XTech 2008 Schedule

To be confirmed

overview of the architecture of SWSE, a Semantic Web Search Engine that scales to billions of RDF statements, and discuss in detail the necessary adaptations to traditional search engine components, in particular indexing, query processing, and ranking.

We might be standardising around a handful of web development frameworks but we're still re-inventing the wheel when it comes to the things we build. A vibrant ecosystem of commercial grade API providers, such as Amazon with their S3 and EC2 services, could change all that. But what needs to happen to make this web services dream a reality? And where are the potential pitfalls for successful apps?

Data portability has become an important requirement on the Social Web. We demonstrate how data and social network portability can be achieved by building upon existing Semantic Web developments such as SIOC and FOAF. SIOC provides a common format for expressing user-generated content and tools for import/export of this information. FOAF provides a way to link users' social networks.

We introduce our work on building tools to mine scientific literature. Using our Golem language/toolkit, we have inferred an ontology for, and extracted RDF metadata from, the tens of thousands of crystallographic datasets obtained automatically from journals as part of our CrystalEye repository. We then show some of the ways in which this enhances our ability to search and mine scientific data.

Have you checked your online identity lately? Did what you find surprise you? Are you pleased with the impression it might make on others? What can you do about it? This talk covers methods grounded in public domain resources to help you proactively establish and maintain your online reputation. Topics will include best practices and related issues, such as privacy vs. free speech online.

I will demonstrate how Silverlight 2.0, using Blend 2.5 & Visual Studio 2008, can optimize your time of development and will prove it by developing, with you, a video game during the time of the session.

Sean leads us on a Celtic-tinted safari of the Web featuring mythical creatures, tenuous analogies and curious interconnections. The mission: to boldly split all necessary infinitives and go where no Web has gone before.