This document discusses some business cases for Linked Open Data and summarizes Tapio Nurminen's work publishing and visualizing Linked Data through his company Flo Apps Ltd. It describes a case study publishing dance data as Linked Data using D2R and mapping files, and discusses options for interfaces and visualizations using tools like Simile Widgets, JavaScript InfoVis Toolkit, and Raphaël. It concludes by emphasizing the importance of interactivity in data visualizations and combining expertise from different fields.

1. Some LOD Business Cases
17.11.2010
Tapio Nurminen
www.floapps.com

2. Background
MA in History
Web Editor @ University of Helsinki
Freelancer
Academic Entrepreneurship @ HSE
Entrepreneur

3. Flo Apps Ltd
consultancy and implementation of modern web technologies
won Apps For Democracy Finland 2009
4 people + subcontractors

4. Linked Open Data
Linked Data - a technical concept
Open Data - a mindset, license-related concept

5. The 2 layers of LOD business
data needed to create apps
apps needed to make things interesting
to get funding for opening the data, apps are needed in most cases

6. Part 1: Publishing Linked Data

7. Case Study: Dance Info Finland
www.danceinfo.fi/tanka/
approx 200,000 triples
D2R server
relational db into RDF
mapping file the central point
ontology issues
which one to use?
what new ones should be created?

8. # Table Person
map:artisti a d2rq:ClassMap;
d2rq:dataStorage map:database;
d2rq:uriPattern "artist/@@Person.ID@@";
# d2rq:class vocab:artisti;
d2rq:class foaf:Person;
d2rq:classDefinitionLabel "artist";
d2rq:orderAsc "Person.Lastname"
.
map:artisti_etunimi a d2rq:PropertyBridge;
d2rq:belongsToClassMap map:artisti;
# d2rq:property vocab:artisti_etunimi;
d2rq:property foaf:givenName;
d2rq:propertyDefinitionLabel "artistin etunimi";
d2rq:column "Person.Firstname";
.

9. Interface issues
3 options
machine/geek readable
hybrid
human interface

10. In the pipeline...
Finnish Literature Society
over 6,000 biographies

11. Part 2: Visualisations

12. Simile Widgets
free, open-source web widgets mostly for data visualizations
Timeline
Exhibit
www.simile-widgets.org

13. JavaScript InfoVis Toolkit
JSON loading, animation, 2D point and graph classes and some tree
visualization methods
thejit.org

14. Raphaël
a small JavaScript library, uses the SVG and VML as a base
every graphical object is also a DOM object, so you can attach
JavaScript event handlers or modify them later
raphaeljs.com

15. Food for Thought
datavisualization.ch/tools/13-javascript-libraries-for-visualizations
HTML5 canvas element offers new possibilities
for more ideas:
http://flowingdata.com/
http://datavisualization.ch/
http://datavis.tumblr.com/
http://infosthetics.com/

16. Design Tips
interactivity !important
deciding what to show, what not and how to show
editorial decisions
combine expertise from different fields
developers usually prefer JSON

17. Thank you!
tapio.nurminen@floapps.com
twitter.com/TapioNurminen