.
Taking small payments, usually $25, from a bunch of Kiva lenders raises the loans. Once a loan’s full amount has been raised it is transferred using PayPal to one of Kiva’s field partners. Field partners are local microfinance institutions (MFIs) in developing countries that find, track and manage entrepreneurs and then disburse and collect the microloans. When loans have been repaid fully they are transferred back to Kiva and then to Kiva lenders via PayPal.
More about Tajikistan
Tajikistan is perhaps best known for its rich history, which includes being a key post along the Silk Road and being the location of the end of the rule of Alexander the Great. It is also known for its famous great thinkers, philosophers, scientists and poets, such as Rudaki, Ibn Sina (Avicenna), Firdousi, Omar Haiyam, Jomi, Mavlavi Rumi, and many others. The country, filled with epic mountain passes, is home to communities that still speak the ancient Sogdian language, and boasts a civilization that dates back to the fourth millennium BC. Even today, it is a complex mixture of the Islamic faith, Soviet culture, New West culture and Central Asian traditions.
But Tajikistan is also the poorest of the former Soviet republics. The civil war, which ignited soon after its independence from the U.S.S.R., further damaged the already weak economy. In addition, 93 percent of the country is mountainous and only 7 percent of the land is arable. These conditions have resulted in high levels of unemployment and have forced hundreds of thousands to seek work in other countries, mainly Russia. While the people of Tajikistan are working to improve its agricultural production and manufacturing sector, nearly two-thirds of the population still live in abject poverty.
March 10, 2009
Topics: Collaboration, Labs, Linked Data, Open Source, Prototype, Services, Standards
Culture!? Linked Data?! Ok, why not! Detailed information will be soon available on http://linked-culture.net.
Linked Culture will provide Linked Data sets from user generated content found on websites like last.fm, tupalo.com, shnitzl.org, qype.com and a lot of alikes. Also editorial content from publishing companies — for example like SIMsKultur Online — and other providers of ebSemantics RDF data.
It’s like what DBpedia is for Wikipedia.
Linked Culture data will include at the beginning content from 50+ websites related to Venues, Events, Reviews, Locations, Ratings, Music, Movies in English and German.
All data will include Linked Data to DBpedia, Freebase, GeoNames, WorldFactBook, WordNet, Musicbrainz and others — owl:sameAs.
Like with Zemanta it is a breeze to enrich the content of your blog posts not only semantically and like OpenCalais want to make all the world’s content more accessible, interoperable and valuable we aim to provide the most comprehensive Linked Data set for Venues/Locations, Events/Menues and Reviews/Ratings worldwide.
An example:
Susi Sorglos, a girl in Vienna, 27 years old. She’s from Berlin. Now studying some nice stuff in the beautiful blue Danube city in Austria.
She wants to meet some friends from University. They don’t know where to go. No problem. Ask the net. As a local in Berlin it was easy to find insider information about the city, now as a stranger in a new place it’s harder to know about what’s going on.
From friends they have a recommendation for the “Arena Wien”. What’s next? What’s going on there? What do our friends know about this venue? What are the friends of our friends thinking about the events there? How to get there by public transport?
A lot of questions.
Ok, how can Linked Culture help?
Here we go:
There is information about Arena Wien available on a lot of websites. Which one to consult? Ask Google? Ask Yahoo!? Ask Lycos? Ask A9? Ask ask.com?!?
You know you want to go to Arena Wien in Vienna. Google told you: arena.co.at
So. Let’s go. But wait: Results 1 - 10 from about 372.000 for arena wien. sh*t.
Would be nice to find all *relevant* information in one place — or use SPARQL to explore ;)
With Linked Culture you will find relevant information/reviews/events for Arena Wien, the event location in Vienna, Austria. For example Linked Data from these sites:
Susi Sorglos also likes going to the cinema. She loves Twitter, too.
Wouldn’t it be nice to find new friends on Twitter? From the same region. Who likes the same movies or suggestes new ones?
How to achieve this? We are going to extract Linked Data from Twitter and match it with the Linked Culture cloud. First proof of concepts are available with Benjamin Nowack’s #smesher.
The Linked Data information about current playing movies (= events) and the cinemas (= venues) is provided from Google Movie and Yahoo! Trailer database.
Afterwards they could go to a nice Restaurant. You know. They found it on tupalo.com ;)
Happy semantic end for Susi Sorglos & her friends.
Available countries at the beginning
- Australia
- Austria
- Germany
- New Zealand
- Switzerland
- United Kingdom
- United States of America
Upcoming Linked Culture events
- April 09: Kick-off brunch. Café Hawelka, Vienna, AT
- June 09: Semantic Gentlemen’s Evening. #SemTech, San Jose, USA
- August 09: Developer #beachcamp. Larnaca, CY
- September 09: Triplification Challenge. I-Semantics 09, Graz, AT
June 12, 2008
Topics: Collaboration, Open Source, Services, Software
Zimbra, a Yahoo! company, is the leader in open source, next-generation messaging and collaboration software. We built Zimbra Collaboration Suite (ZCS) with the belief existing email and calendaring solutions are broken- the result is an innovative experience for end-users and system administrators.
Read the rest of this entry »
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