Tag Archives: Tim Berners-Lee

Searching via Text to Find Data

Posted on July 9, 2009 by Stephen Francoeur

Reading this recent interview with Tim Berners-Lee, I was struck by his elegant description of how linked data on the web and textual material on the web (web pages, documents, etc.) will relate to each other:

You’ve got search for text phrases on one side (which is a useful tool) and querying of the data on the other. I think that those things will connect together a lot.

So I think people will search using a search text engine, and find a webpage. On the front of the webpage they’ll find a link to some data, then they’ll browse with a data browser, then they’ll find a pattern which is really interesting, then they’ll make their data system go and find all the things which are like that pattern (which is actually doing a query, but they’ll not realize it), then they’ll be in data mode with tables and doing statistical analysis, and in that statistical analysis they’ll find an interesting object which has a home page, and they’ll click on that, and go to a homepage and be back on the Web again.

So the web of linked data and the web of documents actually connect in both directions, with links.

MacManus, Richard. “ReadWriteWeb Interview With Tim Berners-Lee, Part 2: Search Engines, User Interfaces for Data, Wolfram Alpha, And More…” ReadWriteWeb, 9 July 2009. Web. 9 July 2009.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Information retrieval, Linked data, ReadWriteWeb, Search engines, Semantic web, Tim Berners-Lee | Comments Off

TED Talk Tuesdays

Posted on June 23, 2009 by Stephen Francoeur

Eric Frierson, a librarian at the University of Texas, Arlington, wrote recently about an interesting way to engage library staff about core issues:

A couple of weeks ago, I sent out an e-mail to the library inviting them to join me on something I called ‘TED Talk Tuesdays.’ If you haven’t been to ted.com, you should check it out. It features videos from leading thinkers in the technology, entertainment, design, business, science, and other fields – speakers are asked to give ‘the speech of their life’ in under 20 minutes.
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So what is TED Talk Tuesday? It’s people in a room watching a TED Talk and spending the rest of the hour discussing how it impacts the library and each other at work. No discussion questions, no formal presentation, just watching a video and talking to each other.

Read the rest of his post here. Below are some of my favorite TED talks.

Ken Robinson Says Schools Kill Creativity

Ray Kurzweil Announces Singularity University

Tim Berners-Lee on the Next Web

Brewster Kahle Builds a Free Digital Library

There are many more videos to explore on this page, where they are organized by themes and topics.