Gnowsis 0.9.2 released
About
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The Gnowsis system adds Semantic Web interfaces to common desktop applications. It enables users to use desktop computers like a small personal semantic web. Linking documents across applications and browsing through the personal information space is now possible. Emails, documents, addresses, photos, appointments that have been spread in the local data jungle can be linked conveniently, weaving a personal semantic web. Data structures are not changed and existing applications are extended and not replaced. Programmers can build Semantic Web and knowledge management applications on top of Gnowsis. Structured data from common desktop applications (like MS-Outlook) can be accessed in a simple web protocol, allowing developers and researchers to leverage this information.
- Application benefit - all information is linkable
- Technical benefit - All applications are unified in a semantic desktop standard.
By transferring Semantic Web technologies to a desktop computer, information is represented and accessed in a uniform way, independent from the software application that generated it. This functionality conforms to the Semantic Desktop paradigm, as defined in previous publications. The core of the Gnowsis is a desktop web server, together with a Java-Swing user interface. Data from different standard applications can be integrated into the server, through standardised adapters. These reusable adapters implement the application specific interfaces and publish them as semantic web services. The general Resource Description Framework (RDF) language is the data basis for this process. Additional metadata is stored in a native RDF database.
Common applications like the Mozilla Web-Suite or Microsoft Outlook are extended through plugins, that integrate the Gnowsis functionality into existing user interfaces. This allows the user to define needed links between resources such as a photo and contact information of a person. Links are stored and then used to navigate from one resource to another, across application borders.
At the moment, Gnowsis is realised as a Java application. It is published as open source tool on the website www.gnowsis.org. The system is in a beta stadium and will be developed further, to be a basis for future research and commercial applications.
The project is hosted at the Knowledge Management Departement of the DFKI
Contact
Prof. Andreas Dengel is director of the Knowledge Management Lab of the DFKI. He is promoting the Semantic Desktop Idea at DFKI and the public.
Leo Sauermann is the project manager and lead architect of gnowsis. He is employed as a Researcher at the Knowledge Management Lab of the DFKI.
The development team of gnowsis can be found here
