It's old news that the Music Industry had to completely reinvent itself
around its core business, and I'm not even sure they have found a
solution yet.
The disruptor? The Web.

The Web sole-handedly brought a complete, established industry to its knees.
Next in line was the News and Publishing industry. Again, very scandalous.
And now, we can aleady see the red dot on the forehead of the next
pair of victims: Banks and Retailers.

If that sounds too far fetched for you, remember that neither the Music
industry nor the News industry perceived the size of the threat they
faced until it was upon them, and things are going even faster today.
You need to take a mental leap in order to see how it will happen in
concrete terms. And the reason it is so hard to see is because this is
the result of a complex system with many converging dimensions.

But the endgame is this: Information will flow freely following the
path of least friction. And that includes money of course.

But thinking in such abstract terms leads you nowhere. The trick is
trying to layout the roadmap: How will this actually happen? What will
happen first? Is there an opportunity for me in any of these
mini-earthquakes?

I recently gave a talk about this and lots of interesting facts and
observations appeared as to which concrete changes would be the first
indicators of a major, subterranean change. Now, after watching the
PayPalX innovate event, I get that feeling that most of the "will
happen" milestones are now in "just happened" status.

* Business Payments over PayPal with small fees
* Some sort of Facebook integration
* Simplified/unobtrusive experience 
* Compelling, radical examples developed atop PayPal API
* Micropayments
* Micropayments
* Micropayments 

And I emphasize Micropayments because they imply a deep cultural
change. Once you learn to pay, say 50cents for small things, then a
complete new "instant" economy is born: The Attribution Economy :)

So most of this is already there. With real world use-cases.
Boy was that fast...

But it has to be. Money is a TERRIBLE solution to a real problem (
exchanging goods and services ). Bad solutions get replaced as soon as
a viable alternative is found.

The beauty of all this is that, from a certain level of abstraction,
all the industries that are being negatively affected by the web are
about tapping into some kind of information flow ( music, news, money,
offers ).

* Music and Digital content: Check
* Text Medium based content: Check
* Offers and Commerce: In progress ( we need more structure. Web 3 is
doing its magic here )
* Money: In progress ( we need just enough momentum to overcome
cultural and regulatory issues. PayPal is upping the ante here. Turbo
speed )

The flipside of this is that there is huge opportunity to innovate,
and this also applies to the current behemoths. But. If history has
taught us something, it has taught us that their size makes them blind
and too slow to react.

I give Banks, say, 4 years before they enter the panic phase.

If you haven't already, I highly recommend you go watch the recorded
live stream from the PayPalX innovate event:
www.ustream.tv/paypalx

This is a question I have heard a couple of times.

( warning: this is a dense technical blog post. It was an email but I decided to post it here. Sorry in advance ).

Well, there are several ways of doing this. But, conceptually, you need to understand that there are three distinct steps in the process, each of which can be accomplished in several ways. ( Note: I use DBPedia as a "toy" example but in real life I use this to create BI and EDI workflows for real life apps ).

The 3 steps are: Linking, Importing and Querying.

== Step 1 ==

Linking ( or aligning ) your data with DBPedia's

This is generally about mapping your URIs to those of "equivalent" concepts in the DBPedia namespace. The result of this process is usually a set of owl:sameAs triples, but they could be another sort of alignment ( ABox or TBox ).

More sophisticated tools like Google Refine can give you a hand when it comes to mapping large datasets.

There are other approaches as well.

Finally, for simple literal ID alignments ( like EAN-UCC, SKU, ISBNs, etc ), a simple SPARQL query using string comparison heuristics will work just fine.

Note to self: Keep an eye on Geospatial Alignment tools.

==Step 2 ==

Once you have created one or more owl:sameAs relationships or some other kind of alignment data, you most certainly want to exploit the result by issuing queries that consider the sum of both datasets. Again, there are several options here and the final strategy will depend on your queries, desired response times, etc. The main factor here is to figure out if you will load some fraction from DBPedia into your system and, if yes, how much of it.

Let me walk you through an example.

If you just want to enrich certain entities ( for example, stealing the labels for cities or for music bands ), then the cheapest and easiest way is to insert only those triples.

