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When I first started taking an interest in semantic web technologies, I sought out places with quality information and opinion. Too often I found there was no up-to-date 'directory' listing the thought leaders in the field. Many information outlets were associated with specific products rather than design principles or standards. That made the initial learning process painful.

For the first question in SemanticOverflow I'd like your thoughts on where the richest sources of impartial semantic web wisdom and background are to be found. Where should I go, if I'm a beginner, to best help me ascend the semantic web learning curve? What about if I've grokked the fundamentals and want to dig deeper? How do I become a semantic web ninja?

UPDATE

The following list shows the links provided so far.

Information Sites

  1. W3C Primer
  2. esw.w3.org/topic/
  3. www.rdfabout.com/
  4. www.w3.org/2001/sw/
  5. www.w3.org/DesignIssues/
  6. videolectures.net/Top/Computer_Science/Semantic_Web/
  7. www.semanticschool.com/ (Polish, maybe English in future)
  8. semanticweb.com/
  9. Lee Feigenbaum's tutorials and overview
  10. Aaron Swartz's RDF Primer Primer
  11. linkeddata.org guides and tutorials
  12. co-ode guide to ontology development
  13. Talis' - HowTo and Getting Started guides
  14. Ontolog Forum
  15. Semantic web at Reddit
  16. semanticweb.org
  17. SemanticUniverse.com Semantic Technology Conference site.

Blogs

  1. Jeni Tennison
  2. Ivan Herman
  3. Kingsley Idehen
  4. Michael Hausenblas
  5. Henry Story
  6. Talis' Nodalities Blog
  7. planetrdf.com - Blog Aggregator

Books

  1. Semantic Web for the Working Ontologist - Allemang & Hendler
  2. Linked Data Patterns - Dodds & Davis
  3. Programming the Semantic Web - Segaran, Evans, Taylor
  4. foundations of semantic web technologies - Hitzler, Krötzsch, Rudolph.

Good Answers Elsewhere

  1. From What can I do to make myself semantic web literate
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23 Answers

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The ESW Wiki is one central place for practical information from the Linked Open Data perspective. (But what does ESW stand for? Mystery.)

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I think ESW is for European Semantic Web. Complete conjecture based on the esw referring to a mailing list for SWAD-Europe IST-7 EU project here: lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-esw – Jodi Schneider 13 hours ago
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For the RDF component of the semantic web, if you're looking to go in deeper, I've written two guides at http://www.rdfabout.com which I've been told are quite good. :-) The site also links to all of the relevant standards at the W3C.

(Sorry for two posts. SO only allows one link per post for new users....)

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For an in-depth primer, I recommend the book "Semantic Web for the Working Ontologist" by Allemang & Hendler. It explains the concepts well and has lots of practical examples.

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I have started a blog called "Szkola Web 3.0" at http://www.semanticschool.com/

It provides daily, short articles about the Semantic Web and news from the Web 3.0 world - I have started at the very basic level - and have recently covered OWL Lite. Will announce SemanticOverflow today :D

At the moment the blog is dedicated for the Polish audience only, but I am looking for people interested in providing side by side articles in other languages as well.

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2 
 I think it's good to have information and tutorials in many languages... – Egon Willighagen Nov 9 at 10:17
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For people on reddit, there is a semantic web-subreddit. We are a small group (~700 subscribers, started a year ago), but (I like to think that) the links are of decent quality.

I personally try to post links to the "less talking, more showing/coding" kind of articles, if that is your thing.

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We publish a lot of howto and getting started type materials on our developer blog: http://blogs.talis.com/n2

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Linked data: http://linkeddata.org/guides-and-tutorials

Ontology Development: http://www.co-ode.org/

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Two fundamental links I have not seen in answers yet:

  • Semanticweb.org
  • Sweet tools at AI3- www.mkbergman.com/new-version-sweet-tools-sem-web/

The AI3 blog is a goldmine of topics and resources about Ontologies, semantic web and semantic tools in general.

(sorry for the incomplete URL for Sweet Tools - I am limited by the first time user quota on hyperlinks).

