The Fiction Books I Read in 2010

I decided to keep track of all the books I read in 2010. I wondered what I would learn from doing this? To make it easier for me to publish and (hopefully) for you to digest, I've broken it into fiction and non. So, here are the 20 fiction books, in the order I read them in 2010. (You can also read my 2010 non fiction list).

1. The Road by Cormac McCarthy.

Set after an unspecified apocalypse, this book follows an unnamed father and son trudging along a road through a grey wasteland of death and destruction. If this sounds grim, well, it is.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/osiatynska/3287986172/
Thanks to osiantynska for this image of piles of books

Although I like horror films, I don't read many (any?) horror books; this one was a gift. I often regretted reading it right before going to sleep. And, after reading the book, I really didn't want to watch the film version. However, I thoroughly enjoyed the book - grim, yet gripping.

2. A Star Called Henry (The Last Roundup) by Roddy Doyle.
Henry, the son of a one-legged hitman, grows up on the streets of Dublin in the early 20th century. He gets mixed up in the Easter Rising of 1916 and becomes a hitman for the IRA.

Roddy Doyle's convincing portrait of Irish street life is by turns comic and tragic. It cleverly makes you see why someone would want to become a terrorist; but also how Henry is inevitably betrayed by his own cause.

3. Loving Frank: A Novel by Nancy Horan
Just like A Star Called Henry, Loving Frank is a novel based on true events. This one follows Mamah Bothwick Cheney, who had an affair with Frank Lloyd Wright.

There was nothing wrong with this book but it just didn't grip me. I never did finish it... but I'm going to count it anyway, partly because I made it most of the way through. And partly because my total number of books read would be even worse otherwise.

4. The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer by Neal Stephenson
This science fiction novel portrays a world that is being reshaped by nanotechnology and being carved up amongst competing tribes, such as the neoconfucians and neovictorians. Several interlocking plot threads follow nicely-drawn characters and weave the details of the fully-imagined future cultures.

I read - and loved - Stephenson's SF classic Snow Crash and his hugely ambitious Baroque Cycle historical fiction books. Diamond Age is quite different again from these in style and subject matter. But, just as with his other books, Stephenson crafted a novel that is both entertaining and thought-provoking.

5. A Most Wanted Man by John le Carre
Le Carre's post-9/11 spy thriller is set in Hamburg and centres on Issa, who may be a Muslim medical student, or a Chechnyan terrorist, or the son of a Russian spy, or all of the above.

Another fictional book that make me feel smarter and better-informed about the real world and its moral complexities.

6. Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned by Walter Mosley
Each of the perfectly crafted short stories about Socrates Fortlow, an ex-convict now scraping out an existence in a Watts shack, stands on its own. And yet the whole collection hangs together like a novel.

Brilliant stuff.

7. The Tourist by Olen Steinhauer
Portraying the alienation and action in the life of a post Cold War spy is now a well-trodden path. But Steinhauer's tale of a CIA "Tourist" (a spy of no-fixed-abode) is well-executed, with convincing characters and a multi-layered plot, played out against backdrops that combine glamour and squalor in equal measure.

8. Making History by Stephen Fry
This is polymath and over-achiever Stephen Fry's third novel. It is an alternative history (what if Hitler won WWII?) although it is cleverly framed as an alternative reality (what if we could go back and change history to prevent Hitler's rise to power?). As you might guess, there's a be-careful-what-you-wish-for twist and Fry uses the what-if's to illustrate how things are better than they might have been.

Not the best novel I've ever read, but entertaining enough and I particularly liked the details of the London and Princeton settings.

9. American Gods: A Novel by Neil Gaiman
I rarely re-read a book, but American Gods was selected for One Book One Twitter, an experimental online bookclub and I decided to join in the fun (a little bit). AG follows the journey of Shadow as he learns about the gods that followed people to America and wound up as shadows of their former godselves, as people forgot their old gods in the New World.

I thoroughly enjoyed re-reading this book, partly because of the added Twittery dimension, but also because I noticed a lot more the second time through this dense and cleverly written imaginative work.

10. Neverwhere: A Novel by Neil Gaiman
Next, I decided to read a new-to-me Gaiman novel. Neverwhere takes you beneath London into a fantasy informed by punning on the Tube stop names (you meet black friars, an Earl holds court and there's a central character who is an angel called Islington).