One common way to do this in Virtuoso is to take advantage of the built-in sponger ( which is a fancy name for a Linked Data adapter ).

Here's one technique that works pretty well. You can use this for an infinite number of scenarios.

The following is Virtuoso SPASQL, but it could be written as pure SPARQL HTTP as well.

sparql clear graph <XXX>;
sparql define get:soft "soft" select * from <XXX> where { ?s ?p ?o } ;

Where XXX is the URI of a SPARQL construct query.

Say what?

OK. Let's slow down a bit. Suppose you want to retrieve all the labels and descriptions available for Paul Mccartney. You can play around with SPARQL in DBPedia and you would probably come up with something like the following:

prefix res: <http://dbpedia.org/resource/>
prefix dbpedia-owl: <http://dbpedia.org/ontology/>
prefix rdfs: <http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#>
select ?label ?abstract where { res:Paul_McCartney dbpedia-owl:abstract ?abstract; rdfs:label ?label  }

( Go see an HTML representation of this query's results here  )

Nice. That's the data you want to add to your app. But how do you store query results into your local Quad Store?

You don't. What you want to store is not the "tabular" select query results, but the data itself. The Triples. Or subgraph if you wish.

No problem, SPARQL construct to the rescue.

prefix res: <http://dbpedia.org/resource/>
prefix dbpedia-owl: <http://dbpedia.org/ontology/>
prefix rdfs: <http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#>
construct 
{ res:Paul_McCartney rdfs:label ?label; dbpedia-owl:abstract ?abstract } 
where
{ res:Paul_McCartney dbpedia-owl:abstract ?abstract; rdfs:label ?label  }

Now, if you run the above query in the default SPARQL endpoint UI for DBPedia ( http://dbpedia.org/sparql ) you will get back a N3/TTL file containing the raw triples for you to insert.

Click here to try it ( Note: your browser will most likely ask you to download a file. Accept and then take a look inside... Yes! triples! ).

The uncompressed URI for the file is pretty long, but it contains your query and some other parameters, effectively exposing a REST API for SPARQL execution ( this transparent HTTP magic is, in fact, an integral part of SPARQL ).

FYI, the URI looks like this ( I remove prefixes to save some space ).

http://dbpedia.org/sparql?query={{prefixes-go-here}}construct+%0D%0A%7B+res%3APaul_McCartney+rdfs%3Alabel+%3Flabel%3B+dbpedia-owl%3Aabstract+%3Fabstract+%7D+%0D%0Awhere%0D%0A%7B+res%3APaul_McCartney+dbpedia-owl%3Aabstract+%3Fabstract%3B+rdfs%3Alabel+%3Flabel++%7D&format=text%2Frdf%2Bn3

Notice the "format=text/rdf+n3" parameter at the end.

So, remember that XXX placeholder above? This is the URI you should use there. Virtuoso will then perform a GET request, download the file, figure out it is a valid RDF serialization and insert it.

Of course, manually composing such a query for each and every one of your aligned resources is a PITA. So I would suggest building a simple script or stored procedure that does the work for you.

OK. I hope you are not too dizzy by now. This example may seem like overkill at first, but if you think about it for a while, we are actually doing something very simple yet powerful here. We are taking a subgraph of a remote RDF dataset and "importing" it into your local environment. This is unique to Linked Data due to its use of URIs ( no collisions ) a triple based KRF ( no need to create tables, just add data ) and, finally, its transparent use of the HTTP protocol.

Hopefully you can build on this to come up with more complex workflows. I have built really crazy things using these simple pieces. Of course this is not the only way, in fact there are thousands of combinations and tools at your disposal. Some ideas include:

• Downloading TTL files using wget, scripts, etc and loading using stored procedures ( faster in some scenarios )
• Syncing to/from a remote Graphs using Virtuoso RDF Graph Replication feature ( this is very robust and efficient as it is based on time tested and industry-standard SQL replication functionality and uses an optimized "changeset-based" messaging protocol )
• Downloading a complete DBPedia dump and loading it completely into your machine. This can be used during the alignment process, for example, to run demanding queries, etc.
• Using Federated SPARQL when it becomes available ( basically, forget about importing, just use multiple endpoints and let the SPARQL engine do the guessing ).