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I think the following article by Tim Berners Lee is a really clear introduction the Semantic Web ...

http://www.w3.org/2000/10/swap/Primer

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My answer (the link limit really really sucks)

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Yeah, it does. Especially since I want people to provide as many li ms as possible. For now, just answer as many times as you need to and i'll summarize as an update to my question. – Andrew Matthews♦ Oct 27 at 20:08
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(uggh! breaking this into multiple answers because of the link limit - sorry!)

I've got a couple of tutorials that give an introduction to many of the Semantic Web technologies:

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(uggh! "new users can only post answers ever 3 minutes; try again later")

...and pastebin thinks my links are spam.

ok, how about this:

http://thefigtrees.net/lee/sw/links.html

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Thanks for persevering, Lee. I've added your links to the summary above. – Andrew Matthews♦ Oct 28 at 22:27
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Semantic Web FAQ

planetrdf.com - aggregation of SemWeb blogs

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For dead-tree books, I recommend "Explorer's Guide To The Semantic Web" and "Thinking On The Web." Both are pretty good for getting an initial taste for the Semantic Web.

http://www.manning.com/passin/

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If you have enough time to listen to them, I reckon Paul Miller's series of podcasts with various interesting semwebby people is a very valuable resource. Published on the Nodalities blog: http://blogs.talis.com/nodalities/

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The Ontolog Forum is a semantics community of practice with roots going way back into AI and the like, and with considered and valuable postings from the likes of John F Sowa, Pat Hayes, and many other leading lights in the semantics world.

http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?WikiHomePage

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1

I have learned the basics and theory behind the semantic web technologies with http://www.semantic-web-book.org/

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1

A cute and useful reading that completes the above mentioned Semantic Web Primer, is the RDF Primer Primer

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http://semanticweb.org/wiki/Main_Page

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The mission of Semantic Universe.com is to raise awareness and explain the usage of semantic technologies in business and consumer settings. Projects by Semantic Universe include the annual Semantic Technology Conference link text and the Semantic Universe Network.

Semantic Universe Network is a joint venture of Wilshire Conferences and Semantic Arts and Cerebra

Now in its fifth year, the annual SemTech Conference represents virtually the entire spectrum of business, government, and consumer activity taking place within the emerging field of semantic technologies. It is the most extensive event ever assembled on the topic.

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1

My 2 cents...

Choose a library written in your favorite language and read the source code, join their mailing list, start answering questions and make new interesting ones yourself, contribute patches and report bugs if you find one.

Forget about: trees, XML, don't hurt yourself with RDF/XML + XSLT and think "graphs".

Read the recommendations from W3C (no, not the one about RDF/XML).

"We Learn... 10% of what we read 20% of what we hear 30% of what we see 50% of what we see and hear 70% of what we discuss 80% of what we experience 95% of what we teach others." -- William Glasser

So, in theory you should teach... but, please, no need to become a University professor (no offence!)... you can just share your experience. :-)

Have fun!

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1

stackoverflow has some decent questions answered around Semantic Web..

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@Joshua: the ESW Wiki stems, AFAIK, from the SWAD project end hence the 'E' might actually stand for Europe ;)

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Please add comments and replies on the answer you're replying to... – Andrew Matthews♦ Nov 1 at 23:47
Andrew, I don't seem to understand. I was answering to Joshua's question what the E in ESW stands for. As, due to the limitations of the system a direct reply is not possible, I used @Joshua. I find your rating offensive and not helpful at all. Lesson learned. Will stay away from your site from now on ... – Michael Hausenblas Nov 3 at 13:20
mhausenblas I think the rating was just to point out that your comment was better made as a direct reply on the answer rather than as a new answer – Ian Davis Nov 3 at 16:24
Thanks for the answer, Michael. (Making comments to answers seems to be disabled for new users, which is a bit confusing.) – Joshua Tauberer Nov 4 at 13:58
I have always been wondering this too, and actually found this info quite informative... and I see no problem with it showing up down here... though it would be nice is someone could start a wiki-enabled answer aggregating all answers, to make the interesting easier to process... – Egon Willighagen Nov 7 at 16:05

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