Outgoing

VIAF's new linked data

We have revised our approach to linked data in VIAF.  Our original approach used an unusual naming convention for the resources being described (in VIAF's case the main resources so far are personae) and exposed the information as a skos:Concept.

We wanted to retain the SKOS description (suitably revised), but also want to describe the VIAF concept as FOAF and expose more of the VIAF data in a more 'native VIAF' form.  We do this by minting some new URIs that the RDF describes:

http://viaf.org/viaf/99366184 is a viaf:NameAuthorityCluster,

http://viaf.org/viaf/99366184/#skos:Concept is a SKOS Concept

and http://viaf.org/viaf/99366184/#foaf:Person is a FOAF Person.

You can retrieve several views of the VIAF clusters either through HTTP content negotiation or by explicitly asking from them.  Here are the main views:

http://viaf.org/viaf/99366184  is the 'real world object', a concept. On resolution it does a 303 redirect to

http://viaf.org/viaf/99366184/  The generic document.  From here you can do HTTP content negotiation for

text/html: http://viaf.org/viaf/99366184/viaf.html   An HTML view of the cluster

text/xml: http://viaf.org/viaf/99366184/viaf.xml  The raw XML of a VIAF cluster

application/marc21+xml: http://viaf.org/viaf/99366184/marc21.xml A MARC-21 view

application/unimarc+xml: http://viaf.org/viaf/99366184/unimarc.xml UNIMARC

application/rdf+xml: http://viaf.org/viaf/99366184/rdf.xml RDF as XML

The RDF is substantially changed.  Much of it describes a viaf:NameAuthorityCluster as laid out in http://viaf.org/viaf.owl and http://viaf.org/viaf.jpg.

There is still more to be done.  Some of the resources identified in the RDF do not resolve yet (in particular the AuthorityAgency's), and some of the internal RDF URI's are not legal URI's because of character issues, but we think what we have is usable, and are interested in getting reactions to it.

Thanks to Jeff Young and Ralph LeVan who did most/all the work on data modeling and implementation and Andy Houghton who tries to keep us honest.

--Th

Trying Chromium OS

 The New York Times had an article recently about Google's experimental operating system that is built around their Chrome browser, with a link to Hexxeh's Flow build designed to boot from a USB drive.

Since I had looked at the OS earlier, I thought it would be interesting (and probably safe) to try it on my laptop, and in a few minutes I was able to download a compressed image of the OS, install the code needed to decompress and de-tar the file, install the code needed to put the image onto a USB stick and then get all that running and the image on my USB stick.

Unfortunately my Sony VAIO X-series machine didn't just boot from the USB port and a quick search on the Web seemed to show that VAIO's won't do that.  Fortunately my son was in town and helped me get into the BIOS and change the setting so that now my machine checks the USB ports -- success!

So, the Chromium OS came up, I was able to log in, get on my local wireless network and start browsing the Web.  Unfortunately the system was so slow as to be almost unusable (several seconds for simple operations such as highlighting a link) on my machine.  The FAQ implies the slowness is due to limited hardware support in the OS, so others may have a different experience.

The good news is that it did work and trying it out didn't seem to hurt my machine, but until something speeds up, it is not even fast enough for me to play with yet.

I still think the idea of an OS focused on Web access is an interesting idea.

--Th