== Step 3 ==

Of course ;)
I almost forget.

If the result of your alignment was a set of owl:sameAs links, you should remember to turn on Virtuoso's owl:sameAs inference:

sparql define input:same-as "yes" select * where ...

How many SMBs (Small and Medium Businesses) exist out there that have
little or no access to e-commerce channels?

Today, in order to put their offers out for the web to see, any given
Business needs to:
* Design and build a website or store
* Invest in SEO / Ads
* Build a community or somehow exploit social media to get their message across

And all that so your products can be found while searching for text
keywords or targeted by inaccurate ( at best ) affiliate platforms!

Sounds like a lousy deal to me ;)
An incremental improvement over current commerce, yes. But nothing radical.
Customers still have to "walk" into a store.

And you have to build that store, paint it, and make it look attractive.

Hmm. 

You know what I would like?
I would like to write my offerings in a spreadsheet from my notebook
and have them automatically "connect" to a global, structured Database
where affiliates, matchmaking systems, Google, etc take care of
finding and sending me a potential buyer with 90% specificity.

I give it two years before this becomes mainstream. Google already
bought Metaweb, and Good Relations + Linked Data are penetrating fast.
In two years I will be able to update a spreadsheet ( or a backend )
and get instant, highly specific visibility. No need for a designer or
even for a pitch.

Also. Keep in mind that this is not a "secondary" idea. This is an
innovation at the core of the web: Commerce and Advertising will
change.

We call this Linked Open Commerce ( in relation to Linked Data, one of
the potential tech enablers ). But it will come in many shapes, forms
and labels.

http://linkedopencommerce.com/

(download)

Click here to download:

Connecting_SMBs_and_The_Massiv.zip (483 KB)

In a world where Customer Development is starting to be defined,
studied and applied, the new scarcity will shift from lack of insights
and connections to lack of initial early adopter, customer
base. That's the new gold.

( it has always been by the way, but only now is it being said out
loud. A whole generation of entrepreneurs are hitting the road with a
much-more-likely-to-succeed strategy than locking themselves up in a
garage.)

If you don't understand a word of what I just said, follow this link.

I have tried this myself and learnt it the hard way ( by making mistakes ).

But I did realize a while ago that the actual hard part was getting customers to
try out your product, to "ignite" the sales process. So I took some
time to look around and I found a place where customers are there,
yours to take, there is also money to finance the team, etc. And I am
not talking about VC. I am talking about Companies. Big companies.

Yes. Companies are the new VCs. And if they aren't, they should be
worried. Because the rate of change is such that they simply cannot
try and insource innovation.

In fact, this is their bait to lure in top-notch brains, which will otherwise
sprout potential thunder lizards out in the wild.

You can't hire an entrepreneur. It's simply not in his DNA. But you can
get him to work for you. With you. 

So with this observation in mind I have been trying to establish a
collaboration model within companies for the last two years, and I
have learnt quite a bit. There are several risks:
* Few companies want to invest and become incubators. They may do so,
but won't do it willingly. And "sugar coating" your message is not
always a good thing. It can prove tricky.
* Intellectual property is not necessarily something visibly on the table.
* There are simply too many counterparts in any given project, each
with its own limited vision. This creates fragmentation and may
destroy the product.

I have been pushing several models into a couple of companies, and in
three of them the same thing happened.
The model made no sense until groupon came along ( in one case ) and
until linked data came along ( in the other cases ). Then it made
sense. Not only did it make sense, it made TOTAL sense and from
wasting months in meetings we switched gears violently.And things had
to be done in a rush.
No planning, no real space to develop insights. And then no one really
respects the actual insight as the product becomes "yet another
project" in the company.

So. I guess while it may sound like a good idea, I am, yet again, a
couple of years early to the party.

