Recent posts in my Linked data & semantic web Category

January 10, 2012

Even if we can’t legally define journalism, we should at least define our journalistic principles

An Oregon judge has inadvertently sparked a wider debate about the nature of journalism, as Cleland Thom reported for the Press Gazette. I think a public set of principles is one key way for publishers to set themselves aside from the general hubbub of the internet.

Read the full post.

September 24, 2011

“The IA of /Culture” - Martin Belam at EuroIA 2011

This is the essay version of the talk I gave yesterday at the EuroIA Summit in Prague.

Read the full post.

August 4, 2011

The Guardian launches 3 million linked data music album pages

This week at the Guardian we launched something like 3 million album pages, allowing users to rate, review and buy just about anything that has ever been released. Well, provided it has a MusicBrainz ID anyway.

Read the full post.

June 23, 2011

7 things I love about the new Guardian artist pages for Glastonbury

This week, in the run-up to Glastonbury, at The Guardian we have begun publishing the latest incarnation of our artist tag pages. These gives us an automated page for every artist playing at the festival, which mixes together our own content with content drawn from the rest of the web. It is an extension of the work that we did earlier in the year based upon the SxSW festival, and on some even longer-standing prototypes that our development team built in the middle of 2010 as a proof of concept. And this blog post is about why I am so pleased with them.

Read the full post.

June 14, 2011

Introducing the rNews metadata standard at Hacks/Hackers London

Last night I was at the Hacks/Hackers meet-up to hear Andreas Gebhart, Stuart Myles and Evan Sandhaus talk about the proposed new IPTC semantic metadata standard rNews.

Read the full post.

May 12, 2011

Martin Belam - "Linked data / Linked stories" at FutureEverything

A brief return from my self-imposed blogging exile this week - today I am in Manchester talking on a panel about data journalism at the FutureEverything festival and conference. This is the script that I’ve written for my five minute opening monologue. It seems way too long to fill just five minutes... Martin Belam - “Linked data / Linked stories” at FutureEverything I often feel a bit of a fraud talking at these kinds of events. Just as at Hacks/Hackers...
Read the full post.

April 12, 2011

Opening up data, and the future of IT - Krzysztof Trzewiczek & Tomasz Kopacz at the Polish IA Summit

I’ just come back from Poland, where I was giving the opening keynote session at the Polish IA Summit, and this week I’m posting my notes from the rest of the sessions I saw in Warsaw. Today I’d like to focus on the talks by Krzysztof Trzewiczek and Tomasz Kopacz, about opening up state data and the future of IT respectively.

Read the full post.

February 21, 2011

Guardian SXSW festival guide published using linked open data

Last Wednesday was the second anniversary of me joining the Guardian on a full-time basis, and it turned out to be one of the best days I’ve had since I arrived. As well as seeing tech demos of three products that will shortly be going live which I am very excited about, we also launched our guide to the bands playing at the SXSW festival in Austin next month, which uses the linked open data of MusicBrainz IDs to aggregate content from elsewhere onto the guardian.co.uk site.

Read the full post.

December 22, 2010

news:rewired - Video from the linked data and semantic web session

The BBC College of Journalism were filming all of news:rewired last week, and they've now put up all the clips from the linked data and semantic web session.

Read the full post.

December 17, 2010

Linklog extra: More links from news:rewired

A few more links to things mentioned in yesterday's news:rewired session about linked data and the semantic web.

Read the full post.

December 16, 2010

Linklog special: Linked data & the semantic web at news:rewired

Today I've been at news:rewired in London, talking about linked data and the semantic web in a panel session with my Guardian colleague Simon Rogers, Martin Moore from the Media Standards Trust, and Silver Oliver of the BBC. Here is a linklog special of all the things I mentioned in my talk...

Read the full post.

December 10, 2010

"Local government and linked data" at Online Information - Part 2

Last week I was at the Online Information conference, and here is the second part of my notes from a session featuring Richard Wallis, Chris Taggart and Noel Hatch, looking at linked data in the context of local government in the UK.

Read the full post.

December 9, 2010

"Local government and linked data" at Online Information - Part 1

Last week I was at the Online Information conference, and here are my notes from a session featuring Richard Wallis, Chris Taggart and Noel Hatch, looking at linked data in the context of local government in the UK.

