Similar to the tradition of fine old British pubs who feature 'guest' ales to complement the standard fare, it seems SchemaWeb is becoming a haven for new XML alternatives to RDF/XML syntax. Joining TriX and the homegrown TriplesML, we now feature feeds in the Regular XML RDF (RXR) format on each and every schema details page.

RXR was unveiled by sem supremo Dave Beckett recently at XML Europe during his talk 'Modernising Semantic Web Markup'.

Hopefully work in this area will result in a single open standard format soon before we run out of menu space!

The Semantic Web hit prime time yesterday when BBC Radio 4 programme 'The Material World' devoted half a show to things semmy. Helping out presenter Quentin Cooper were eminent semsperts, Wendy Hall from the University of Southampton and Jim Hendler from the University of Maryland. These two gave a lucid and interesting explanation of this er... difficult subject.

Topics included software agents, ontologies (dear to our hearts at SchemaWeb) and trust. A big plug for FOAF too. Top stuff.

Wendy closed the show with the prediction that the Semantic Web would be a reality within ten years. Crikey - we better get a move on!

Hear it again (and again) on the BBC archive.

XML Europe gets underway next week in Amsterdam and once again top sem warriors will be in action on and off the podium.

Semantic highlights include:

Ontology-Driven Topic Maps by Bernard Vatant
Modernising Semantic Web Markup by Dave Beckett
Crawling the Semantic Web by Matt Biddulph
Semantic Blogging: Spreading the Semantic Web Meme by Stephen A Cayzer
Treehugger: The RDF Model Meets XPath by Damian Steer
RDF, XForms, and the Law - Staying Out of Gaol by Charles McCathieNevile
RDF/XHTML: A New RDF Syntax by Steven Pemberton

And not to forget the closing keynote, The State of XML by Edd Dumbill where I suspect RDF and FOAF might get a wee mention.

If you are as crazy about RDF and OWL schemas as we are, you might like to point your RSS readers at Last Updated Schemas, a brand new feed at SchemaWeb which reports schemas which have recently been upgraded to new versions.

This joins the original Latest Schemas feed for new schemas published in the directory to provide complete coverage of all recent SchemaWeb activity and timely information for those who just 'have to know'.

Semwebbers planning this year's hectic conference season might also like to subscribe to Semantic Web Events, a calendar hosted at SemaView's excellent eventSherpa server.

All SchemaWeb's machine readable offerings can be viewed on the Web Services page.

Top semsters will be packing their swimming togs, sun lotion and scuba gear as well as their laptops this weekend and traveling to the Semantic Web Interest Group (SWIG) meeting in Cannes in the beautiful South of France next Monday and Tuesday. The SWIG bash is part of the W3C Technical Plenary Meeting which continues for the rest of the week.

Chaired by the 'Father of FOAF' Dan Brickley, the meeting has a packed agenda with contributions from, amongst many others, Libby Miller who talks about RDF Calendar and also the interesting work in progress on RDF image annotation and 'our man on the Med' Danny Ayers who travels over the border from his home in Italy to talk about using XHTML Outlines and XSLT to extract RDF from web pages and his own implementation XOW.

Rumour has it however that the real action will be at the beach bar where the detailed planning for the recently announced Semantic Web Activity Phase 2 will be taking place between other strenuous activities such as the traditional beach tennis match between the 'URI is an identifier' and the 'URI is a physical resource' camps.

Phase 2 will see the creation of two new Working Groups, the Semantic Web Best Practices and Deployment WG and the RDF Data Access WG. SchemaWeb users will be pleased to see that the Best Practices and Deployment WG charter contains the following fragment:

We are honoured!

A great big Howard Dean holler resounded through semspace today as news spread that the RDF and OWL specifications had achieved W3C Recommendation status.

This historic event might even cause RDF frenzy at the already hot sessions at the Emerging Technology Conference in San Diego tomorrow which kick off with Fear of a FOAF Planet presented by Edd Dumbill and Dan Brickley. This is followed by FOAF Lightning Talks featuring a glittering array of foafsperts including Morten Frederiksen, Jim Ley and Marc Canter. Be there!

Chris Catton, Development Manager at BioImage has recently published the Standard Animal Behaviour Ontology (SABO) on the internet. This OWL document complements the artifacts available for download in zip format from the SourceForge project page which include OWL and DAML+OIL versions and a useful chart of the ontology.

SABO is one of a number of ontologies that will be used to search and browse the soon to be launched BioImage Database which will provide scientists with a freely-accessible source of multidimensional digital images for biological research.

Nick Knouf has published work in progress on an OWL schema for bibTeX. This schema, we predict, will become a very important resource for bibliography and publication management. It is also a great example of OWL and a perfect starting point and reference for all ontology designers moving to this new standard.

Congratulations to Tim Berners-Lee, Director of the World Wide Web Consortium and inventor of the Internet who has been honoured with a knighthood in Britain's New Year honours list. Sir Tim has been made a Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire in recognition of his great achievements.

Sir Tim is a strong advocate for and a driving force behind the Semantic Web. 2004 has started with a bang - let's keep up the momentum.

Professor Wendy Hall, founder and leading light of the Intelligence, Agents, Multimedia Research Group at the University of Southampton, today appeared on the BBC Radio 4 programme Shop Talk in a show focused on Artificial Intelligence.

IAM projects include Advanced Knowledge Technologies who are pioneering management and delivery of semantic data and RDF triples store technology.

Discussion on the show ranges from robots to web agents and can be enjoyed on demand on the internet. Listen to the closing moments to hear Wendy say those magic words 'semantic web'.