I am interested in hearing other experiences in this matter. How do
you negotiate with a company to establish a collaborative,
joint-venture style association instead of a two step massacre.
1. Hmm I don't get it... tell me more, tell me more. Throw everything
on the table please.
2. Oh! I do get it now. So do as I say and do it now. And also, mesh
your ideas with this other bunch of ideas.

But I insist. Companies should become VCs.

And they will.
I have this ability to live 2-4 years ahead of myself.

Anyone knows how to exploit it?

Mr Piñera:
By implementing and enforcing Linked Open Data policies during this
presidential ( 2010 - 2014 ) period you will achieve two things:
* Easily reveal the status of "currently" mis-managed ( ehem. Corrupt
) institutions. This data need not be analyzed now, but it will stay
"for the record" and someone will join the dots ( a University, NGO,
etc ).
* Dramatically increase the visibility of all transactions during the
next administration. This will most probably be a deterrent for all
those trying to return to a job where they make money w/o moving a
finger. ( and, yeah. A corruption killer as well ).

Piñera has 3 years to make a change to the platform. OGD provides a
unique opportunity to make such positive, irreversible and strategic
change with long term projection and high ROI.

Also, for short term ROI, there is PR: being amongst the first
countries to get on top of Linked Data powered OGD.

Regarding execution strategy: Grassroots is not an option, we need the
govt, money and a LAW.

For those contacting me for this very same purpose today (
participating in Open Data in Chile ), my official statement is this:
I have the will to provide support, training and participate in such
effort as long as we go all the way up to the president. I don't want
to spend any more time fighting middle ranks that only lead us to more
bureaucracy. I already burnt too much money and you should learn from
this experience.

No grassroots. We don't have a large enough developer base.
No middlemen. They don't have the authority to "hand over" the data,
much less implement repeatable and sustainable processes ( which cost
money ).

Also. Beware of big tech companies here who are used to getting ALL
govt projects. The only way OGD will work is if we democratize this
and create an open ecosystem, right from the source.

So,
1. Remember the pitch above
2. Aim for grants for small teams, including universities
3. Avoid big companies that will try to land EXCLUSIVE contracts
4. Define a set of no more than 5 easy practices that should be enforced by law.

This is a huge infrastructure biz opportunity as well. So watchout for
the sharks. Of course, WF directors know that.

Keep it open

And bring it on ;) !!!

The easiest way to understand what the next stage of the web will be
like is to take a deep look at Facebook.
Zuckerberg got it right. He (they) managed to attract users and build
a web within the web because he solved the two most critical pending
issues:

1. Structured-ness
2. Identity

Facebook tackled structuredness by simplifying the problem first.
Instead of trying to model "all the possible things" that exist on the
web, they chose to structure the 20% that generates 80% of the value (
people, events, relations, etc ) in the activity that was most
unattended. ( social interaction ). They may have started aiming for
something simpler, but I am sure they figured this out sooner rather
than later. The graph! They were hosting the famous goddam graph
within the web!

Identity was a consequence of getting structured-ness right. Plus, it
was easily achievable, enforcable and distributable within a walled
garden.

Notice that this is all they did. Fix two issues. With that in place,
users and developers simply filled in the blanks.

Now the blue empire is starting to piggyback our browsing activity to
bring the whole web inside of their framework via a set of protocols
and APIs ( opengraph, stream, likes, connect ). This is natural, and
smart. It may sound terrifying to some, but it is actually good for
all of us.

Why?

Well, because the biggest barrier was never technical. It was our
perception of how the web was supposed to be. People got it wrong and
steering the ship proved to be harder than expected. Facebook is
kindly teaching us to "expect" single sign on, to "demand" a portable
graph of friends; In short: to dissociate the data from the container.

Developers are slowly figuring it out now. They are realizing that
there has always been built-in structured-ness in the web and that
they were somehow misled to believing that things were hard. In fact,
they are even simpler than Facebook puts it.

The identity part, on the other hand, has not always been there. But
it is finally crystallizing after several experiments ( OpenID, OAuth,
etc ).

You will soon make a "record" for yourself in this giant database, and
it will all start making sense ;)

Structured-ness and Identity.
The two new features that the web will massively roll-out starting 2011:

Linked Data + WebID

Type the characters you "think" you see in the picture below.

