Welkin: A General-Purpose RDF Browser

Stefano Mazzocchi writes "Many consider the Semantic Web to be vaporware and others believe it's the next big thing. No matter where you stand, a question always pops up: Where is the RDF browser? The SIMILE Project, a joint project between W3C, MIT and HP to implement semantic interoperability of metadata in digital libraries, released today the first beta release of a general purpose graphic and interactive RDF browser named Welkin (see a screenshot), targetted to those who need to get a mental model of any RDF dataset, from a single RSS 1.0 news feed to a collection of digital data."

Semantic Web Firefox plugin?

Considering the big 1.0 for Firefox is out, I would think people who wanted their Semantic Web browsing software to be wide-spread would implement it as a Firefox plugin, no?

Why is this funny?

Are people marking this Funny just to be cruel? I find this rather interesting. XUL's data model is RDF already, so it's not like Firefox doesn't already have the foundation to do this.

Re:Semantic Web Firefox plugin?

I personally won't be satisfied until someone writes a standards compliant browser in HTML.

The question is not about a browser

The question is about whether we really need a World Wide Web that looks like Wikipedia with links to every word and generally just a jumbled mess of blue and purple text. No matter how you cut it, the problem lies in having too much information immediately available.

Imagine you are a reading a book, but each word is connected by string to a dictionary reference, and each dictionary reference definition is tied to the definitions of the words in the definition. You'd end up with a huge, eventually circular mess of string and you couldn't realistically get any enjoyment out of the book. The fact of the matter is that if you want to get more information about something, it is easy to go to an outside source to look it up. It does not need to be easier, because by making it easier than it must be you necessarily end up cluttering the thing you want to illuminate.

There is an old saw, "Make things as simple as possible, but no simpler." The Semantic Web, while an interesting idea, tries to make things too easy, beyond the point of usefulness. The lack of content on the Semantic Web is a testament to the uselessness of such an over-engineered web space.

Re:The question is not about a browser-Paradigm

Or a testament to people's inability to understand new paradigms.

Or a testament of the inability of the paradigm's creator to get people to understand it's necessity.

Re:The question is not about a browser

but about how quickly can Microsoft turn it into a security hole for your friends and family?

Re:The question is not about a browser

The point of the Semantic Web lies not in making information readily available to people browsing the internet but in providing semantic context with which computers can work. A person reading a document in a browser is not expected to follow links attached to every word. Rather, a computer program is expected to be able to use this information to learn the meaning behind the sting of characters.

Re:The question is not about a browser

Nobody wants to hire a team of ontological engineers to map information they already have in human accessible form into some highly structured, machine parseable format, and pay them to keep that information up-to-date.

Please don't tell that to the company I'm interviewing with on Friday. :)

Re:The question is not about a browser

I [reference.com] do [reference.com] not [reference.com] know [reference.com] what [reference.com] you [reference.com] are [reference.com] talking [reference.com] about [reference.com].

Solution space?

Isn't RDF much like the laser use to be? A solution looking for a problem?

RDF a load of crap

enough people have said it, but it's worth while saying again. RDF is totally flawed and will never meet the vision of W3C. The whole idea that an RDF resource is true and authorative is just silly. Look at what happened to HTML metadata tag. I got abused instantly and search engines stopped using them. RDF rules is monotonic, which is just totally silly. that basically means any rules written in RDF will timeout if the data isn't already on that particular server. W3C should just give up already on RDF and move on.

Gee thanks...

After looking at that screenshot, it's sooo clear to me the value that the semantic web brings to us (mirrored here [hardgrok.org] as their server appears to be flaking out a bit). If anything, this makes it crystal clear why the semantic web hasn't really taken off, other than in the much more limited form of RSS feeds.

A network of random connections of semantic concepts embodied as URIs is just not a friendly form of data for humans to manipulate directly, and I don't think it every will be. That's right, I don't believe this is really an issue that's solvable with slightly better tools. I think ultimately the management of and connection of ontologies is something that computers will have to learn to do themselves.

It's just too hard to expect normal human beings to describe knowledge in any way other than the way we are used to. The web is only as popular as it is because HTML is a simple, appearance-based way to markup documents (yes, I realize strictly speaking HTML isn't supposed to describe many aspects of appearance per se, but there's no denying that it comes from that root). We understand bold and italics (and even strong and em), but ask somebody to generate two concepts by constructing URIs for them and relating them in subject-predicate form and they are going to look at you and drool.

Even programmers aren't used to the idea of describing knowledge - it's one thing to tell a computer what to do, it's another thing to tell a computer how to know about something that you know.