Lighter-weight than American Gods, but fun none-the-less.

11. Fleshmarket Alley: An Inspector Rebus Novel by Ian Rankin
As our big holiday this summer revolved around Edinburgh, I followed my tradition and read a book set in that city. I was happy that Fleshmarket Alley is a real location off Cockburn Street - and only slightly disappointed that it is really called Fleshmarket Close (as are the books outside of the USA). We saw Ian Rankin in the flesh (and Alisa spoke to him), as the Edinburgh Book Festival was in full swing when we visited.

Fleshmarket Alley / Close is a solid entry in the seemingly neverending series of well-written Rebus murder mysteries.

12. Best of Philip K Dick by Philip K Dick
I was inspired to read this collection of sci-fi short stories by the World Cup. Remember Paul? Well, Philip K Dick wrote Martian Time-Slip which I hear involves an octopus that can predict the future (or maybe is controlling the future). Sadly, that book wasn't available in the library. But this collection was - and it contained several of his short stories that were later reworked into films (Minority Report, Total Recall and so on).

13. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon
I was flying somewhere when I ran out of books to read. I think I had a 45 minute layover in Chicago? So, I ran into a bookshop and bought this book. It turned out to be a great choice.

The mid-twentieth century Cambrian explosion of comic books is the backdrop for and inspires the style of this novel about two Jewish cousins and their families in New York City. Although the action roams far and wide, including Prague (with several magical appearances by the Golem) and frozen mad battles in Antartica.

14. Valley of Bones: A Novel by Michael Gruber
Cuban-American detective Jimmy Paz investigates a mysterious, mystic nun implicated in the murder of an Arab arms dealer. This turned out to be a very original entry in the mystery/thriller genre, as it roams back and forth in time and between continents.

15. Murder on the Leviathan: A Novel by Boris Akunin
Translated from the Russian, this is a period murder mystery set onboard a cruise ship. I particularly liked how each chapter was told from the view point of a different character.

16. The Echelon Vendetta by David Stone
At the local library fundraiser, I bought a bag of books for a dollar. This was one of them. But this CIA spy thriller wasn't half bad.

17. Severance Package by Duane Swierczynski
There were several things I liked about this thriller by former Philadelphia City Paper editor Swiercynski. It is simultaneously set in Philadelphia and Edinburgh, both cities I know quite well. The action and plotting are a bit comic book but there are enough comedic touches to make it an entertaining ride.

18. Cold Service by Robert B Parker
19. Hush Money by Robert B Parker
Both of these Parker books were in the for-a-dollar bag. They are each competent entries in the Spenser detective series. Quick and painless reads.

20. Super Sad True Love Story: A Novel by Gary Shteyngart
Picked by several people as their book of the year, this novel is set in Rome and New York City in the near future. It traces Lenny (obviously modeled on Gary) and Eunice (his Korean American gf) as they navigate their way through the fashion-obsessed, technology drenched, book disdaining world. Everyone is glued to their apparats (descendants of today's smartphones) which broadcast constant streams of data about you and bombard you with information about the people and things around you. I particularly liked the portrayals of the Bipartisan party and the ubiquitous National Guard checkpoints.

In a lot of ways, SSTLS reminded me of William Gibson's recent novels, although Shteyngart is more skeptical of the frantic, technology driven future. It reminded me of a thought I had whilst in Rome in November - that there is hope for a happy future after an empire collapses, which is heartening given what the USA is going through currently. There are many clever references ("The Rupture") but there is also a lot of depth. Lenny and Eunice are convincing characters and quite different from one another. My last novel I read in 2010 and one of my favourites.

The Non Fiction Books I Read in 2010

I decided to keep track of all the books I read in 2010.  I wondered what I would learn from doing this?  To make it a little easier for me to publish and (hopefully) for you to digest, I've broken it into fiction and non.  So, here are the 10 2010 non fiction books, in the order I read them.  (You can also read my 2010 fiction list).

1. The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine by Michael Lewis

Lewis exposes the convoluted financial mechanics and dreadful yet unsurprising morality that lead to the world-wide financial collapse of 2008.  He tells the story through little-known financial players, most of whom saw the problems much earlier and decided to do something about it.  Often that something was to make as much money as possible.

