Anyway, the data is now available in RDF and can be queried via SPARQL. You can find some useful examples of such queries from Leigh Dodds at the Talis blog. Happy querying!

It’s been fundamental to what we do for a long time. We feel we’re good at it, but our content is an island… This is wholly consistent with our open strategy… to facilitate access to slices of our data for those who want to include it in their applications.

Watch Larson’s announcement:

Good news from the Raw Data Now front. Tim Berners-Lee has been asked by Gordon Brown to help open up access to government data in the UK. Let’s hope this is not just a publicity stunt to boost Mr Brown’s plummeting popularity, but a true effort in creating a more transparent government. If this works, it should point more governments towards this direction.

In the meantime, critics in the UK point out the great obstacles such an attempt will stumble upon. BBC technology correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones comments:

I fear Sir Tim may be in for a bruising few months, as he tries to convince Sir Humphrey et al to let it all hang out.

Clearly, a lot has to change in the idiosyncrasy of state officials for Sir Tim’s vision to fully come to life, but at least he’s been given this chance. Let’s just see how this goes…

It’s clear to us that the time for structured data has come. We’re beginning to see it in the current wave of Linked Data sets being released, and in the support that big companies, like Google and Yahoo, are showing for structured data. Who knows, maybe the Semantic Web is nearly upon us too.

He also talked passionately about the future of the web and Linked Data. He believes sharing data on the web can have so many benefits and that everyone should be contributing to this. He even engaged the audience in chanting: “Raw Data Now!”.

Watch the talk here: