Web Directions South 2011, Sydney, October 13th.
Presentation slides
Session description
The key idea of the Semantic Web is to make information on the Web easily consumable by machines. As machines start to understand web pages as sources of data that can be easily combined with other public data on the Web, the promise is that search on the Web will move well beyond the current paradigm of retrieving pages by keywords. Instead, search engines will start to answer complex queries based on the cumulative knowledge of the Web.In this presentation, we overview the basic set of technologies that can be used to annotate web pages so that they can be processed by data-aware search engines. In particular, we discuss the RDFa and microdata standards of the W3C designed for marking up data in HTML pages. We look at the ways in which this information is currently used by search engines, including the latest schema.org collaboration between Bing, Google, and Yahoo!, which provides a basic set of vocabulary items understood by all three major search engines on the Web.About Peter Mika
Peter Mika is a researcher and data architect at Yahoo! Research in Barcelona, working on the applications of semantic technology to Web search. He received his BS in computer science from Eotvos Lorand University and his MSc and PhD in computer science (summa cum laude) from Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. His interdisciplinary work in social networks and the Semantic Web earned him a Best Paper Award at the 2005 International Semantic Web Conference and a First Prize at the 2004 Semantic Web Challenge. From 2006 to 2009, he has been a co-chair of the Semantic Web Challenge. Mika is the youngest member elected to the editorial board of the Journal of Web Semantics. He is the author of the book ‘Social Networks and the Semantic Web’ (Springer, 2007). In 2008 he has been selected as one of “AI’s Ten to Watch” by the editorial board of the IEEE Intelligent Systems journal. Peter is a regular speaker at conferences.Follow Peter on Twitter: @pmika" ["post_title"]=> string(38) "Peter Mika - Making the Web searchable" ["post_category"]=> string(1) "0" ["post_excerpt"]=> string(315) "
In this presentation, we overview the basic set of technologies that can be used to annotate web pages so that they can be processed by data-aware search engines.
Web Directions South 2009, Sydney Convention Centre, October 9 10.45am.
Presentation slides
Session description
RDFa is at the cornerstone of the Browser Web and the Semantic Web. With RDFa, publishing data becomes as easy as publishing HTML, and can help web pages authors to join the linked data cloud and leverage all the URI-based data integration features brought by Semantic Web and Linking Open Data technologies. In this introductory session primarily directed at those who author web content, Mark will touch a range of RDFa topics from its goals and how it came about, to its relationship to linked data and how it’s being used in some recent projects for UK Government web-sites.One of the main reasons why interest is growing fast in RDFa is because the prospect for being able to extend documents without having recourse to standards organisations is enormous. Mark will explain how the RDFa task force has managed to provide extension points to a base language as a mean to break the perpetual cycle of guessing in advance which new language features are sought by authors.About Mark Birbeck
Mark Birbeck is the managing director of webBackplane. He has been creating software for many years, and his particular interests are the semantic web, and components that help to create dynamic, flexible, user interfaces. He has consulted, given training, spoken at conferences, and contributed to books and articles on these and other topics. He is also heavily involved in the creation of new standards on these themes.An Invited Expert at the W3C since 2003, Mark has also edited multiple W3C technical reports and publications for both the XForms Working Group and the XHTML 2 Working Group. Over the years his work there has included devising and proposing RDFa and Compact URIs.Follow Mark on Twitter: @MarkBirbeck
RDFa is at the cornerstone of the Browser Web and the Semantic Web. With RDFa, publishing data becomes as easy as publishing HTML, and can help web pages authors to join the linked data cloud and leverage all the URI-based data integration features brought by Semantic Web and Linking Open Data technologies. In this introductory session primarily directed at those who author web content, Mark will touch a range of RDFa topics from its goals and how it came about, to its relationship to linked data and how it’s being used in some recent projects for UK Government web-sites.
A presentation given at at Web Directions North, Vancouver, February 7, 2007.
- MP3 of presentation
- Presentation slides - John Allsopp (PDF, 2MB)
- Presentation slides - Dan Cederholm (PDF, 12MB)
- Session description
- About John Allsopp
- About Dan Cederholm
This session was originally meant to feature Tantek Çelik as well, but due to a last-minute change instead featured just John Allsopp and Dan Cederholm
Session description
Microformats are much more than just a promising technology or passing fad — hear these three experts cover the whys and the hows of designing and developing with microformats.
Hear microformats founder and custodian Tantek Çelik paint on the broad canvas, talking about motivations, use cases, examples, and benefits. John Allsopp, author of the forthcoming friends of Ed microformats book will cover a number of practical examples of quickly and cleanly adding microformats to existing code. Renowned designer and developer Dan Cederholm will look at how microformats provide excellent scaffolding for styling with CSS.
This session will really get you up to speed with this exciting, quickly spreading technology.
About John Allsopp
John Allsopp is a founder of Westciv, an Australian web software development and training company, which provides some of the best CSS resources and tutorials on the web. Westciv’s software and training are used in dozens of countries around the World.
The head developer of the leading cross platform CSS editor, Style Master, John has written on web development issues for numerous web and print publications and was one of the earliest members of the Web Standards Project.
About Dan Cederholm
Dan Cederholm is a web designer and author living in Massachusetts, USA. He’s the founder of SimpleBits, a tiny design studio.
A recognized expert in the field of standards-based web design, Dan has worked with Google, MTV, ESPN, Fast Company, Blogger, Odeo, and others. He embraces flexible, adaptable design using web standards.
Dan is the author of two best-selling books: Bulletproof Web Design (New Riders) and Web Standards Solutions (Friends of ED). Dan also runs the popular weblog SimpleBits, where he writes articles and commentary on the web, technology and life. He also plays a mean ukulele.
" ["post_title"]=> string(69) "John Allsopp and Dan Cederholm - Microformats: More than Just Promise" ["post_category"]=> string(1) "0" ["post_excerpt"]=> string(832) "A presentation given at at Web Directions North, Vancouver, February 7, 2007.
Microformats are much more than just a promising technology or passing fad — hear these three experts cover the whys and the hows of designing and developing with microformats.
Hear microformats founder and custodian Tantek Çelik paint on the broad canvas, talking about motivations, use cases, examples, and benefits. John Allsopp, author of the forthcoming friends of Ed microformats book will cover a number of practical examples of quickly and cleanly adding microformats to existing code. Renowned designer and developer Dan Cederholm will look at how microformats provide excellent scaffolding for styling with CSS.
This session will really get you up to speed with this exciting, quickly spreading technology.
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Session description
The problem of bringing richer semantics to the world wide web has been challenging standards bodies and developers for several years. Approaches like "The Semantic Web" promise much, but require us to throw away the accumulated efforts, skills and tools of more than a decade. Over the last year or two, an evolutionary approach to richer semantics for today's web, based on HTML, current developer practices, and tools, called Microformats, has been spreading like wildfire among tool developers, and web publishers large and small.
In this presentation John Allsopp looks at why microformats are necessary, what organisations like Yahoo! are doing with them, and how your organisation can benefit from them right now.
About John Allsopp
John Allsopp is a founder of Westciv, an Australian web software development and training company, which provides some of the best CSS resources and tutorials on the web. Westciv's software and training are used in dozens of countries around the World.The head developer of the leading cross platform CSS editor, Style Master, John has written on web development issues for numerous web and print publications and was one of the earliest members of the Web Standards Project.
The problem of bringing richer semantics to the world wide web has been challenging standards bodies and developers for several years. Approaches like "The Semantic Web" promise much, but require us to throw away the accumulated efforts, skills and tools of more than a decade. Over the last year or two, an evolutionary approach to richer semantics for today's web, based on HTML, current developer practices, and tools, called Microformats, has been spreading like wildfire among tool developers, and web publishers large and small.In this presentation John Allsopp looks at why microformats are necessary, what organisations like Yahoo! are doing with them, and how your organisation can benefit from them right now." ["post_status"]=> string(7) "publish" ["comment_status"]=> string(4) "open" ["ping_status"]=> string(4) "open" ["post_password"]=> string(0) "" ["post_name"]=> string(14) "john-allsopp-2" ["to_ping"]=> string(0) "" ["pinged"]=> string(0) "" ["post_modified"]=> string(19) "2008-07-24 21:54:41" ["post_modified_gmt"]=> string(19) "2008-07-25 02:54:41" ["post_content_filtered"]=> string(0) "" ["post_parent"]=> int(0) ["guid"]=> string(66) "http://westciv.com/webdirections08/blog/john-allsopp-microformats/" ["menu_order"]=> int(0) ["post_type"]=> string(4) "post" ["post_mime_type"]=> string(0) "" ["comment_count"]=> string(1) "0" ["filter"]=> string(3) "raw" } } ["post"]=> object(stdClass)#116 (25) { ["ID"]=> int(3850) ["post_author"]=> string(1) "7" ["post_date"]=> string(19) "2011-11-07 09:07:14" ["post_date_gmt"]=> string(19) "2011-11-06 23:07:14" ["post_content"]=> string(2676) "Web Directions South 2011, Sydney, October 13th.
Presentation slides
Session description
The key idea of the Semantic Web is to make information on the Web easily consumable by machines. As machines start to understand web pages as sources of data that can be easily combined with other public data on the Web, the promise is that search on the Web will move well beyond the current paradigm of retrieving pages by keywords. Instead, search engines will start to answer complex queries based on the cumulative knowledge of the Web.In this presentation, we overview the basic set of technologies that can be used to annotate web pages so that they can be processed by data-aware search engines. In particular, we discuss the RDFa and microdata standards of the W3C designed for marking up data in HTML pages. We look at the ways in which this information is currently used by search engines, including the latest schema.org collaboration between Bing, Google, and Yahoo!, which provides a basic set of vocabulary items understood by all three major search engines on the Web.About Peter Mika
Peter Mika is a researcher and data architect at Yahoo! Research in Barcelona, working on the applications of semantic technology to Web search. He received his BS in computer science from Eotvos Lorand University and his MSc and PhD in computer science (summa cum laude) from Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. His interdisciplinary work in social networks and the Semantic Web earned him a Best Paper Award at the 2005 International Semantic Web Conference and a First Prize at the 2004 Semantic Web Challenge. From 2006 to 2009, he has been a co-chair of the Semantic Web Challenge. Mika is the youngest member elected to the editorial board of the Journal of Web Semantics. He is the author of the book ‘Social Networks and the Semantic Web’ (Springer, 2007). In 2008 he has been selected as one of “AI’s Ten to Watch” by the editorial board of the IEEE Intelligent Systems journal. Peter is a regular speaker at conferences.Follow Peter on Twitter: @pmika" ["post_title"]=> string(38) "Peter Mika - Making the Web searchable" ["post_category"]=> string(1) "0" ["post_excerpt"]=> string(315) "
In this presentation, we overview the basic set of technologies that can be used to annotate web pages so that they can be processed by data-aware search engines.
Presentations about microformats
Podcasts, slides, videos and more
Peter Mika — Making the Web searchable
In this presentation, we overview the basic set of technologies that can be used to annotate web pages so that they can be processed by data-aware search engines.
See the slides and hear the podcast »
Mark Birbeck — Marking up content with RDFa
RDFa is at the cornerstone of the Browser Web and the Semantic Web. With RDFa, publishing data becomes as easy as publishing HTML, and can help web pages authors to join the linked data cloud and leverage all the URI-based data integration features brought by Semantic Web and Linking Open Data technologies.
In this introductory session primarily directed at those who author web content, Mark will touch a range of RDFa topics from its goals and how it came about, to its relationship to linked data and how it’s being used in some recent projects for UK Government web-sites.
See the slides and hear the podcast »
John Allsopp and Dan Cederholm — Microformats: More than Just Promise
A presentation given at at Web Directions North, Vancouver, February 7, 2007.
Microformats are much more than just a promising technology or passing fad — hear these three experts cover the whys and the hows of designing and developing with microformats.
Hear microformats founder and custodian Tantek Çelik paint on the broad canvas, talking about motivations, use cases, examples, and benefits. John Allsopp, author of the forthcoming friends of Ed microformats book will cover a number of practical examples of quickly and cleanly adding microformats to existing code. Renowned designer and developer Dan Cederholm will look at how microformats provide excellent scaffolding for styling with CSS.
This session will really get you up to speed with this exciting, quickly spreading technology.
See the slides and hear the podcast »
John Allsopp — Microformats
A presentation given at Web Directions South, Sydney Australia, September 28 2006.

The problem of bringing richer semantics to the world wide web has been challenging standards bodies and developers for several years. Approaches like “The Semantic Web” promise much, but require us to throw away the accumulated efforts, skills and tools of more than a decade. Over the last year or two, an evolutionary approach to richer semantics for today’s web, based on HTML, current developer practices, and tools, called Microformats, has been spreading like wildfire among tool developers, and web publishers large and small.
In this presentation John Allsopp looks at why microformats are necessary, what organisations like Yahoo! are doing with them, and how your organisation can benefit from them right now. See the slides and hear the podcast »
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