Using the contrarians is a clever way to explain the complicated financial engineering and to make sure that the message of Wall Street being evil, greedy and incompetent gets thoroughly hammered home.  One reason I read this book: my friend Janet was the copy editor. A second reason: I was the "special guest" at the all-female book club, as I was expected to be able to explain the financial mumbo jumbo.  Luckily, Lewis himself does a good job in explaining CDOs and CDSes and the like.  And, even though he somewhat oversimplifies what happened, this was one of the Big Idea Books of 2010 and I was glad to have read it.

2. Consider the Lobster and Other Essays by David Foster Wallace

An eclectic series of essays on everything from the motives of talk radio hosts, to why sports autobiographies are so compelling and yet so unsatisfying, to the spectacle and dubious ethics of the Maine lobster festival.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/simon_cocks/4867695239/

Thanks to simon_cocks for this image of a book on the beach

I'm told that I really should read DFW's Infinite Jest but instead I keep reading collections of his essays (in 2009 I read and loved A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again). I'm sure some people will find his constant use of abbreviations, lengthy parenthetical remarks and huge footnotes annoying, but I happen to love them. And every essay takes unexpected zags that keep you on your mental toes.

3. The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work by Alain de Botton

This elegant collection of essays explores the details, delights and distresses of modern work.

I enjoyed de Botton's How Proust Can Change Your Life, The Art of Travel and - particularly - The Consolations of Philosophy. His twitter comments aren't bad, either. So, clearly, I'm a fan of this English philosopher and you won't be surprised that I liked this one, too.

4. A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare: 1599 by James Shapiro

The life and times of William Shakespeare seem to always fascinate scholars - and they fascinate me, too. Shapiro smartly picks a single year to illuminate the Bard and how contemporary events influenced some of his greatest works - Henry V, Julius Caesar, As You Like It and Hamlet. Or maybe Shapiro is using the hook of revealing more about Shakespeare to educate us about a tumultuous year in English history - Irish rebellion, threatened invasion by a Spanish Armada, Essex and Elizabeth's complicated courtly romance and the favourite's fall from favour.

5. By Hook or By Crook by David Crystal

Linguist Crystal wandered all over Britain to learn more about English as it is actually spoken today. He also took a trip or two to illustrate a little bit about the how the language is evolving elsewhere.  He assumes a fair amount of knowledge of British culture (and especially British TV), which some might find off putting.  But I liked each carefully crafted chapter.

6. On the Rez by Ian Frazer
On the Rez is a long, rambling mix of biography and history.  The biography is mainly that of Frazer's friend Le War Lance, although he throws in some other portraits, too. The touching story of SuAnne Marie Big Crow is particularly powerful.  The history that weaves in amongst the tales of Frazer and Le's troubled friendship is that of the Oglala Sioux Nation.

A difficult and important read.

7. Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms: Essays on Natural History by Steven Jay Gould
A theme that runs through many of these  essays from Natural History magazine is how scientists can be wrong in interesting ways: how they can arrive at the right answer via the wrong path (or the wrong answer via the right path).  And, of course, the Theory of Evolution continues to be Gould's touchstone.

I enjoyed this collection, although I would recommend that SJG newbies start with one of his earlier works (such as Wonderful Life or Eight Little Piggies).

8. How to Become a Scandal: Adventures in Bad Behavior by Laura Kipnis

The astronaut who drove non-stop cross country in a nappy (or a "diaper", if you prefer) because she was in a love triangle with two other astronauts.  The friend who betrayed  Monica Lewinsky's confidence.  A judge who falls off his rocker.  The exaggerations of a Million Little Pieces.

There is plenty of schadenfreude to be derived from this book - and maybe a little insight in human nature, too.  I wasn't really all that familiar with these scandals, so it was fun to learn about them (in a scholarly book, of course).  And then to find out a bit more about how what really happened was a lot more complicated.  That you could even understand this apparently crazy behaviour.

9. Quantum Theory: A Very Short Introduction by John Polkinghorne

I knew virtually nothing amongst quantum theory before I read this book.  By the end of it, I felt like I had a pretty good grasp of how different the concepts are, and how this complex set of theories is still evolving.  This is the second Very Short Introduction I've read.  Both were good - and easily to slip into a pocket, so you can read up on erudite subjects even when in Forever 21.

