Beyond Web 2.0 -- How RDFa Can Help to Democratise Data on t

Google Tech Talk June 19, 2009 ABSTRACT Beyond Web 2.0 -- How RDFa Can Help to Democratise Data on the Web. Presented by Mark Birbeck. Publishing to the web has never been easier, with the proliferation of content management systems, online blogging platforms, microblogging, and more. However, publishing data is either the preserve of organizations prepared to manage their own IT, or requires individuals to sign up for one web 2.0 service after another. RDFa provides a straightforward means by which data can be published as easily as a web-page can, and the implications are enormous. From large organizations to the individual blogger, anyone can now publish data by simply placing extra markup in their pages, putting individuals back in control of their own data. Instead of burying their data in an ever growing array of online services, individuals will now simply publish once, and allow third-party services to consume their information -- from profile information to items for sale, from film reviews to favorite recipes, your web-pages become your API. By allowing everyone to have an API, RDFa creates the possibility of a new generation of applications that will operate across our data. Mark Birbeck works on standards and applications at the juncture of rich user interfaces and the semantic web. To help these two worlds communicate, he invented RDFa. He's an invited expert at the W3C where he is deeply involved with XForms and XHTML 2. Alongside his standards work, he has instigated a number of open source projects, including the Ubiquity XForms and Ubiquity RDFa Ajax libraries. His commercial work involves consultancy, development work and training, in both XForms and RDFa.