topicmapsforge.org

Update adds oil, gas, energy, and export data to Factbook Map

2010-10-12T00:00:00

The topic map of the CIA World Factbook was enhanced by data on production and consumption of oil, gas, and energy, as well as on export commodities.

Due to the subject-centric mapping, any country named for a particular export commodity is now linked with all other countries named for the same commodity. Therefore, it takes just a mouse click to find out, for which countries the CIA mentions carpets as relevant export commodities.

Answers to strategic questions on carpet exporting countries may also be easily retrieved. For instance, find out which of the carpet exporting countries has the highest oil production by setting a text filter ("carpets") on the locations overview, and sorting the remaining countries by the respective property.

Factbook Map extended by economic data

2010-09-06T00:00:00

The Factbook Topic Map on topicmapsforge was extended by economic data from the CIA World Factbook. The enhanced version now offers the following additional data: Gross domestic product, growth rate of GDP, growth rate of industrial production, unemployment rate, and inflation rate.

The update also adds information on natural resources. Unlike the website of the CIA, topicmapsforge.org provides information on natural resources in a subject-oriented way. This means, that any country mentioned in relation to a particular natural resource can be retrieved with a single mouse click. The same kind of transparency is also provided with respect to religions.

The Factbook Map provides a particularly good data store for exploration with PivotViewer - the graphical tool for filtering and selection. Have a look at a grouping of countries by inflation rates. There are countries with more than 30% inflation rate. In countries with annual per capita income above 20.000 $, however no inflation rates above 12% are reported, as the corresponding country distribution shows.

New visualization tool integrated

2010-08-12T00:00:00

With PivotViewer, a new tool for the visualization of data stored in the topic maps has become available to topicmapsforge.org.

PivotViewer allows the intuitive exploration of large data sets which can be reduced to manageable quantities with a few clicks. Moreover, PivotViewer offers various collections for each single topic map. Each collection represents a central theme of the respective topic map and consists of a series of topics and their characteristics, grouped into facets and their values.

With PivotViewer, the values of the facets can be restricted in order to quickly obtain data sets with the required characteristics. Furthermore the values of the facets can also be searched or used for the grouping of data.

What makes PivotViewer special is the graphic representation of resulting data sets, which may also be displayed as distributions over the range of values of the selected property. Investigate for example the distribution of life expectancy in the countries of the „Factbook“-Map and consider the changes which occur in this distribution when the BIP/per capita is gradually reduced to include the lower incomes only.

Try PivotViewer with one of the collections in the "Factbook" map or have a look in the manual before you start.

Here you'll find a list of all available pivot collections on topicmapsforge.org: PivotViewer collections.

Factbook map with country data based on World Factbook of CIA published

2010-08-12T00:00:00

It is with the Factbook Topic Map that the third semantic application went online today on topicmapsforge.org. Based on the current edition of “The World Factbook” of the CIA, numerous statistical and descriptive data about all countries of the world are now available in a navigable network.

A special feature is the adoption of the new PivotViewer on the country table. It offers graphical overviews about the characteristics of countries with powerful faceted filtering functionalities hitherto unavailable.

Map on the Soccer World Cup 2010 enhanced by match statistics

2010-06-04T00:00:00

Based on a topic map, available in English and in German, tmf provides comprehensive overviews on teams, players, referees and stadiums, as well as to the schedule of all matches of the upcoming Football World Cup 2010 in South Africa.

Historical match statistics of the participating teams have been newly added. For every team, there is now a further overview providing the number of matches, scored and conceded goals, as well as wins, draws and losses.

In group D, Germany's best known opponent will be Australia. Will you find the historically most difficult opponent of the German team?

After the extensions on the topic map for the Soccer World Cup, topicmapsforge.org now provides more than 2800 web pages with over 136.000 links.

The final team line-ups are now also available, and for the stadiums links to Google Maps have been added.

topicmapsforge.org maps descriptive variety lists of Germany's Bundessortenamt

2010-05-16T00:00:00

topicmapsforge.org publishes a topic map on the descriptive variety lists of Germany's Federal Authority for Plant Varieties (Bundessortenamt).

The map, available in German only, provides access to data on plant varieties published in the German variety lists (Beschreibende Sortenlisten). It is a show-case produced with agreement but without participation of the Bundessortenamt, and is not meant for productive or commercial use.

The web application rendering the topic map on plant varieties offers a greatly increased number of access paths to information in the descriptive variety lists. Compared to the web interfaces provided by the Bundessortenamt, it also offers added functionality not only on the assortment tables, but also on a large number of overviews not available via the authority's website.

The latter including breeder related overviews but also variety distributions over the evaluated properties such as susceptibility to mildew in the listed varieties of common winter wheat. Moreover, a hierarchy-browser allows navigation on property-types, thus offering overviews such as the variety distributions of common winter wheat over the evaluated disease susceptibilities .

