Posts tagged with: startup

Running an R&D-heavy agency in the current economical climate is pretty tough, but there are also a couple of new opportunities for these semantic solutions that help reduce costs and do things more efficiently. I'm finally starting to get project requests that include some form of compensation. Not much yet (all budgets seem to be very tight these days), but it's a start, and together with support from Susanne, I could now continue working on Paggr, semsol's Netvibes-like dashboard system for the growing web of Linked Data.

An article about Paggr will be in the next Nodalities Magazine, and the ESWC2009 technologies team is considering a custom system for attendees which is a great chance to maybe get other conference organizers interested. (I see much potential in a white-label offering, but a more mainstream-ish version for Web 2.0 data is still on my mind. Just have to focus on getting self-sustained first.)

Below is a short screencast that demonstrates a first version of the sparqlet (= semantic widget) builder. I've de-coupled sparqlet-serving from the dashboard system, so that I'll be able to open-source the infrastructure parts of Paggr more easily. Another change from the October prototype is the theme-ability of both dashboards and widget servers. Lots of sun, sky, and sea for ESWC ;-)



HQ version (quicktime, 120MB)

What can I say? I'm still smiling like on the pic on the left (credits: Keith Alexander). And you have no idea how urgently I need the money ;-)

paggr has received very encouraging feedback (or premature praise, rather), so I'm busily working on getting the beta out as soon as possible. Especially given that paggr wouldn't have had a chance to convince the judges without the great amount of Linked Data and all the painful spec work by the Semantic Web Community. The ball's in my court to actually deliver now.

There are some items left on my todo list before I dare sending out more invitation codes (some were added after feedback at ISWC):

• improved RDF exporter for portals and individual widgets (just finished the first version, using a new thingy called poshRDF)
• the widget and agent builders should be visual, more like the cool SPARQLMotion editor (I'm working on that now).
• dropping a widget item on the canvas should auto-open a corresponding details widget
• widgets should be able to "listen to" other widgets for auto-refreshs
• a setup wizard that lets you specify initial accounts and data sources

I assume that a fully generic semantic widget and agent platform might be either over- or underwhelming, so I plan to provide a set of ready-to-run apps for paggr. Here are some ideas:

• feed reader with rich filtering and bookmarking (to del.icio.us?) and rating
• microblog and aggregator (twitter + identi.ca + groups + filters + posting)
• address book
• semantic email client
• calendaring
• decentralized social network (portable personal profile + lifestream aggregation)

Do you have any preferences or ideas for apps you'd like to see on paggr? I'd be very happy about your suggestions. Leave a comment here or send a mail to paggr [at] semsol [dot] com.

I've been semi-silently working on something new. A combination of many semwebby things I came across and played with during the last 3 years or so:

• semantic markup
• smart data
• an rdf clipboard
• ajax
• sparql sparql sparql
• sparql + scripting
• sparql + templates
• sparql + widgets
• lightweight, federated semweb services and bots
• UIs for open data
• semwikis
• agile and collaborative web development

So, what happens when you put this all together? At least something interesting, and perhaps semsol's first commercial service. (Or product, this is all just LAMP stuff and can easily be run in an intranet or on a hosted server). Anyway, still some way to go. It's called paggr, the landing page is up, and today I created a first teaser/intro video.

I'll demo the beta (launch planned for November) at upcoming ISWC during the poster session (my poster is about SPARQL+ and SPARQLScript, the two SPARQL extensions that paggr is based on). I may have early invites by then.

As a preparation for the hopefully busy fall and winter months, though, I'll be on vacation for the next two weeks. No Email, no Web, no Phone. Yay!



HQ version (quicktime, 130MB)

This is going to change everything. Well, almost. I will continue to work on my Semantic Web solutions, but there will be a major re-branding and finally a focused roadmap. My code experiments and projects are going to be critically reviewed and consolidated. (I can't tell yet what stuff is going to be continued, but I'll keep my SWEO commitments, esp. the knowee community project which is going to start in April).
Quite some orga action coming up, but I'm looking forward to a clean bengee.reboot()

• I'll move from Essen to Düsseldorf, which is closer to Cologne, the DUS airport, and also a little away from the Web periphery here, with the Ruhr Valley still in reach, though.
• The appmosphere wordplay is going to be discontinued. No German really managed to pronounce or remember it correctly, and the *-osphere naming is rather overused these days anyway.
• The new brand will most probably be semsol.com which is going to be transformed to a Semantic Web Agency. (I've always been a frontend developer, combing this with an in-house RDF system will hopefully form a nice USP for the anticipated move towards info-driven Web apps.)
• The open source RDF framework currently named semsol will get a new name (perhaps just "semsol suite", we'll see), and there will be more product-style solutions (a browser, an editor, a schema manager, etc.).
• ARC will keep its name, but is going to be re-coded as ARC2 based on the experience and feedback obtained so far.
• Less research-y slippery slopes.
• More Germany-targeted activities.