The Sun BabelFish Blog
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Google Video introduces the Semantic Web
A few months ago I put together a slide show to introduce the Semantic Web. In order to make the problem less abstract I try to present the Semantic web through a very practical problem faced by Software engineers and first presented by Fred Books in the 70ies in a very influential book The Mythical Man Month [1]. Simply put, adding more engineers to a project does not make it go faster. So how could the SemWeb affect software development in an Open Source world, where there are not only many more developers, but also these are distributed around the world with no central coordinating organisation? Having presented the problem, I then introduce RDF and Ontologies, how this meshes with the Sparql query language, and then show how one could use these technologies to make distributed software development a lot more efficient.
Having given the presentation in November last year, I spent some time over Xmas putting together a video of it (in h.264 format). The result is not too bad for a first attempt at adding sound to a slide show, though it may at points be a little slow I have to admit. It takes time to do this well, and I don't have time to improve it. So the video of my slide show presenation is a little long at 30 minutes, but it should be a good introduction for people with software engineering experience.
Then last week I thought it would be fun to put it online, and so I placed it on google video, where you can still find it. But you will notice that Google video reduces the quality quite dramatically, so that you will really need to have the pdf side by side, if you wish to follow. But if you can view the latest mpeg4 format (H.264) then you will find the this movie a lot clearer to watch [2].
Notes:
- the great thing about making things public is that 10 minutes after I did this, it was pointed out to me that I had mis named Brooks in the presentation. Ouch! It's easy to fix the slides, but fixing the video is going to be less pleasant :-(
- This movie is served with mime-type video/h264 but for some reason it does not open quicktime on OSX automatically when using Safari.
Posted at 12:38PM Mar 23, 2006 [permalink/trackback] by Henry Story in SemWeb | Comments[5]
Note on comments:
- I know the forms below are a little small. We have asked for years for this to be changed, but I don't think it's going to happen soon. In Apple's Safari you can resize the entry box with you mouse. For people using other browsers click on this javascript link, that should allow you to resize your form.
- Comments are moderated, so they will take a little time to appear. Currently moderation means I have to read them personally. Hopefully with OpenId deployment, this will become more automated.
- HTML markup no longer works here, due to some decision made somewhere. Sorry about that.
- If you are having trouble posting, it may be that you need javascript to be enabled. I don't think javascript should be needed for submitting a form, but that's the way it is here.
- Check your comments by using the preview button...


Posted by AI3 - Adaptive Information::: on March 25, 2006 at 10:18 PM CET #
Posted by Henry Story on March 22, 2007 at 12:51 PM CET #
Posted by Henry Story on April 06, 2007 at 11:03 AM CEST #
Posted by Dorai Thodla on July 19, 2007 at 09:33 PM CEST #
Posted by Henry Story on July 19, 2007 at 09:33 PM CEST #