10. The Age of Paradox by Charles Handy

A lot of non-fiction books have a snappy title that betrays the central idea, which they then repeat for hundreds of pages.  I was worried that this book was going to be like that - explaining everything in terms of paradox.  However, even though that Handy does discuss lots of puzzles - work, justice, citizenship - in terms of paradox, it actually works.  Published in the mid-1990's, it is interesting to read now - as much of what he predicts has already come to pass - and it still feels relevant today.

IPTC and Rights Expression Languages

IPTC has been looking at how to express rights for news content. At the Rome IPTC meeting, I presented the work to date (slides are on slideshare). And Daniel Pähler presented ODRL, the Open Digital Rights Language.

The News Industry Need for Machine Readable Rights
Various news publishers have identified the ability to be able to express rights in a machine readable way as being a priority. In part, this reflects the fundamental changes that have been transforming the news industry. Once, an agency such as the Associated Press distributed content to editors at newspapers and broadcasters, who would select which items they would use. In the process of this selection, they would be able to read any editors' notes, which could include any restrictions that needed to be observed. However, increasingly, news outlets are fully automated, with very little - if any - editorial oversight of what is published. Amongst other things, this drives the need for the expression of rights and restrictions in a way that can be evaluated automatically. This automation would allow the editorial process to be more efficient. In general, an editor still needs to exercise their judgement as to whether a particular restriction applies in a particular context. But, automatic evaluation of rights and restrictions can identify the items that need those decisions, rather than having editors inspect every single item. (This exercise of editorial judgement means that these systems are not like DRM, in which particular actions are forbidden and typically enforced by the devices involved).

IPTC and Rights Expression
IPTC reviewed how the various news formats that it maintains allow for the expression of rights. In every case, there are currently semi-structured ways to express rights using natural language, which wouldn't easily allow for the fully machine-readable rights expressions that member companies need to express. On the other hand, the IPTC has consistently decided that it didn't want to develop a machine-readable rights expression itself - members of the IPTC have felt qualified to develop news formats, whereas legal matters are a different domain.

ODRL and ACAP
After reviewing several candidates, we felt that ODRL v2 was the best fit for an existing (though not quite yet complete) rights expression language. In particular, it offers the ability to create an industry-specific rights vocabulary that can be "plugged in" to the ODRL framework. The IPTC has been working with ACAP on developing this vocabulary and with the ODRL group to help refine the ODRL v2 framework itself.

Daniel's slides can be downloaded from the ODRL Wiki.  They give a nice introduction to the ODRL effort and the ODRL v2 approach.

Questions on Rights and ODRL
Daniel and I were asked several questions about rights for news in general and ODRL in particular. For example, there was some discussion about whether rights are really only applicable to photographs (the consensus was no - every media type has increasing amounts of rights being applied). There were questions about how to apply rights to the parts of an item (such as the frames within a video). The partMeta structure of NewsML-G2 handles this nicely (assuming we were to include ODRL within the partMeta structure, which I think we would). There were also questions about what industries are using ODRL today. Chiefly, the mobile phone industry uses ODRL v1 as part of the OMA DRM system (http://xml.coverpages.org/ni2004-05-31-a.html). Daniel explained that there are several academic projects that are using or working on ODRL v2 (Daniel himself is from the University of Koblenz).

Get Involved
You can find out more about the ACAP ODRL profile - and even participate in the work - by visiting the a special Wiki page set up by ODRL for ACAP:

http://odrl.net/wiki/tiki-index.php?page=ACAP+Profile

Adding Foreign Namespace Support to the NITF XML Schema

As previously discussed on this blog, NITF has very limited support for foreign namespaces.  I've been experimenting with ways to remedy this and presented the results at the most recent face-to-face IPTC meeting (in Rome).  I have posted the NITF slides on slideshare.

During the meeting, it was decided to break the NITF 4.0 effort into two:

• NITF 3.6 release, which would directly address the addition of foreign namespaces and could be approved as early as January 2011
• NITF 4.0 which would add support for G2 features (such as qcodes) and will likely require significantly more work to develop and approve

It was decided to take this approach, since foreign namespace support addresses pressing needs (in fact, many people do not realize that it isn't legal already to mix and match NITF with other XML schema).  It was also felt that this change is relatively minor and so doesn't merit a major version number change (not sure I agree with that, but ...).

