We’ve announced LESS today - an end-to-end approach for the syndication and use of linked data based on the definition of visualization templates for linked data resources and SPARQL query results.

Such syndication templates are edited, published and shared by using LESS’ collaborative Web platform. Templates for common types of entities can then be combined with specific, linked data resources or SPARQL query results and integrated into a wide range of applications, such as personal homepages, blogs/wikis, mobile widgets etc.

LESS and further information and documentation can be found at:

http://less.aksw.org

Particular thanks go to Raphael Doering (Netresearch) who performed most of the development work and to Sebastian Dietzold (AKSW) for contributing in various ways.

OKCon, now in its fifth year, is the interdisciplinary conference that brings together individuals from across the open knowledge spectrum for a day of presentations and workshops.

Open knowledge promises significant social and economic benefits in a wide range of areas from governance to science, from culture to technology. Opening up access to content and data can radically increase access and reuse; improving transparency, fostering innovation and increasing societal welfare.

In addition to high-profile initiatives such as Wikipedia, OpenStreetMap and the Human Genome Project, there is enormous growth among open knowledge projects and communities at all levels. Moreover, in the last year, many governments across the world began to open up their data.

And it doesn’t stop there. In academia, open access to both publications and data has been gathering momentum, and similar calls to open up learning materials have been heard in education. Furthermore, this gathering flood of open data and content is the creator and driver of massive technological change. How can we make this data available, how can we interlink it, how can we use it to collaborate and share our work?

• where: London, UK
• when: Saturday 24th April, 2010
• www: http://www.okfn.org/okcon/
• cfp: http://www.okfn.org/okcon/cfp/ (deadline: Jan 31st 2010)
• hashtag: #okcon2010

Some AKSW members are involved in next year’s Semantic Web in Use Track of the Extended Semantic Web Conference 2010. Yes, its called “Extended”, instead of formerly “European”, in order to reflect the broadening of the topics of interest. Next year’s In-Use track is particularly devoted to:

• Description of concrete problems in specific application domains, for which Semantic Web technologies can provide a solution.
• Description of an implemented application of Semantic Web technologies in a specific domain.
• Assessment of the pros and cons of using Semantic Web technologies to solve a particular business problem or other practical problems in a specific domain.
• Comparison with alternative or competing approaches using conventional or competing technologies.
• Assessment of the costs and benefits of the application of Semantic Web Technologies, e.g. time spent on implementation and deployment, efforts involved, user acceptance, returns on investment.
• Evidence of deployment of the application, and assessment/evaluation of usage/uptake.
• Domains of interest include, but are not limited to: semantics in the enterprise, improving access to governmental data, semantics-based solutions for health care and life sciences, digital libraries, games with a purpose, semantic geo-data management.

More information can be found at: http://www.eswc2010.org/calls/semantic-web-in-use

We are pleased to announce the first public version of the LinkedGeoData.org datasets and services.

LinkedGeoData is a comprehensive dataset derived from the OpenStreetMap database covering RDF descriptions of more than 350 million spatial features (i.e. nodes, ways, relations).

LinkedGeoData currently comprises RDF dumps, Linked Data and REST interfaces, links to DBpedia as well as a prototypical user interface for linked-geo-data browsing and authoring.

More information can be found at the LinkedGeoData homepage at: http://linkedgeodata.org

We were working in the last weeks on bringing geo data derived from the marvelous OpenStreetMap project to the data web. This work in progress is still far from being finished, however, we would like to share some first preliminary results:

• A vast amount of point-of-interest descriptions was extracted from OSM and published as Linked Data at http://linkedgeodata.org
• The Linked Geo Data browser and editor (available at http://linkedgeodata.org/browser) is a facet-based browser for geo content, which uses an OLAP inspired hypercube for quickly retrieving aggregated information about any user selected area on earth.

Further information can be also found in our AKSW project description.