Georgi asked: What Would You Build With a Web of Data?. Richard McManus found the invitation worthy of a Read Write Web post and thus far it has become home for an interesting discussion.

I agree with several of the proposed ideas and I dislike others. But that's the beauty of this thing, that everyone will come at it from a different angle and, serendipitously along the way, we will run into pieces of each other's construction that fit our own vision. It's the nature of this giant human meshup we call "the web".

Here's my personal favorite app: A Better World.

Recently we had an 8.8 quake down here in Chile and several people died. Almost none if you compare this to Haiti or China. We had roughly 500 casualties. But nevertheless, we should have had zero. None. Zilch.

And this becomes evident when you analyze the causes of each death. Some of them are due to corruption and malpractice in the construction business. The vast majority of them were due to blunt negligence: a tsunami hit several localities after the quake but the alarm system didn't do its thing. In fact, the confused messaging that got across even encouraged some families to stay home while they could have easily walked "by foot", with no hurries, to a safe place.

There are people to be held accountable for all of this. Today, yesterday, 10 years ago, in the future and everywhere around the world. This anecdote is a symptom of a widespread and ancient social pandemic that is very hard to erradicate: negligence, corruption and lack of accountability.

A Web of Data would win in the long run. We should be able to go back and see why the Tsunami alert system was not in good shape and figure out where the missing satellite phones went ( if they were ever bought ).

In fact, the propsect of being implicitly accountable for anything would have enticed the responsible parties to do the job right in the first place. No one wants to go against his own interests. Not even the worse sociopaths. In fact, they would be the first ones to become "extremely good". So, while the deepest cause will remain, we would have effectively turned the tables on the problem.

( one name for this App could be: implicity accountability ).

We would also be able to rebuild the country faster and in a more agile manner if we had the "loose coupled coordination" that is naturally derived from a shared data substrate and a single world view. It is very hard to coordinate people in such a rush and, just like in the enterprise, information fragmentation has become enemy number 1.

And the blessing is that the enterprise understands this problem, and they are willing to pay and work to achieve this, again, in their own interest. Therefore, it is just a matter of time until my favorite app is in place.

Those that have heard my presentations know by heart what I always say: The only scarcity we have to overcome in order to fix the pending issues of our society is the Cost of Information Integration. All the other elements are present:

• Most people already want to help
• Those that don't will find an incentive once the attribution mechanisms are in place, courtesy of the Web of Data ( remember that identity & reputation are the new gold )
• Goods can already be quickly moved across the world in a granular and efficient fashion given that you know the destination

So, my favorite app is definitely "A Better World".

As for the other ideas, they are all steps in this direction and will contribute their bit for my favorite app ;)

The global roadmap is unstoppable!

What? But aren't you also the guy that bores us to death in endless
speeches about identity, self-branding and living on and for the web?

Indeed.

But here's the current scenario:
I have half of my life going on in Facebook these days. The rest is
scattered across Twitter, GMail, Blog comment threads, Skype chats,
Opensource projects, etc. And by the time I get hold of the latest
service I'm using, a new one comes along and catches my attention.
Now, should I be the one integrating these services? Should I be the
one taking care of walking in one straight line while the forces of
social media tear and new gadgets tear my identity apart?

Well, given that I am the one interested in reaping the benefits of
having a coherent brand across the web, it follows that it is in my
interest to do so. Right?

But why don't I do it then?

Because it would be a full time job to do so! Plus I am lazy and I
know what' coming next.
Someone else will do it for me. In fact, the web itself is slowly
"condensing" around identity. Just wait and see how the linked data
wave boosts this process.

In the meantime you can follow my fragmented self here and here and
here and here, etc ad infinitum in classic schizophrenic Web2.0 style

@aldonline
http://blog.aldobucchi.com/
http://posterous.aldobucchi.com/
http://facebook.com/aldo.bucchi
http://google.com/search?q=aldo+bucchi

If you're suffering from the same illness. Relax my friend, it will
soon pass. As long as you remember to abide to the golden rule of the
web: NEVER break or replace a URI. That's why I kept my old Blog URLs
intact and I ended up with blog.aldobucchi.com and
posterous.aldobucchi.com.