Therefore, I have now created an NITF 3.6 set of schema files, fixing various bugs in the previous experimental schema and adding expansion points that were missing.  So, compared with NITF 3.5, the experimental schema

• Added any attributes in globalNITFAttributes and commonNITFAttributes
• Added any element into head, body, docdata, body.head, block, enriched text, after body, media, body.end

I've also versioned the ruby files to 3.6 and altered the comments to discuss NITF 3.6, rather than NITF 3.5. Finally, I've created an NITF instance that exercises the various foreign namespace capabilities.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nitf/files/schema/nitf-3-6.xsd
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nitf/files/schema/nitf-3-6-ruby-include.xsd
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nitf/files/schema/nitfastronautNSspan.xml

These files are also available via the NITF 3.6 directory on the IPTC website.


Comments?  Questions?  Critiques?

IPTC and Semantic Web Technologies - Linked Data, Metadata and Ontology

At the IPTC's most recent face-to-face meeting in Rome, we reviewed our explorations of semantic web technologies for news. The news standards body has been looking at three major areas:

• Linked Data
• Metadata in HTML (RDFa and microformats)
• News Ontology

Linked Data
We discussed our work to turn IPTC's subject codes into Linked Data using SKOS concepts and Dublin Core properties. Michael Steidl (Managing Director of the IPTC) was planning to demo the IPTC Linked Data ... but, sadly, Internet access was not working in the hotel! He was, however, able to discuss the proposed collaboration between the IPTC and MINDS on Linked Data for news.

Linking and Mapping

Much of the discussion about IPTC's Linked Data work turned on the difficulties of mapping. In addition to representing the IPTC subject codes in RDF/XML and RDF/Turtle, there was some work done to map from the 17 top level IPTC terms to dbpedia concepts. We quickly figured out that these top level terms are chiefly umbrella terms and so don't map very well to individual dbpedia concepts. The meeting felt that it would be good to map the second level terms, but the problem is that this is quite a lot of work and - as usual - it isn't clear who will do it! We then explored some of the challenges of creating and maintaining the links in Linked Data - that is where a lot of the value, but also much of the investment, lies.

My slides about IPTC's Linked Data work are available on slideshare:

http://www.slideshare.net/smyles/iptc-sem-webstuartmyles201011

Metadata in HTML - rNews and hNews

Many news providers have created feeds to supply news using IPTC formats such as NITF and NewsML-G2. However, there are an increasing number of consumers of news who only want to work with "pure" web technologies, i.e. HTML rather than XML. So, the IPTC has been looking at the two major paths to represent metadata in HTML - microformats and RDFa.

hNews

I discussed hNews - the microformat for news that was adopted by the community in late 2009 - which builds upon hAtom by adding a few news-specific fields (such as Source and Dateline). As well as explaining how to add microformats to your HTML templates, I provided some statistics that the Associated Press has gathered on adoption. (As of October 2010, we know of about 1,200 sites using hNews, predominantly in North America). See my Prezi on hNews at http://prezi.com/uo5ggdkll8sa/an-introduction-to-hnews/ for more.

rNews

Evan Sandhaus (Semantic Technologist at The New York Times) described rNews - a proposal for an RDFa vocabulary for news. As the names imply, rNews and hNews are similar in intent (news-specific metadata in HTML) but somewhat different in approach. Whereas hNews went through the microformats process, an RDFa vocabulary can be created by anyone. Evan has created an initial rNews draft based somewhat on the NewsML-G2, NITF and hNews models but it is clearly heavily influenced by the needs of the New York Times.

Members of the IPTC's Semantic Web Yahoo! Group can view Evan's rNews draft and are encouraged to discuss it in that email group. At the Rome face-to-face meeting there was quite a lot of interest, but also several issues raised about the details of the first draft. The meeting generally agreed to continue looking at both hNews and rNews, with a view to making a recommendation on both in 2011.

The benefit of getting rNews and hNews adopted by the IPTC is that greater industry support translates into less work for toolmakers: if many news providers support hNews and/or rNews - and do so in very similar ways - then it is easier to build parsers and tools to extract metadata from HTML.

News Ontology

Benoît Sergent of the European Broadcasting Union discussed the work that he and his colleague Jean-Pierre Evain have been doing to create a news ontology, based upon the NewsML-G2 news model. Benoît described how EBU would like to combine the video content that it produces with content from its member organizations and other third parties. If they can represent this information using a flexible, universal model (the news ontology) they could use off-the-shelf tools (such as a triple store) to query, manipulate and recombine that content.

