Enabling Semantic Web Communities

Welcome to DBin.org!

DBin, enables a novel paradigm: Semantic Web Communities

New: watch the following screen demo for a quick
but informative introduction on DBin (requires Flash and audio playback)

Short textual description:


Similar to a filesharing client, DBin connects directly to other peers. Instead of files, however, it will download "relevant information" about topics you specify. More technically sharing and receiving "Semantically structured information" using RDF and other components of the W3C Semantic Web Initiative.

Similar to a Newsgroup client, bits of information (called "annotations") are collected and inserted by entering Topic Rooms. e.g. the "Beers lovers" or "Butterflies collector" rooms. To maximally enjoy the room, it is suggested that you download a proper, specialized user interface and interaction environment prepared for you by domain experts (e.g. ).

Such "specialized" domain applications that run on top of DBin are called "brainlets".

Annotations often take the form of comments or binary files (pictures etc.. ), but given RDF is used, they can nicely structured pieces of "metadata" such as direct comparisons, votes, data sheets, sale offers, semantic links with other resources or concepts, reviews, etc ..

  • The more "annotations" you collect, the "smarter" and more fun your DBin installation becomes.
  • DBin automatically merges annotations from each group you visit, so to enable cross cutting views spawning multiple domains and topics. Ask questions like "Show a pub that's open at this time and serves a beer that has been rated at least 8 and doesn't contain ingredient X".
  • Check the authorship of any piece of information. DBin automatically signs each annotation inserted in the P2P with a generated digital signature. Use such identity information to create precise filtering right for your needs
  • Join P2P groups also when running behind firewalls and NATs thanks to our JaSiMPA messaging API
  • Enjoy rich annotations including images, attachments and other media which are immediately published on the Web from within DBin and made available both to DBin users and regular web users.
  • Start your Semantic Web based Topic Group by creating a Brainlet for your domain of interest and setting up your P2P meeting server and groups!. No programming required, just edit a few XML files.

But most importantly:

DBin is not another vendor specific, totally idiosyncratic tangle of names and definitions.


DBin is instead a general purpose and user oriented W3C Semantic Web empowered application .

Try DBin now, or read a longer description of its features. A look at the FAQs is also suggested.

Status:
Version 0.4 "Barbera" has been released on 10 May, 2006

News

10 May 2006

DBin 0.4 "Barbera" released! Now including advanced Geotagging components, improved P2P, and much else.

15 April 2006

DBin presented at the Semantic Desktop hands on Workshop at DFKI.

10 April 2006

"DBin: Semantic Web for user communities, now!" has been accepted for presentation at WWW 2006, 23rd-26th May 2006 in the Ontologies and Semantic Web developer track session. See you there :-)

5 April 2006

DBin to be presented at demo at ESWC. Also, Brainlets will be presented at the Scripting for the Semantic Web workshop held a day before the conference. See you there :-)

25th march 2006

DBin based project proposal "DISCOVERY" gets approved under the EContentPlus IST call! The project will run for 3 years and will serve as validation for the DBin model in a complex, real world scenario

13th February 2006

DBin to be presented at the W3C Tech Plenary SWIG meeting Cannes, March 2. See you there :-)

10th February 2006

After 3 years of research and 2 of implementation, DBin 0.3 "Ficus" has been released! (announcement), along with documentation on starting new servers, P2P groups and Brainlets.

28th January 2006

DBin 0.3 "Ficus" is now running smooth and has been made available to alpha testers. Just a few days to the first public beta.

10th October 2005

DBin 0.3 "Ficus" is on its way and it will be our first public beta. We now have full Windows Installer and the Server/Groups brainlet paradigm (lifecycle, user interaction) has been finalized. By the time 0.3 will be out it should be immediately possibly for anyone to deploy DBin servers and create DBin groups.

27th May 2005

RDFContextTool library 0.1 is released.

14th May 2005

DBin 0.2 "Sushi" is shown at WWW2005 Developer Day. This is our first release with enough infrastructure to show a basic but "complete" behaviour (e.g. digital signatures, trust filtering, information revocation over P2P etc).



Last modified May 11, 2006.