A few users have been in touch and asked whether we are still alive here at SchemaWeb or is it abandoned and drifting through cyberspace like a digital Marie Celeste. Well I can report that Derek and I are well with hands firmly on the tiller. I'm afraid that we have just been too busy of late to inflict our bloggy ramblings on our valued users who I am sure are more interested in the cargo we have on board.

Actually I must confess that we have spent most of our leisure time this glorious summer exploring some of the wilder bits of North Wales. We have developed a fascination with prehistoric remains and the undisturbed uplands up here are packed full of them.

This incredible monument called Maen y Bardd was erected by a team of ancestors at least 4000 years ago in a sublime landscape overlooking the Conwy valley. Words or photos cannot begin to describe this special place. A great picnic spot too!

So what has tickled the SchemaWeb fancy over the last few months?

We like SPARQL and are looking forward to W3C Recommendation. This SQL style language for querying RDF data stores is a great step forward and will make implementation of semantic web applications much easier in the future. Derek tells me he has given up using the old fashioned graph traversal parsers with their GetStatements(subj, pred) type API calls. Too low level and too much work he complains. Why write three hundred lines of code when you can write one using a SPARQL query he says and as I have a 2p per line of code piecework arrangement with Derek I tend to agree.

We have been playing with early versions of SPARQL using John Barstow's Windows binaries for the Redland RDF toolkit with the C# wrapper and are impressed. John interrupted his busy career in music a few months ago to sort out the download and go situation for Windows at the Redland project. Sterling work John, you are a hero... many thanks.

And of course congrats to Redland's dad Dave Beckett who is off to Yahoo! I am sure that marketing at the big Y is even now working on the makeover/relaunch. "Yahland! The semantic web at your fingertips" maybe...

On the community front it was nice to see two A list ontologists from either side of the Atlantic meeting up in Buenos Aires recently. Leo (left) (author of the naughty Kissology schema) and Leandro (right) (the classic Speaks, Reads and Writes) are top semweb practitioners in Germany and Argentina respectively.

And in their spare time the coolest looking guys in semspace. What do you think girls?

It is exactly one year since SchemaWeb was born and unleashed upon an unsuspecting world. We are pleased to report that baby is doing fine and has grown to almost three times her birth size.

Like all proud parents, Derek (my developer) and I will be taking a short break from our relentless monitoring of semspace and cracking open a few bottles of (ginger) beer to celebrate this special day.

Many thanks to all SchemaWeb contributors and users for your interest, feedback and support over the last year. Special thanks to John McHugh and the team at Qmediastream who have provided excellent hosting.

And if by chance you have a new RDF schema or OWL ontology lurking somewhere on your hard disk then all we can say is... bring it on - make a one year old happy!

Many great photos from the historic 1st FOAF Workshop are now published and perusable online.

This photo of Chief FOAFster Dan Brickley however has caused Derek and I some slight concern. We can only think of only three explanations.

1. Somebody shrunk Dan.

2. There has been an almighty cockup at the printers with a specification misunderstanding comparable to the Spinal Tap 'Stonehenge' fiasco.

3. Just a business card specially designed to fit Dan's wallet!

[ Dan photo by Libby (slightly modified) ]

Bob DuCharme, whose excellent XSLT column for XML.com has been essential reading at SchemaWeb for many years, has grabbed a piece of semspace and launched rdfdata.org as a portal for direct access to large amounts of the golden stuff.

Bob, pictured above chilling with a Theremin, is also encouraging content producers to provide an RSS interface for all their content and not just the latest 10 or so offerings. Hear hear, after all HTML is so last year!

A request at the recent FOAF Workshop at Galway was for a guide to vocabularies available for use with personal profile documents expressed in FOAF. Until such a definitive list has been prepared and published, SchemaWeb may provide some pointers. The query page at SchemaWeb now opens with an example query which returns all properties that declare foaf:Person as the domain.

At present these properties belong to the following schemas:
Bio
Speaks, Reads and Writes
trust
Reading List Schema
Relationship
Pet Profile Ontology
Psychometric Profile Vocabulary
Trust Ontology
visit
Kissology
Uranai

Of course this is not the complete picture as this is only a list of schemas that explicitly declare a property / domain linkage to foaf:Person. Others that spring to mind are:
Geo
vCard
SWAP Personal Information Markup
Airport Ontology
Vegetarian Ontology
Blogger Code
Who's Who Description Vocabulary
MeNow
Music Vocabulary
Quaffing

Most of the above are used in the following FOAF files:
http://kasei.us/about/foaf.xrdf
http://www.ecademy.com/module.php?mod=network&op=foafrdf&uid=1
http://xml.mfd-consult.dk/foaf/morten.rdf
http://xml.mfd-consult.dk/foaf/morten-history.rdf
http://dannyayers.com/misc/foaf/foaf.rdf

Are you just getting into the Semantic Web and want to take a quick shortcut to that penny dropping moment? Derek and I think you can do no better than check out the 'Business Model for the Semantic Web' by Sir Tim Berners-Lee.

Published in 2001, this beautifully constructed piece of fourteen paragraphs explains not only why XML over HTTP has revolutionised computer networking and systems interop but also defines this next great challenge in a way that even your (slightly webby) granny would understand.

If this produces a slight tingle then we recommend moving on to the 'Semantic Web Road Map' from 1998. This only shows its age in that all the alluded to RDF core specs (along with the mighty OWL) are now done and dusted and ready to rock.

And if by chance the tingle turns to an itch then I'm afraid the only cure is to visit the definitive RDF resource guide, pick up some tools (a parser and maybe a triples data store) and go do it.