Freebase can be considered a 'wikipedia' of structured data. Freebase provides the data under creative commons and it is being developed by MetaWeb Technologies. Currently in Alpha release, there is an ongoing effort for developing prototype data objects and populating these objects with instances of data.
A user community contributes heavily in the process (like in the case of wikipedia). Users create their own data types and upload data. Also a significant effort of developing algorithms to extract knowledge from wikipedia pages and to store it in a structured way in Freebase is currently taking place.. Freebase provides its own Data Query API based on JSON. The Geospatial Community can take advantage of this technology since the data are being provided by Creative Commons. Geographic Data Types may be possible to be developed in Freebase. Personally I have tried to evaluate Freebase's abilities by creating ISO 19115 Data Types for Geographic Metadata and it seems that Freebase could be very promising. For those interested, Freebase can be accessed in the following url: http://www.freebase.com/ A mashup that uses Google Maps and data from Freebase can be accessed here: http://dev.mqlx.com/~zak/arch/ For those who do not like a commercial company involved in Free Data, what about establishing an organization that can provide technologies similar to Freebase ? ie: 1. Website for users to access the community data 2. WebApp to allow community users create their own Data Types 3. WebApp to allow users upload structured data. 4. Open API for users to be able to consume / discover the uploaded data. Vasilis. On Wed, Apr 16, 2008 at 4:21 PM, P Kishor <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > On 4/16/08, Kralidis,Tom [Burlington] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > > Thought this might be of interest: > > > > ..Tom > > > > > > > > > > ________________________________ > > > > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Kate Lance > > Sent: 15 April, 2008 1:02 PM > > To: SDI technical > > Subject: [GSDI Technical] blog - "We need a Wikipedia for data" > > > > > > maybe some from the geospatial community would care to submit a comment > > (regarding technical approach/architecture) in response to this recent > > blog post by Bret Taylor, ex-Googler, about the need for open data > > sets.... > > > > http://bret.appspot.com/entry/we-need-a-wikipedia-for-data > > "We need a Wikipedia for data" - April 9, 2008 > > > Haven't read the above post, but I wonder if the poster(s) know about > Open StreetMaps? > > > > > > > > between 0000-00-00 and 9999-99-99 > > > > _______________________________________________ > > Technical mailing list > > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > http://lists.gsdi.org/mailman/listinfo/technical > > > > _______________________________________________ > > Discuss mailing list > > Discuss@lists.osgeo.org > > http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss > > > > > > > -- > Puneet Kishor http://punkish.eidesis.org/ > Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies http://www.nelson.wisc.edu/ > Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo) http://www.osgeo.org/ > _______________________________________________ > Discuss mailing list > Discuss@lists.osgeo.org > http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss > _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss