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Idea #8800: Add RDF metadata output to programs

Written by Warbo the 19 May 08 at 08:20. Category: System. Related project: Nothing/Others. Status: New
Rationale
Metadata (data about data, for instance artist and album information about a song) is becoming more and more important for finding and organising files as storage space increases, digital cameras spread everywhere, desktop search becomes popular, Internet speeds make sharing things painless, etc. but a big problem with metadata is the lack of it, often causing users to manually add it to their documents at some point.
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Solution #1: Add metadata as RDF even if app doesn't use RDF itself
Written by Warbo the 19 May 08 at 08:20.
Even though there are few programs which make use of metadata at the moment, I think it would be a good idea to automatically add sensible metadata to files now so they can be integrated into future metadata-using software more easily (less manual adding of metadata).

The most sensible way of doing this would be in RDF formats ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_Description_Framework ) which are an accepted standard. By storing metadata along with files themselves (for example in XMP format http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extensible_Metadata_Platform ), rather than in application/framework specific databases it makes such a system more future-proof and keeps the metadata intact when moving files around (eg. sending over the Internet).

The Nepomuk project looks interesting in this area http://nepomuk.semanticdesktop.org

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glotz wrote on the 19 May 08 at 16:08
A very good idea. Another easy to grasp example of metadata is tagging.

+1

AndersFeder wrote on the 4 Jun 08 at 09:04
For those interested, I launched an informational page on the broader idea of 'semantic desktops' at http://live.gnome.org/SemanticDesktop

The idea of that page is to collect information on the topic for anyone who may want to pick up the ball at some point.

tomas.virseda wrote on the 1 Oct 08 at 19:14
Semantics should be a must-have in modern desktops.

I started to read about semantic web three years ago but it's now when I've realised that the semantic web is a new and good approach to deal with data. Well, maybe it's not the panacea but imho it's the best by now. Indeed, it's very good.

I'm reading about RDF, Dublin Core, Nepomuk, RDFlib, FOAF, SIOC, Linked Data, etc. ... and it's quite interesting how you can connect piece of data and collect useful information.

I'm just a newcomer here but I'm trying to develop a graphical tool[1] for dealing with my messy harddisk (tons of info here and there). First, I tried with tags but it wasn't very efficient. You can't connect data because you don't know what it means. So, I stopped developing the application. Months ago I started to rewrite my app using python, rdflib, nepomuk and dublincore ontologies, gtk as a graphical toolkit and mysql/sqlite3 as backend. And I'm impressed how powerful can it be. On the other hand, it is not so easy than write a HTML page.

KDE is one step ahead respect GNOME in this area, integrating NEPOMUK ontologies into the core of KDE. Nice shot. As a GNOME user I'd love to be able of using the power of the semantic web in my desktop as well.

Thanks for the link about Semantic Desktop in GNOME. It wasn't in my bookmarks.

Saludos / Regards

[1] http://code.google.com/p/vazaar/ (notice that it's in an very early stage of development, so don't expect too much. By now :)


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