Read the full post.

December 8, 2010

"1267 and all that..." - John Sheridan on turning UK law into linked data at Online Information

Last week I was at the Online Information conference in London. Here are my notes from a session given by John Sheridan, looking at how they have turned nearly 800 years of UK legislation into digital linked data online.

Read the full post.

December 2, 2010

No more 'us and them': Part 4 - Building tools to enable story-telling

In early November 2010 I gave a presentation at the London UKUPA meeting for 'World Usability Day'. In it, I took the day's theme of 'communication', and examined how twenty years of digital technology had smashed the boundaries between media organisations and their audiences. In this five part series, I've written that talk up as an essay, covering how the media now have to deal with users on a much more personal level, involve them in product design, and build tools to enable story-telling. This is part four.

Read the full post.

November 24, 2010

What open Government data gives us with one hand, closed state data takes away with another

The release of Government spending data gives us a wealth of information about companies earning their living from the state. However, the ability to cross-reference it with data on the companies themselves is limited by the fact that Companies House keeps that state data behind a paywall.

Read the full post.

November 16, 2010

Tyler Bell on why linked data will win

Tyler Bell has written a piece for O'Reilly Radar entitled "Where the semantic web stumbled, linked data will succeed". He seems to comes out strongly in favour of the Lego-building kit approach of interoperable data from many sources, rather than the rigid approach of defining a perfect ontology to map everything to.

Read the full post.

October 20, 2010

Reactions to Guardian Linked Data and "Search at The Guardian"

Some bits and piece from around the web about a couple of things I've been involved with at The Guardian this week - the inclusion of MusicBrainz IDs and ISBN numbers in our content API, and the "Search at The Guardian" event I helped run on Monday.

Read the full post.

October 18, 2010

Adding 'Linked Data' to The Guardian's API

Today we have announced that we have added 'Linked Data' to the Guardian's API. You can now query it using MusicBrainz IDs and ISBN numbers.

Read the full post.

September 13, 2010

Reactions to "Let a million data structures bloom..."

There has been plenty of reaction my "Let a million data structures blooom" post last week, which was sparked by Tom Coates and his "Death to the semantic web" slide at dConstruct the other week.

Read the full post.

September 9, 2010

Let a million data structures bloom...

At dConstruct last week Tom Coates stood in front of a slide saying "The semantic web must die". I couldn't help but respond...by saying that I agree with 99% of what he said in Brighton.

Read the full post.

September 7, 2010

Blog round-up: Berlin datajournalism meetup

I've spotted a few blog reactions to last week's datajournalism meetup in Berlin, and thought I'd gather a couple of them here, which focus on the importance of linked data being free from commercial restraint, on the German attitude to privacy on the web. And David Essex.

Read the full post.

September 2, 2010

Why are the UK & US so far ahead with linked data and the semantic web compared to Germany?

The first of what will no doubt be a flurry of blog posts about my trip to a datajournalism meetup in Berlin looks at one of the questions asked during the final panel session: Why do the UK and US seem to be so more advanced with linked data and the semantic web than Germany?

Read the full post.

June 9, 2010

Wikipedia deletions and #linkeddata implications

My post about the deletion of the band First Aid Kit's Wikipedia page got a rapid response from an admin, who saw my blog and restored it to the encyclopedia. However, it has done nothing to allay my primary concern, that in relying on dbpedia as a near-central hub in the #linkeddata world, we are relying on the good intentions of WIkipedia editors, some of whom are keen to reduce the scope of pages on the site.

Read the full post.

May 6, 2010

The digital general election: 3 technology trends for next time around

I've been keeping a close eye on the new media elements of this campaign, and thought I'd stick my neck out and predict three digital trends we will see a lot more of next time around.

Read the full post.

March 3, 2010

Privacy, distribution, licences and standards - more notes on the London Linked Data meet-up

In the last of several posts around the web about the 2nd London Linked Data meet-up, here are my notes on issues of privacy, distribution, software licences and setting usable standards for open linked data.

Read the full post.

March 2, 2010

Human readable linked data URIs - a follow up

My blog post yesterday about human readable linked data URIs sparked a lot of discussion in the comments and on Twitter. In this follow up post, I argue that just because it wouldn't make sense for the BBC to do it with their /programmes URI schema, doesn't mean it should be ditched as a worthwhile aspiration for those who can manage it.

Read the full post.

March 1, 2010

Does 'Linked Data' need human readable URIs?

One of the topics that came up in last week's London Linked Data meet-up was whether URIs needed to be human readable, or whether computer generated random mixes of characters were acceptable. For me, human readable is the way to go every time.

Read the full post.

February 2, 2010

'What is information architecture?' on Inside Guardian, and talking with Talis

I've recently started a blog post series on Inside Guardian about my role as information architect at guardian.co.uk, and also been interviewed for the Nodalities podcast about 'Linked Data' and news.

Read the full post.

January 25, 2010

'News Linked Data Summit' on Fleet Street

I spent Friday at a fascinating event at the St Bride Foundation, just off Fleet Street, discussing the application of the 'web of data' to the news industry. I'd helped organise the 'News Linked Data Summit', along with John O'Donovan and Silver Oliver of the BBC, Richard Wallis of Talis, and Martin Moore of the Media Standards Trust. The day was held under the Chatham House Rule, and so I'm not going to go into too much detail, but suffice...
Read the full post.

November 5, 2009

Ecommerce Expo: Part 4 - Marketing at Seatwave, and semantic ecommerce with Smart Information Systems

Last week I started posting a series of notes and quotes from the London Ecommerce Expo in Earls Court which I attended in October. I've written up Mike Tomlinson talking about multi-variant testing from British Airways, Trenton Moss of Webcredible discussing optimising the purchase process, and Andy Leaver from Bazaarvoice talking about 'social commerce'. Today I wanted to look at two other talks that I attended. "Building a new business in a brand new category"- James Hamlin, Seatwave I suspected...
Read the full post.

September 18, 2009

London Linked Data meet up: Notes and take-away quotes - part 2

This week I've posted quite a bit about the Linked Data London meet-up that I attended in Hammersmith last week. As well as a two part transcript of my contribution to a panel about 'linked data and the future of journalism', yesterday I published the first part of a set of notes and take-away quotes from the event. Here are some more. 'About a third of a newspaper is data' - Andrew Walkingshaw Either he is stalking me, or I...
Read the full post.

September 17, 2009

London Linked Data meet up: Notes and take-away quotes - part 1

Last week I attended the first London Linked Data meet-up. It was organised by Georgi Kobilarov and Silver Oliver, and they kindly invited me to speak on a panel about 'Linked Data and the future of journalism'. Earlier this week I published a two part rough transcript of my contribution to that debate. Today I wanted to publish the first of two posts looking at what I made of the rest of the event, which was, at times, a little...
Read the full post.

September 15, 2009

'Linked Data and the future of journalism' - part 2

Yesterday I published the first part of a rough transcript of the things that I said at the London Linked Data meet-up. I was part of a panel chaired by Paul Bradshaw. We were discussing the future of data and journalism with John O'Donovan, Dan Brickley and Leigh Dodds. The views expressed are my own, and not the views of Guardian News & Media where I work. The view from the stage at the London Linked Data meet-up Martin Belam...
Read the full post.

September 14, 2009

'Linked Data and the future of journalism' - part 1

Linked data and the future of journalism
I recently appeared on a panel debating linked data and journalism. Here is a transcript of what I said.

Read the full post.

September 4, 2009

'The future of journalism' and Linked Data panel

Next week I'll be taking part in the first London Linked Data meetup. I'll be on a panel chaired by Paul Bradshaw, looking at what linked data means for 'the future of journalism', alongside John O' Donovan (BBC), Leigh Dodds (Talis) and Dan Brickley. The event is described as: "for people who are interested in learning about Linked Data on the Web, people working on making data available on the web, people building infrastructure and applications for the Web of...
Read the full post.

October 1, 2008

Take-away facts and quotes from the 2008 Euro IA Summit in Amsterdam - Part 2

Yesterday I started blogging some of my take-away facts and quotes from this year's Euro IA Summit at the Tuschinski Theatre in Amsterdam. Here are some of the things that stood out for me on the Friday afternoon. "How do you re-design a business critical web application with billions of unique products" by Floris Ketel "KLM are in the room. If they have to correct me, I will get slapped" Floris Ketel was presenting a case study on the...
Read the full post.

Read more about…