Genius + Eye Candy = Semantic Flash
Boost your Flash/Flex/AIR apps with free data from the Semantic Web!
About
This project is in incubation state ( no public releases yet ).
Please join the discussion group to participate: SemanticFlash@Google Groups
The basic I/O framework ( RDF-XML ) is working and the original version of this project ( owned by univrz consulting ) is being used in commercial applications. However, for time constraints, we are not releasing anything to the public yet.
Mission
Our main objective is to bring the power of the Semantic Web to the Flex guys. Not Flex to the Semantic Web guys ( the former implies the latter, anyway ).
This means that we will avoid philosophic and overly technical discussions when possible, stick to pragmatism and aim to simplify the UI developer's workflow by providing:
- High level tools that incorporate the latest standards, conventions and best practices
- Articles and tutorials on how to use these tools to make your applications look better, work better and provide more value to your users
- A responsive community that contains a high concentration of talent from both worlds
You won't have to understand how the Semantic Web works, just hop in and use what's good for you. This is a grassroots approach to creating Next Generation User Interface culture and increasing the demand for RDF data ( which will most probably impact its availability in a positive way ).
We will feed the virtuous cycle from the other end. From the UI.
What's in this for me?
Well, that depends on who you are.
If you are a Flash/Flex developer
...then this framework will allow you to
- Spice up your apps with free, high quality data from the Semantic Web ( yes, it's already here )
- Slurp in artist and track data for your new Mp3 player ( from musicbrainz )
- Slurp in geographical data for your new map mashup
- Slurp in ( whatever ) from ( take a look at some of the currently available sources )
- Create highly flexible UIs for all sorts heterogeneous data ( your company's assets, for example )
- Learn to speak and think in terms of the future Web
- Discover an excellent alternative to moving your data around as XML docs or RPC calls
If you are a Semantic Web developer / researcher
...then this framework will allow you to start experimenting with a highly flexible and practical development environment ( Adobe Flex ), with superb graphical and multimedia capabilities.
You can then set off to take the Semantic Web browser to a whole new level, explore novel filtering and navigation paradigms for the Giant Global Graph, create dazzling visualizations and mashups for your linked data and ( hopefully ) give us a hand.
The Semantic Web community has been working hard on delivering usable Browsers to navigate the web of data. We encourage you to stand on the shoulders on these giants and aim to improve their usability and aesthetics.
The following list contains remarkable examples of Semantic Web browsers: Zitgist Data Viewer, Disco, Tabulator, OpenLink's Linked Data Viewer, Marbles, etc ( you can find an extensive list here ).
However, we also encourage you to depart from this first generation and explore radical and novel approaches to delivering data ( click here to get your creative juices flowing ).
Note: Flash and Flex are now mostly opensource technologies. In fact, a branch of the runtime has been handed to the Mozilla foundation. So... no lock-in FUD, please. And if you are a futurist, then you might be relieved to meet the OpenScreen project
Sponsors
( want to see your name here? we do!... talk to Aldo )
Strategy
Simple things should be simple, complex things should be possible
What's Simple?
- Loading, parsing and consuming an RDF document
- Using RDF data at a script level ( a la E4X )
- Using RDF data in the UI
- This includes binding / collections API integration
- Aggregating a few RDF documents ( how much is "a few?" )
These are primary goals. We will emphasize in creating services to achieve these tasks using a simple workflow and enforcing best practices whenever possible ( shielding you from the complexity of choice ).
What's Complex?
- Inference & Smushing
- Rules
- Provenance Management
- Consuming non-static sources ( SPARQL endpoints )
- Ontological Constraints
- Read-write RDF
- SPARQL Update
- Open, edit, save RDF docs
- etc...
These are secondary goals. The framework should allow you to achieve these tasks by providing the basic building blocks or clear extension points.
Roadmap
- Work on CoreDesignIssues
- Define Model classes ( RDF Abstract Concepts )
- RDF I/O Framework ( Parsers )
- RDFXMLParser
- N3 Parser ( or just TTL? )
- ...
- In memory storage
- Simple smushing
- Simple Forward Chaining inference ( for foaf sha1's and other necessary stuff )
- AIR ( sqlite triple storage )
- ...