Due to the underlying subject-centric information architecture, data is upgraded to a highly interconnected, and navigable network of subjects. Information on each subject is collocated around the very subject itself, and available at the cost of a single mouse click.

The topic map and the web application provided on topicmapsforge.org render the wealth of information in the German variety lists navigable, much more transparent and accessible in an efficient and intuitive way. Try it out - so you know.

Explore the German Variety Lists

Topic map on 2010 Soccer World Cup published

2010-05-16T00:00:00

topicmapsforge.org publishes a topic map on the 2010 Soccer World Cup to be held in South Africa starting 11 June 2010.

The map, available in English and German, provides access to data on teams, players, referees and stadiums, as well as to the schedule of all matches. To provide up-to-date information it will be constantly updated during the upcoming tournament.

Data is harvested from various sources in Wikipedia, transformed and integrated into a topic map.

Based on the ISO-standardized topic map as its data source, topicmapsforge.org provides a comprehensive and highly linked network of navigable information about the world cup. Characterized by its subject-oriented information architecture, topicmapsforge.org aggregates all available information around each subject and makes it availble at the cost of a single mouse click.

For an overview on the participants just click on the respective menu item participants to retrieve a multifunctional table showing persons, their nationalities, their national teams and their roles as kickers, coaches or referees. Enter „coach“ in the box for quick text-filtering to reduce the records related to coaches at the world cup.

To find out about clubs and their kickers participating in the world cup, you may click on the menu item club to access an overview of clubs, their countries, the number of kickers participating in the world cup, the names of these kickers, and the national teams they are playing for. Use the text filter on the left and enter „manchester“ to reduce the table to the two Manchester Clubs. Interested in ManU? Just click on „Manchester United“ to retrieve an overview of their kickers and find that ManU-kickers are playing for the national teams of England, France, Korean Republic, Portugal, and Serbia.

If you are interested in the topic „Germany“, you may try the semantic search functionality provided with the search box to the right. For „germany“, you get several dozens of themes listed, together with their type, and information causing the hit. Due to the latter you will understand why a search for Germany also retrieves the company adidas as the sponsor of the German team. Each search also retrieves a short list of categories for the topics found. E.g. the search for „germany“ finds topics such as „person“, „club“ or „group match“. You can use these categories to further specify your interest, and quickly reduce the list of retrieved topics.

The topic map on the 2010 soccer world cup and the web application provided on topicmapsforge.org make the maze of information about this mega event transparent and navigable in an efficient and intuitive way. Try it out - so you know.

Explore 2010 soccer world cup

topicmapsforge.org publishes its first topic maps

2010-05-16T00:00:00

topicmapsforge.org publishes two topic maps addressing two very different domains: plant varieties listed by the Bundessortenamt (German Federal Agency for Plant Varieties), and 2010 soccer world cup.

The topic map on the soccer world cup provides access to data on all teams, players, referees and stadiums, as well as to the schedule of all matches. The map is available in English and in German, and will be constantly updated during the upcoming tournament, to provide up-to-date information. The web application also seamlessly integrates data offered by the topicmapslab of the Universit of Leipzig, and is meant to be a highly networked information source giving a large number of overviews related to the 2010 soccer world cup.

The second application is a Topic Maps-transformation of openly available data on plant varieties published by the Bundessortenamt (German Federal Authority for Plant Varieties). The map offers a large number of access paths to the wealth of information in the desciptive variety lists. It also offers easy access to a large number of overviews hitherto not available, via the official webfrontend to the authority's data. E.g. the distribution of the susceptibility to mildew in the listed varieties of common winter wheat is now available at the cost of a single mouse click.

Each of the topic maps published in topicmapsforge.org is in fact a web aplication in its own right. The user interfaces are laregely auto-generated from the underlying topic maps, which results in reduced cost for production and maintainance of complex web applications.

The examples are charcterised by self exlanatory data, comprising integral parts of highly networked access paths to their content. Both applications demonstrate a new quality of navigation and information retrieval from complex information ressources enabled by knowledge-oriented information systems.

Check out the maps on the 2010 soccer world cup , and on the German Variety Lists yourself!

topicmapsforge.org as portal for high quality topic maps

2010-05-07T00:00:00

The countdown for the launch of topicmapsforge.org as a web portal for the publication of topic maps covering diverse domains has started.

The openly accessible website will be a show-case for the efficiency and the advantages of Topic Maps, the semantic technology for knowledge representation based on a family of ISO-standards. High quality content will be provided using topicWorks technology of Nexxor, a Stuttgart based software vendor specialising in Topic Maps technologies.

Life Sciences will be one of the thematic foci of the topic maps published on topicmapsforge. Currently, the mapping of some larger data sources is under way. Among others, extensive exemplary data sets of federal German authorities will be available as topic maps on topicmapsforge.

The life science use cases will be supplemented by topic maps of general interest for addressing a wider audience. Among the latter, the 2010 soccer world cup will possibly have a high attention value.