For those who want to look ahead

[Rex Brooks <rexb@starbourne.com>]

Hi Everyone,

I've been debating with myself when it would be best to bring up the 
topic of Open LInked Data, since, down the road, this is probably going 
to be the way that both search and research will be done. Note: it 
doesn't relate to any of our immediate work, but is something I had 
planned to introduce after the ValueListURN work is done. However, as 
with Cloud Computing which burst onto the IT scene with big hype last 
year and will continue this year, Linked Data will probably start 
getting hyped before we get to the point that we want to consider its 
place in our work.

So, rather than wait, I decided to invite you all to read ahead, so to 
speak, so that this isn't new stuff for us when we get there. So here 
are a couple of starting points:

Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linked_Data

W3C:
http://esw.w3.org/topic/SweoIG/TaskForces/CommunityProjects/LinkingOpenData

It is still early days for this, but the combination of Cloud Computing 
and Linked Data is inevitable, and I suspect the same collection of 
agile bright minds that brought us AJAX while we waiting for something 
else to provide dynamic, and asynchronous, updating of content of web 
pages based on user input, these two developments will almost certainly 
be connected by something like AJAX for dynamically updating data within 
content, and this is something that will affect the public during 
emergencies much the same way that ad hoc AJAX powered web pages and RSS 
feeds and Twitter are used now. Unfortunately, even though we can get 
information faster through these kinds of social networking 
applications, there is no non-repudiation or security, and the challenge 
will be to use similar systems in official systems, especially with 
interoperability standards that provide reliable and secure service 
allowing trust in the data thus linked.

Note that Linked Data uses RDF, which we have already introduced into 
our discussions.

If this is old stuff for anyone, good for you! Please clue us in with 
any topics of interest that stick their heads up over the horizon.

Cheers,
Rex

-- 
Rex Brooks
President, CEO
Starbourne Communications Design
GeoAddress: 1361-A Addison
Berkeley, CA 94702
Tel: 510-898-0670