Let's just relax and wait for some Web3.0 magic :)

In case you didn't know...

1. We need Tents!

Yesterday during the Crisis Camp in Chile ( techies trying to help organize disaster relief ) there was one "critical issue" being raised over and over again. Displaced people living in camps won't be able to cope with the winter. Epidemics, social unrest and mayhem are guaranteed unless we provide them with sufficiently good tents. And keep in mind that winters here are cold as hell, people are poor and given that we were barely able to manage the first crisis, nothing makes me think we will do better with this one. If a baby gets sick, that's life sentence. We need tents.

2. The Tsunami was of cinematographical proportions

I saw pictures of the tsunami affected regions taken by regular folks like you and me. Journalists or simply travelers that went to the zone of the disaster driven by a very understandable mix of both curiousity and desire to help. They were impressed. And I can see why: One of the pictures showed a refrigerator cliging from a tree. No, we don't usually put refrigerators on trees. That 400lb piece of metal was most probably part of someone's kitchen. And now it is laying feet away from a ship, which also used to be miles away anchored somewhere. The point is: WTF!!! is this real?

3. It rained in Haiti

I just saw someone trying to desperately raise awareness about how the camp he is now managing, which serves as home for 45.000 displaced haitians, will be brutally washed away when the rain season starts and how he also needs thousands of tents.

When you see someone that desperate trying to get the message across: "PEOPLE ARE GOING TO DIE NOW!!! PLEASE DO SOMETHING!!". The appropriate advice is: Hey, why don't you go live on CNN?

And he did of course, talking a full 10 minutes to Anderson Cooper. But he was totally frustrated, because he's obviously been saying this for quite a while and nothing happens. Then you think to yourself: jesus, if he already made it to CNN and he still can't get those tents, what's left for the poor people in the south of Chile?

Ah. And did I mention that this person was Sean Penn!!?

And People are stupid.

They are stupid-er than you think. Trust me. They keep on talking about being good and helping others, but when the "others" are actually dying, then everyone has something else to do.

Personally I don't really care about Sean Penn so I don't expect you to care either. I've seen him everywhere. But a Ship in the middle of the highway? that's something I need to see. Seriously. Guilty confession. I want to see that at least once in my life. Another thing I like is when people talk great things about me. Specially if I actually deserve it ( otherwise it feels a bit awkward, although you learn to live with the feeling ).

So, here's the idea: Incentivize filthy rich people from Chile to go down and see this. Give them a tour, let them take pictures, film them. Then make them sign up as "sponsors" for a family and take care of them. Of course they won't have to do much. Just sign a couple of checks. They will come back shocked, sensibilized, and with a real, concrete story to brag about other than playing golf or going to a tropical island.

Also, give those who participated a Copper Pin so they can put it in their flag when they go out on September 18th ( National Holiday ).

I am not kidding BTW. I would really bow at all those with pins in their flags and hug them with sincere admiration. No matter why they did what they did, there is someone who is infinitely thankful for their efforts and that's all that matters. They were brave enough to challenge the status quo and that's more than enough for me.

And those who don't have pins in their flags. Well, I have plans for those as well.

Now, this may sound funny. But the real question is: Why can't we make things like these work?
This is a market. The market of Tourism and Philantropy in times of crisis. It's just not explicitly defined but this is a good moment to start.

I imagine a lot of people are thinking: but what happens with all the money that has been raised?
Isn't that the way it works? I comfortably donate from my home?

No! This is obsolete, rooted in earlier days where the cost of information transport was too high and it breaks the value flow in both directions: Firstly, the giver does not get personal credit for his donation.

And second... well. Let me paraphrase Sean Penn: "Politics! politics will kill them!!"
There is simply too much administrative overhead and the "ad hoc", headless organization that assembles itself around a crisis is everything but efficient.

That's what he means by politics. There is just too much overhead and nothing "smart" about the decisions being made. Keep in mind that the guy is a terrific actor, but even he can't fake the discontempt when he talks about what's going on. And I know how it feels...