Alright, I know I'm opening myself up to the flames here, so flame away. Anyway, I think the "semantic web" will need to wait for tools like Cyc et. al. to come along far enough to construct and relate their own ontologies out of English text, and until then all we will see is stuff like RSS or RDF files in Firefox extensions to describe deployment conditions (i.e. stuff that can be done with any arbitrary XML dialect that doesn't really qualify as the "semantic web" to me).

RDF browser?

Niice. I've always wanted to know what's going on in Steve Job's head.

On a Mac

it's nice seeing the first screenshot on a Mac.

Just something friendly about that.

Do you really want web pages that look like this?

The Incredible Hulk [komar.org] had fun [reference.com] with his halloween decorations [komar.org] but that's a warmup [demon.co.uk] for his christmas lights [komar.org] where he plays [plays.com] RoShamBo [komar.org] when not helping [helpout.com] out Google Compute. [powder2glass.com]

The International Obfuscated C Code Contest

Make it the goal of next years International Obfuscated C Code Contest.

I'm sure we'll get a really cryptic one liner that actually is a fully functional RDF browser.

This is the future of the web

Browsing metadata is the next frontier in the evolution of the web. Some of the other RDF browsers popping up include Gnowsis [gnowsis.org], MIT Haystack [mit.edu], and Fenfire [nongnu.org].

With the growth of the Internet, the value of data itself is dropping, while the value of metadata (i.e. "data about data") increases, introducing a need for tools that can manipulate metadata. That is what RDF is all about - standardizing a way to represent metadata. It is not a standard for the metadata itself...those standards will be determined the same way everything else is on the Internet: with the best solutions rising to the top.

The most common objections to this scenario?
a) "Nobody will bother entering metadata". Wrong...it's already happening. Users are voluntarily generating metadata all the time. Just check out sites like flickr [flickr.com] (photo blogging) and del.icio.us [del.icio.us] (collaborative bookmarks), not to mention Amazon reviews and Ebay ratings.
b) "RDF tags will just be abused with spam, trolls, and other useless info". A variety of techniques are emerging that are designed to protect the integrity of user-contributed data, including trust metrics [moloko.itc.it] like Slashdot's own distributed moderation [umich.edu] (PDF) or Advogato [advogato.org].

This business isn't vaporware..

Check out Semaview Inc. [semaview.com] who's making a business of RDF. They've already got one good product [eventsherpa.com] out. They're somewhat OSS friendly, too.

Personally, I think eventSherpa is pretty neat.

(Disclaimer: I know the CEO.)

Seriously now

Why would the Robotech Defence Force need there own browser?

but does it...

load Slashdot faster, or block popups?

j/k

CB

innovative?

This http://simile.mit.edu/welkin/images/screenshot.gif
screen shot reminds me of my big college sophomore year project. Connecting lots of pretty lines together in hopes of impressing people by calling it a neural network. I have to give props though for getting the lines to be anti-aliased.

Do we REALLY want this?

It'd make the internet look like a Tom's Hardware review... *Scanning a page with pointer... Moves pointer over word that just happens to be "thong"* Window pops up saying... "Thong: Type of underwear, usually stringlike, that gives you a MAJOR wedgie in all the wrong (or right) places. *mini link*BUY THONGS NOW CONDOM SEX SEXY BONDAGE $30.00" Things like those would be all over the page.

The wrong answer to the right question

I promoted RDF a fair bit back in the late 1990s and even wrote one of the first libraries for it. I think that the idea of machine-readable data on the web is a very good one (and probably more scalable than the whole Web Services thing), but six or so years later, I don't think that RDF is it.

The trouble is that RDF (and OWL) try to do too much, getting all tangled up in the arcana of knowledge representation, and the Semantic Web thing has only muddied the waters further -- the screenshot is a stunning graphic representation of the mess that RDF has gotten itself into (I'll assume that it's serious, since it's a long time until 1 April).

All we really need for a data web is a bunch of XML files online that make references to each other for machines to follow, the same way that web pages make links -- in other words, a data web would be a distributed database, the same way that the document web is a distributed hypertext system. RDF reminds me more of the complex pre-HTML hypertext systems of the late 1980s than of the successful, simple formats and protocols that drive the Web.

More like answer to a question no one asked

Statistical text analysis and link analysis are a superior technique because it presumes the author could be BSing. The entire document must contribute to the corresponding query value, not just keyphrases which could or could not be true. This is why Google is a $50 billion company and no RDF firm ever will be.

Narcissism

Almost everybody here seems to be missing the point: RDF isn't for you--it's for your computer. The point of RDF and the Semantic Web is to structure knowledge so that programs can interact with one another to perform better, even in some cases simulating intelligent decisions. Unless you're working in developing Semantic Web technology, you should never have to look at an RDF document.

It's not a wiki. It's not a new way to see metadata. It's your softwares' version of the WWW.

It's not always about you humans.

The semantic web, in a nutshell

1) people like to masturbate.

2) some people like to look at pictures of naked girls while masturbating.

3) some people like to think about graph theory while masturbating.

The semantic web is the unfortunate result of #3.

Now, while I have no problem with any of these behaviors, I do ask that people in group #2 to keep their sticky dirty magazines under their bed, not on their coffee tables; and people in group #3 to likewise keep their inventions locked in the closet, and not release them to standards bodies or working groups.

So when you see someone in a clear frenzy of sexual excitement talking to you about "ontologies" and "reification", simply smile politely, and call the police.

Remember, these people are the exception, not the norm, in an otherwise healthy society.

Visualization conundrum

One trouble regarding many semantic visualization techniques involving large datasets is: the more visually appealing a graph is rendered, the less useful it often becomes. Many projects undertaken over the past 6 years (including Welkin) have focused on 2- and 3-dimensional renderings of a dataspace, using lines, proximity, node-shape, fly-over metadata display, etc. to classify and relate nodes, only to find there is no room left for persistent display of the textual metadata that ultimately drives a user toward the content he/she is looking for.

Marcos Weskamp's Newsmap [marumushi.com] (slashdot [slashdot.org]) on the other hand demonstrates an excellent balance of form and function, emphasizing textual metadata over symbolic graphic representation. How might this approach be applied specifically to RDF? One possibility: 5 axes rendered in a 2d visual space: color (category), saturation (relevance), size (interest), x/y position (age) and text (metadata). Just a thought anyway.

Awesome, thanks!

I have been looking for a tool (that's better than Document inspector) to troubleshoot while I'm trying to code in RDF. I was hopeing for a debugger so I wouldn't have to test so many cases through multiple steps, but being able to see the structure may help some.

Too bad it doesn't take the XUL rules into consideration when redering maps like the one shown in the screenshot. Do you know if they are going to open development up anytime soon?

"The next thing"

It's like the stock market, I think. If someone is having to say, in print, "It's the next big thing.", it ain't or it's already over. Generally, the next big thing (and great stock) is already done "roaring" when the public finally hears about it. Having a bunch of Uber-Geeks make a declaration is not indication of the eventual success of the idea.

Personally, at work, it might be a good idea, unless the owner of the information does NOT want to be "connected" for business reasons. However, after umpteen years of hacking, I don't even open a browser anymore when I get home. I started two new hobbies, nether of which involves computers, just to un-stress and enjoy life some more. Guess that makes me un-RSS'ty. (I will go now.)

Dont let poor presentation fool you.

People who look at these browser screenshots and decide that the semantic web is/will be a mess stop thinking too early.

This graph-like presentation is just one way to show semantics, and it only works for certain things, like topic maps.

I'm sometimes using tools like outliners and the Brain [thebrain.com] (insert pun here) to present ideas and their relationships. This is not the way you would want to e.g. read/present a complex manual.

Other, more complex forms of presentation are required - and possible. Ted Nelson had a lot of ideas regarding hypertext and presentation of relationships that have never turned into products. I'm working on my own little, Xanadu-ish project that aims to make navigation in structured text easier. The benefit is not presentation "A" or "B" - but the fact that you will be able to tweak the presentation according to what you need to know. This requires semantics, which in turn requires new tools both for the author, not (only) for the reader.

One day, we will look back and wonder how we could live with an Internet where a search engine had to guess if we are looking for Lotus The Car or Lotus The Flower or Lotus The Software Company, or where separating articles by an author from those about him was nearly impossible. No-one in their right mind can claim this is good enough for the future.

Nobody Wants This.

Ten years ago, we used to say, "we are angry at this or that issue." Now, we say, "we are frustrated". The entire idea of trying to reduce our language to assertions of logic is silly because as soon as we do so, we immediately try to change the definition of one of the composing elements in order to get out of it.

Here's the biggest problem with the web. Most people that have web sites have them to sell stuff, and they DON'T WANT their stuff to be easily searchable and diced and sliced. All this interoperability and data exchange stuff XML, Web Services, Internet Tools, even old COM Objects and CORBA objects and even older RPC all failed, has failed, and will always fail because people don't want you to make it easy to compare you against someone else. It's not a question of cost.

It's just stupid to do it. What, I'm going to pay someone to make it easier for customers to choose someone else for any product? That's the most retarded thing in the world.

If you wanted to make the next big web, make one where people CAN'T compare content from your site to someone elses and have zones of it be franchized off for exclusivity. Like, I'd make a browser where every page sent is just a giant bitmap, and that way, it couldn't be scraped at all.

Re:Buggy!!!!

Yeah, lord knows proprietary software like MSIE has never had bugs or security issues.