[OSGeo-Discuss] FW: [GSDI Technical] blog - "We need a Wikipedia for data"

[Vasilis Vlastaras]

Freebase can be considered a 'wikipedia' of structured data. Freebase provides
the data under creative commons and it is being developed by MetaWeb
Technologies.
Currently in Alpha release, there is an ongoing effort for developing
prototype data objects
and populating these objects with instances of data.

A user community contributes heavily in the process (like in the case
of wikipedia).
Users create their own data types and upload data. Also a significant
effort of developing
algorithms to extract knowledge from wikipedia pages and to store it
in a structured way
in Freebase is currently taking place..

Freebase provides its own Data Query API based on JSON.

The Geospatial Community can take advantage of this technology since
the data are
being provided by Creative Commons. Geographic Data Types may be
possible to be developed
in Freebase. Personally I have tried to evaluate Freebase's abilities
by creating ISO 19115
Data Types for Geographic Metadata and it seems that Freebase could be
very promising.

For those interested, Freebase can be accessed in the following url:

http://www.freebase.com/

A mashup that uses Google Maps and data from Freebase can be accessed here:

http://dev.mqlx.com/~zak/arch/

For those who do not like a commercial company involved in Free Data, what about
establishing an organization that can provide technologies similar to Freebase ?
ie:
1. Website for users to access the community data
2. WebApp to allow community users create their own Data Types
3. WebApp to allow users upload structured data.
4. Open API for users to be able to consume / discover the uploaded data.

Vasilis.


On Wed, Apr 16, 2008 at 4:21 PM, P Kishor <punk.kish at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 4/16/08, Kralidis,Tom [Burlington] <Tom.Kralidis at ec.gc.ca> wrote:
>  >
>  >  Thought this might be of interest:
>  >
>  >  ..Tom
>  >
>  >
>  >
>  >
>  >  ________________________________
>  >
>  >  From: technical-bounces at lists.gsdi.org
>  >  [mailto:technical-bounces at lists.gsdi.org] On Behalf Of Kate Lance
>  >  Sent: 15 April, 2008 1:02 PM
>  >  To: SDI technical
>  >  Subject: [GSDI Technical] blog - "We need a Wikipedia for data"
>  >
>  >
>  >  maybe some from the geospatial community would care to submit a comment
>  >  (regarding technical approach/architecture) in response to this recent
>  >  blog post by Bret Taylor, ex-Googler, about the need for open data
>  >  sets....
>  >
>  >  http://bret.appspot.com/entry/we-need-a-wikipedia-for-data
>  >  "We need a Wikipedia for data" - April 9, 2008
>
>
>  Haven't read the above post, but I wonder if the poster(s) know about
>  Open StreetMaps?
>
>
>  >
>  >
>  >  between 0000-00-00 and 9999-99-99
>  >
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>
>
>  --
>  Puneet Kishor http://punkish.eidesis.org/
>  Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies http://www.nelson.wisc.edu/
>  Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo) http://www.osgeo.org/
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