Collaborative Semantic Geospatial Applications

Data Sources to Make Mashups Correct, Complete, Relevant and Revisited

Jonathan W. Lowe

Owner, Giswebsite LLP

www.giswebsite.com

14 May, 2008

Jonathan's shelves of the Lowe Family bookshelf

“Will O'Reilly stop publishing new technical books when they run out of colophon animals for the covers?”

O'Reilly brings fiction to a formerly technical audience

Brady Forrest

Hackerin the Rye

Handling Angst with Reg Exp

Brady ForrestBrady Forrest & Leo Tolstoy

Epic Programming Tips Magical Realism Power Tools

Perl in the Time of Cholera

War & Peace Cookbook

The Goal:• People repeatedly visit your web application because its results are relevant to their specific individual needs.

How to deliver more relevant results?• Use Open, Structured Data – Communities contribute content.• Use Faceted Browsing – personalized spatial analysis.

A Whirlwind Tour of Metaweb's Freebase:• Free, open and typed data• Community of public participation• Structured data relationships• Web-based data access API• Metaweb Technologies – the company

What's this presentation about?

A growing supply of community supported, structured data...

OpenStreetMap: user-generated, folksonomically structured, queryable

Map tiles? Great.Source data? Better still!

FortiusOne's GeoCommons: various data sources, hybrid folksonomic structure,

downloadable in several formats

Deep spatial resources for analysis and aggregation

GoogleBase: user-generated, folksonomically structured, queryable

GoogleBase is spatial?Yes: GoogleBase's Business locations data enables applications such as Walk Score.

Domain-specific collaborative and/or structured data stores

Metaweb's Freebase: free, open, semantically structured, queryable

Freebase's infrastructure built and managed by Metaweb Technologies, Inc.

• $15mil VC (April, 2005)

• $42mil VC (Jan, 2008)

• Staff of 65 people

• 3 year runway

Open data strategy guided by long-term vision of co-founder, Danny Hillis.

Freebase's Current Domains

Freebase holds spatial data, but is not exclusively spatial

Freebase's 262,000 Point Locations

• Points• Lines• Polygons • Non-spatial properties• Related properties

Accessing Freebase's Data

• GeoJSON• KML• ESRI Shapefile

SPATIALOUTPUT

FORMATS

Application Development Tools: Metacarta's OpenLayers

Freebase data: all Berkeley schools, all grade levels, public and private

Application Development Tools: Google Maps & Javascript

Freebase data: public elementary schools and their catchment zones

Freebase data: Berkeley liquefaction zones, landslide zones, earthquake faults and public/private high schools

Application Development Tools: UMN Mapserver & Perl Mapscript

What is semantically structured data?

• Strongly typed data

• Hardwired data relationships

1) Search the web for a person, place or thing.

1) Search the web for a person, place or thing.

2) From the results, extract the descriptive text, but filter out the search terms and links.

3) Generate a tag cloud from the extracted text.

(This example useshttp://tagcloud.oclc.org/tagcloud/TagCloudDemo)

1) Search the web for a person, place or thing.

2) From the results, extract the descriptive text, but filter out the search terms and links.

3) Generate a tag cloud from the extracted text.

(This example useshttp://tagcloud.oclc.org/tagcloud/TagCloudDemo)

1) Search the web for a person, place or thing.

2) From the results, extract the descriptive text, but filter out the search terms and links.

4) People unaware of the original person, place or thing guess what it was using only the tag cloud.

What is

Chez Panisse

?

• Gourmet restaurant serving California cuisine• Co-founded by Alice Waters• Located in North Berkeley, California• Recipies of popular dishes are revealed in cookbooks by Alice Waters and Paul Bertolli

Our brains are sophisticated semantic processors – what did yours just do?

• Type or classify data

• Form relationships between data

Chez PanisseI think... alice is a name waters is a name alice waters is a person

I think... a co-founder is a person

Chez Panisse

Chez PanisseI think... alice waters is a person a co-founder is a person

Chez PanisseI think... alice waters is a person a co-founder is a person

Hey! Both terms are about people...

Maybe: alice waters is a co-founder?

Chez PanisseI think... a restaurant is a business

Chez PanisseI think... co-founders start businesses

Chez PanisseI think... a restaurant is a business co-founders start businesses

Chez PanisseI think... a restaurant is a business co-founders start businesses

Holmes! Both terms are about businesses...

Yes, Watson, maybe... restaurants have co-founders?

Chez PanisseI think... alice waters is a co-founder restaurants have co-founders

Chez PanisseI think... alice waters is a co-founder restaurants have co-founders

By George! Both terms are about co-founders...

Is alice waters the co-founder of a restaurant?

I think... california, usa is a place bay area is a place North berkeley is a place 94709 is a place gourmet ghetto is a place 1517 shattuck ave is a place

Chez Panisse

Chez PanisseI think... restaurants are located in places

Zowie, Batman! These terms are all about places...

What restaurants are located in berkeley, the gourmet ghetto, 94709 and all these other places?

Chez PanisseI think... restaurants are located in places berkeley is a place gourmet ghetto is a place 94709 is a place ...etc...

Chez PanisseI think... restaurants have co-founders restaurants are located in placesand... alice waters is a co-founder berkeley is a place

What restaurant is located in berkeley and was co-founded by alice waters?

Chez PanisseI think... restaurants have co-founders restaurants are located in placesand... alice waters is a co-founder berkeley is a place

What is Chez Panisse?

What is Chez Panisse?

Who is Alice Waters?

What is Chez Panisse?

Who is Alice Waters?

What is Chez Panisse?

Who is Alice Waters?

Where is Chez Panisse?

What is Chez Panisse?

Who is Alice Waters?

Where is Chez Panisse?

Where is Alice Waters?

What is Chez Panisse?

Who is Alice Waters?

Where is Chez Panisse?

Where is Alice Waters?

What is Chez Panisse?

Who is Alice Waters?

Where is Chez Panisse?

What is Berkeley, California?

A Specific Individual Need:

I just graduated from Stanford Graduate School of Business and want to work for a venture-funded company in Silicon Valley (California). Maybe my connection to Stanford can help me get an interview...

The resulting query:

Find venture-funded companies in the City of San Jose, California, that employ one or more people who are alumni of the Stanford Graduate School of Business, and, while you're at it, list those employee's names.

Freebase's results for San Jose, California:

Relevance via Freebase Query that joins people, businesses and location

PayPal

• Roelof Botha

eBay

• Ben Hanna• Jeffrey Jordan

Cisco Systems

• Barry Eggers• John Turk• Greg Sands

People – Business – Location

Using Freebase's hardwired data relationshipsto deliver relevant results

• Relevance in Search Results

• Relevance via Faceted Browsing

Relevance via Faceted Browsing

Relevance via Faceted Browsing

Tools such as Exhibit from MIT's Simile Project are made to visualize semantic data such as Freebase's.

Users can filter by any different property, personalizing the resulting map relevant to their specific needs.

Because the data has a semantic structure, Exhibit can automatically create new filters when users add new properties to the data.

Useable data• The data is free and open.• The data's license does not limit its use.

Community data• All users can contribute new data.• All users can modify existing data.

Organized data• The data's explicit structure conveys its meaning.• The data's structure unifies the whole collection.

Accessible data• The data source has a web-based query interface.• The data source tracks and publishes all changes.

A forseeable future• The company running the service has funding.• The service is built on scalable technology.

What makes a data source good for relevant web mapping applications?

Jonathan W Lowewww.giswebsite.com

Metaweb's Freebasewww.freebase.com

Thank you!