Topincs 4.1.0 released

March 8th, 2010

Robert Cerny has released version 4.1 of Topincs, a Topic Maps-based wiki and knowledge management tool.

This version allows ordering of fields on topics, adds some Topincs-specific constraints to TMCL, and improves the Admin page.

For more information, please see the announcement.

How advertisers should best approach Web 3.0

March 5th, 2010

Graham Moore of NetworkedPlanet has written an article for UTalkMarketing on How advertisers should best approach Web 3.0. It’s about the new realities of advertising on the web in the age of semantic technology.

Another Word for It

March 4th, 2010

Patrick Durusau, convenor of SC34 WG3, and generally active in the Topic Maps community for years, has finally caved in and started a blog, which he calls Another Word for It.

Topic Maps engine in JavaScript

March 3rd, 2010

Jan Schreiber has released the first preview of a Topic Maps engine written in JavaScript, called tmjs. It’s a lightweight engine independent of other JavaScript libraries and offers a TMAPI 2.0-like API. The idea is to make it possible to write Topic Maps applications that run entirely in the browser.

QuaaxTM 0.5 released

February 23rd, 2010

The QuaaxTM Topic Maps engine has just been released in version 0.5, with support for PHPTMAPI 2.0. The QuaaxTM engine is written in PHP and uses MySQL for persistent storage.

Topic Maps course in the Netherlands

February 22nd, 2010

The Dutch SGML/XML User’s Group is arranging a full-day course on semantic modelling at Arbo Unie in Utrecht on February 25th. It seems to be held by the company Be Informed, and covers Topic Maps, the Be Informed Product, and RDF/OWL. The Topic Maps tool used for modelling is Ontopia. For more details, please see the official announcement.

PHPTMAPI 2.0 released

February 19th, 2010

The PHPTMAPI project has released version 2.0 of the API, following the release of TMAPI 2.0. The QuaaxTM Topic Maps engine already implements version 2.0 of the API.

Los

February 18th, 2010

Difi, the Norwegian Agency for Public Management and eGovernment, has published a common classification intended to be used in the Norwegian public sector, called Los. It’s specifically aimed at municipal administrations, but could also be used more widely.

Los is published in XTM format, with PSIs for all the main concepts. The main part of it is a hierarchical classification (a taxonomy, basically), but it also has topics (and PSIs) for major governmental units, provinces, counties, and a few other things.

So for anyone developing Topic Maps-based services for the public sector in Norway this is something that should be studied carefully. Given the careful use of PSIs it’s also a major contribution to Open Linked Data in Norway.

Edit: We’ve been asked by non-Norwegian readers where the XTM download is. There’s actually several, and they’re all on the documentation page. The first one, los-alt.xtm, contains everything. The others are subsets.

Topincs 4 released

February 18th, 2010

Robert Cerny has released version 4 of his Topincs Topic Maps-based wiki and knowledge management tool. A major change in this version is that it now uses TMCL (according to the latest draft) to represent the topic map schema. As far as we are aware, this is the first TMCL implementation to be released. For more information, please see the announcement.

User group meeting about National Broadcasting

February 17th, 2010

The Norwegian Topic Maps User Group is arranging a meeting about the Norwegian National Broadcasting application on March 2 at Bouvet’s offices in Oslo. The presentation will present

  • the application,
  • the ontology behind it,
  • challenges with using the ontology,
  • how it is connected to the national curriculum (also in Topic Maps),
  • how synchronization with the curriculum topic map works, and
  • ideas for future extensions.

For more information, please see the official page.