In many ways, this is the most fundamental piece of the semantic web work that the IPTC is undertaking. It is also the least accessible, for many. Members of the IPTC SemWeb group can view a draft of the news ontology and can comment in that email list.

Expanding Beyond the Point - Geo Geometries and Features

When adding "geo data" to your content, it is tempting to think you just need to add a latitude and longitude and you're done.  After all, this allows you to plot your data on a map, by applying a push pin or the like.

what's the point?
http://www.flickr.com/photos/darren/35248684/

However, that lat+long pair may indicate the centre of a location in your content, but it doesn't reveal anything about the scale or type of the location.  There are two ways you can do this.  One is to make use of a geometry, the other is to identify the feature type.  And you can use both together.

Geo Geometries

Geometry at the National Mosque
http://www.flickr.com/photos/swamibu/2527486134/

If you look at the various geo standards, you'll see that it is common to use different types of geometry for geographic data.  For example, if you look at http://www.georss.org/simple you'll see

Point
Line
Polygon
Box
Circle

The polygon, box and circle all express areas.  The needs of your application will likely drive which one might be most appropriate.  For example, if you want to display a map at the right "zoom level", it is likely that a point (aka the centroid) and a box (aka the bounding box) are enough.  (In which case, you'll need three points to express them - one for the centroid, two for the corners of the bounding box.  Obviously, the other geometries have different characteristics - you only need the centroid and a radius to express a circle, whereas a polygon must have at least three points, but can have many more).

Geo Features

Pigeon Point / Sky Whale...
http://www.flickr.com/photos/nzdave/303236483/

On the other hand, it could be that what you're aiming to do is to describe what is known as the "geo feature", rather than or in addition to the geometry of an area.  In other words, how is the area classified - is it a city, a country, a park, a farm, a forest, a lake ...?  If so, then there are some geo ontologies that might help.  A popular one is the geonames ontology, which breaks down geo features into subtypes of administrative boundaries, hydrographic, area, populated place, road / railroad, spot, hypsographic, undersea and vegetation http://www.geonames.org/statistics/total.html

Linked Data and the World Cup

In January of 2010, I attended the News Linked Data Summit. This was a collection of several organizations involved in news production and distribution, looking to see if there was a way to collaborate on moving forward the Semantic Web (and particularly Linked Data) for news. It was a very interesting discussion, lead mainly by the BBC and The Guardian. At the end of the day, the group decided to move forward together by producing Linked Data for the UK Election. (In January, the election was clearly going to happen in the near future, but not yet announced - it wound up happening in May 2010).

I had a counter proposal for a Linked Data experiment - the World Cup. This made more sense for my employer and seemed to be of interest to at least some others. It was not to be, however. (I later spoke to some folks about whatever happened with the UK Election Linked Data experiment. As far as I can tell, the Guardian did produce some election data. But it isn't clear to me that this turned into anything bigger).

By Shine 2010 http://www.flickr.com/photos/shine2010/3292491879/

However, it turns out that the BBC did use the Semantic Web to power their World Cup “microsite” (actually their World Cup site has more pages than the non-SemWeb Sports section). In "The World Cup and a call to action Around Linked Data", BBC Architect John O'Donovan gives an overview of how they used fine-grained metadata to be able to produce their site with far less need for editorial curation of individual pages. In an accompanying piece, Jem Rayfield describes the technical details of the "dynamic semantic publishing".

Although their descriptions are couched in the terms of the Semantic Web, much of what they describe is more to do with the application of fine-grained metadata than with the particular data formats they use. They do describe how they make use of certain Semantic Web technologies - such as an RDF Triplesore / SPARQL system - to apply derived properties. And it is almost certainly the case that the use of the RDF model has given them more flexibility than can be the case when you use RDBMS systems - or even XML-based schema. However, fundamentally, what they are describing is the potential for what could be done via the application of metadata to content. It is interesting to see it in action.

The England Team didn't do so well at the World Cup - thanks Doug88888! http://www.flickr.com/photos/doug88888/4550561194/

It is also interesting how much of a revelation this is to people. (The first article was widely distributed via Twitter. And the comments are quite breathless in their admiration).

Hopefully, the work that the IPTC is doing on Linked Data and the Semantic Web will help other news organizations (including the AP!) unlock some of the great metadata work that is going on behind the scenes...