| Mandriva to help build "Social Semantic Desktop" |
Feb. 28, 2006
Mandriva subsidiary Edge-IT has been selected to participate in an EU-backed project that aims to create a next-generation computing approach known as the "Social Semantic Desktop." The goal is to transform the PC into a collaborative environment that supports both personal computing and information sharing via social and organizational channels.
The $20 million NEPOMUK project plans to create the framework for the Social Semantic Desktop, which will bring three major changes to desktop computing: the availability of contextual information; the shift from hierarchical to semantic storage; and advanced methods of assisting users through collaboration and more effective search.
To build the Semantic Desktop, according to the project's website, NEPOMUK's objectives are to develop the methods, data structures, and services necessary...- To annotate and link arbitrary information on the local desktop, across different media types, file formats, and applications. Semantic web data structures and techniques will be applied and adapted to achieve this goal.
- To articulate and visualize the user's ideas and transform them into semantic information. We will extend easy-to-use wiki technology and integrate it with annotation mechanisms.
- To integrate content creation and processing with the users' way of structuring their work. Key approach will be the integration of agile process modelling concepts with the information generation and structuring.
"NEPOMUK will result in revolutionary applications," said Mandriva CEO Francois Bancilhon. "Social Semantic Desktop represents a big opportunity to further extend the knowledge sharing functions offered by current technologies."
Mandriva's Edge-IT support and services subsidiary, acquired in July 2004, has been awarded $2.1 million from the project to help fund various roles in the project. Mandriva said it will participate in the definition of the infrastructure tools necessary for the NEPOMUK project, and will help to organize and lead community engineering and establish community support.
The company will also take over the submission of NEPOMUK application programming interfaces to standards organizations, such as the World Wide Web Consortium, as well as implementing NEPOMUK technologies on its Mandriva Club website, creating a community help-desk platform with peer-to-peer capabilities to provide one of the first real-world applications.
The NEPOMUK framework is expected to integrate with existing desktop tools and environments, such as the KDE and Gnome Linux graphical interfaces, the Mozilla browser, and the Eclipse development environment and tool set, Mandriva said.
Fifty percent of the NEPOMUK project is funded by the European Union's Sixth Framework Programme. The other half of the funding comes from corporations, including IBM Corp., Hewlett-Packard Co., SAP AG, Thales SA, and the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence, among others.
The Nepomuk Project is not connected with the town of about 3,600 of the same name in the Plzen region of the Czech Republic.
Related Stories:
(Click here for further information)
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
