Ping the Semantic Web.com: a pinging service for the Semantic Web

Frederick Giasson

 

    One of the problems I found with the semantic web is how it could be difficult to find new and fresh data. Recently I was confronted with a problem: how to notify a web service that Talk Digger had new and updted semantic web data ready to be crawled (the SIOC and FOAF ontology for people familiar with semantic web technologies).

Then I questioned myself about why nobody, at my knowledge, developed a sort of weblogs.com or pingerati.net pinging service for semantic web documents? This solution already proved that it is working considering that weblogs.com archive and export millions of pings every day.

 

What is PingtheSemanticWeb.com?

PingtheSemanticWeb.com is a web service archiving the location of recently created/updated FOAF, DOAP or SIOC RDF documents on the Web. If one of those documents is updated, its author can notify the service that the document have been updated by pinging it with the URL of the document.

PingtheSemanticWeb.com is used by crawlers or other type of software agents to know when and where the latest updated FOAF, DOAP and SIOC documents can be found. So it requests a list of recently updated documents as a starting location to crawl the semantic web.

More information about supported ontologies can be found here:

 

Using the Bookmarklet

I greatly suggest to anyone to use pingthesemanticweb.com’s Bookmarklet. You only have to install this bookmarklet in your browser, and click on it from any Web page. If a FOAF, SIOC or DOAP document is found, it will be immediately indexed by the pinging service.

It is the easiest way for anyone to help PingtheSemanticWeb.com to find new documents to index.

 

How to install the Bookmarklet

Read the instructions on how to install the Bookmarklet (Browser Button) into your browser.

 

How does it works

You can use the URL of a HTML or RDF document when pinging PingtheSemanticWeb.com web service. If the service found that the URL points to a HTML document, it will check if it can find a link to a FOAF, a DOAP or a SIOC rdf document. If it founds one, it will follows the link and check the RDF document to see if SIOC, DOAP and/or FOAF elements are defined in the document. If the service found that the RDF document has SIOC, DOAP and/or FOAF elements, it will archive the ping and make it available to crawlers the export files. Otherwise it will discard it.

 

 

Custom needs, suggestions and bug reports

This service is new, so if you have any suggestions to improve it, if you find any bugs while pinging URLs or importing ping lists, or if you have any custom needs for you semantic web crawler of software agents, please contact me by email [fred ( at ) fgiasson.com], that way I’ll be able to help you out as quickly as possible.

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