Five things you don't know about me

Well, I don't think I have been tagged yet, but I could be within the next few days (the meme is spreading), and as I won't be here for a while, I decided to strike preemptively. If no one tags me, I assume to take one of danah's.

So, here we go:

1. I was born without fingernails. They grew after a few weeks. But nevertheless, whenever they wanted to cut my nails when I was a kid, no one could do it alone -- I always panicked and needed to be held down.
2. Last year, I contributed to four hardcover books. Only one of them was scientific. The rest were modules for Germany's most popular role playing game, The Dark Eye.
3. I am a total optimist. OK, you knew that. But you did not know that I actually tend to forget everything bad. Even in songs, I noticed that I only remember the happy lines, and I forget the bad ones.
4. I co-author a webcomic with my sister, the nutkidz. We don't manage to meet any schedule, but we do have a storyline. I use the characters quite often in my presentations, though.
5. I still have an account with Ultima Online (although I play only three or four times a year), and I even have a CompuServe Classic account -- basically, because I like the chat software. I did not get rid of my old PC, because it still runs the old CompuServe Information Manager 3.0. I never figured out how to run IRC.

I bet no one of you knew all of this! Now, let's tag some people: Max, Valentin, Nick, Elias, Ralf. It's your turn.

Semantic Web patent

Tim Finin and Jim Hendler are asking about the earliest usage of the term Semantic Web. Tim Berners-Lee (who else?) spoke about the need of semantics in the web at the WWW 1994 plenary talk in Geneva, though the term Semantic Web does not appear there directly. Whatever. What rather surprised me, though, is, when surfing a bit for the term, I discovered that Amit Sheth, host of this year's ISWC, filed the patent on it, back in 2000: System and method for creating a Semantic Web. My guess would be, that is the oldest patent of it.

Supporting disaster relief with semantics

Soenke Ziesche, who has worked on humanitarian projects for the United Nations for the last six years, wrote an article for xml.com on the use of semantic wikis in disaster relief operations. That is a great scenario I never thought about, and basically one of these scenarios I think of when I say in my talks: "I'll be surprised if we don't get surprised by how this will be used." Probably I would even go to state the following: if nothing unexpected happens with it, the technology was too specific.

Just the thought that semantic technology in general, and maybe even Semantic MediaWiki in particular, could relief the effects of a natural disaster, or maybe even safe a life, this thought is so incredible exciting and rewarding. Thank you so much Soenke!

All problems solved

Today I feel a lot like the nameless hero from the PhD comics, and what is currently happening to him (begin of the storyline, continuation, especially here, and very much like here, but pitily, not at all like here). Today we had Boris Motik visiting the AIFB, who is one of the brightest people on this planet. And he gave us a more than interesting talk on how to integrate OWL with relational databases. What especially interested me was his great work on constraints -- especially since I was working on similar issues, unit tests for ontologies, as I think constraints are crucial for evaluating ontologies.

But Boris just did it much cleaner, better, and more thorough. So, I will dive into his work and try to understand it to see, if there is anything left to do for me, or if I have to refocus. There's still much left, but I am afraid the most interesting part from a theoretic point is solved. Or rather, in the name of progress, I am happy it is solved. Let's get on with the next problem.

(I *know* it is my own fault)

Semantic Wikipedia presentations

Last week on the Semantics 2006 Markus and I gave talks on the Semantic MediaWiki. I was happy to be invited to give one of the keynotes at the event. A lot of people were nice enough to come to me later to tell me how much they liked the talk. And I got a lot of requests for the slides. I decided to upload them, but wanted to clean them a bit. I am pretty sure that the slides are not self-sufficient -- they are tailored to my style of presentations a lot. But I added some comments to the slides, so maybe this will help you understand what I tried to say if you have not been in Vienna. Find the slides of the Semantics 2006 keynote on Semantic Wikipedia here. Careful, 25 MB.

But a few weeks ago I was at the KMi Podium for an invited talk there. The good thing is, they don't have just the slides, they also have a video of the talk, so this will help much more in understanding the slides. The talk at KMi has been a bit more technical and a lot shorter (different audiences, different talks). Have fun!