Lately I’ve developed a huge interest in the semantic web, if that’s what you’d like to call it. Expected to be the next-generation web, it moves beyond the web of pages we’re used to and the URLs that make up the lifeblood of the internet and move to a model based on a web of individually linked data via more general URIs (Uniform Resource Identifiers). I should also mention that I’m pretty sure there is some debate regarding the syntax of naming systems (as in a URL is a URI…) but you get the idea.
The Web of Data is connected and published as Linked Data (a W3C specification) and as you can imagine, geo-data is one form of data that can add semantic meaning to another piece of data. Hence my excitement when LinkedGeoData.org officially launched this morning with RDF descriptions of more than 350 million spatial features from the OpenStreetMap database.
Comprised of RDF dumps, Linked Data, REST interfaces, links to DBpedia and a prototype browser for browsing LinkedGeoData, this project is the first major attempt I’ve seen (beyond the geographical information available in DBpedia) that aims to add geo-semantic meaning to the web.
Ultimately, the idea behind Linked Data is to enable web users the ability to connect pieces of related data–as is the case with LinkedGeoData. For example, the latitude and longitude coordinates of Winnipeg published as LinkedGeoData could be connected to DBpedia information about the city’s population, geographical size and history.
Now I have to admit I’m not a programmer and I’m new to the idea of the semantic web, so it is possible I’ve got some things backwards here. I’m pretty sure I got it down pat though (if not please correct me 
). What I would like to know from any data crunchers out there though is this: what other projects and innovations could be possible with LinkedGeoData?
