Content, Identifiers and Freebase
Date: Aug 27, 2009 · 6:30 PM
Chapter: New York City
Location: New York's Hotel Pennsylvania
Event ID: 10966857
URL: https://www.meetup.com/semweb-25/events/10966857/
Welcome back to your New York Semantic Web Meetup. We will kick off the event calendar with Metaweb and a presentation about "Content, Identifiers and Freebase".
Freebase is a community managed database for knowledge about the world. Information in Freebase is organized as a web of facts, which can be systematically retrieved. Thus it is possible to discover that there are republican politicians who have appeared in films and who have received contributions from Boeing (yes, there is more than one!)
As a large, strongly connected corpus of information made available under a liberal Creative Commons license, Freebase is a useful asset for content publishers and application developers alike.
Individuals and groups using Freebase can not only add facts to the database, but they can extend the data model to meet their needs, allowing the data within Freebase span a diverse range of subject matter- covering everything from Jeans to Genes.
This presentation will provide a short overview of how content is organized within Freebase, briefly describe some of the services provided by the system and discuss some of the ways Freebase can be used to enhance existing CMS and other applications. The talk will also identify how Freebase can be used as general semantic publishing platform, serving as a rich source of vocabulary, a very large collection of strong identifiers and a simple way to publish Linked Open Data.
In addition Jamie will also briefly introduce us to their new and recently published book "Programming the Semantic Web"
http://www.amazon.com/Programming-Semantic-Web-Toby-Segaran/dp/0596153813
Speakers:
While developing an Internet laboratory for studying economic equilibria, Jamie started one of the first ISPs in San Francisco so he could get a better connection at home. He finally got a real job as CTO at DETERMINE Software (now a part of Selectica) helping create order in the unstructured world of Enterprise contract management. He is now helping to organize the world’s structured information at Metaweb where he oversees data operations.
Robert co-founded Metaweb Technologies in July 2005. At parent company Applied Minds, Robert led the San Francisco office as Director of Knowledge Product Development. Since the start of his career, Robert has played the role of author, designer and programmer for myriad software applications. Robert’s first computer was an Elf II, which used the same microprocessor as the Voyager, Viking and Galileo spacecraft. At the young age of 15, Robert created database software for a small publishing company. He followed this first piece of work by publishing a number of computer games through Broderbund. This early work included the classic game Gumball as well as the Atari 400/800 and Commodore 64 versions of Karateka. Robert later designed the game D/Generation and acted as the technical director for The Last Express. Robert holds a BS in Computer Science from Yale University.