Internet Alchemy

My name is Ian Davis. I maintain a personal blog, Internet Alchemy where I write on technology, the semantic web and whatever else catches my eye. I also contribute to the Talis group blog Nodalities. You can contact me by email using me@iandavis.com or ian.davis@talis.com. I am often on irc.freenode.net as iand in #talis, #swig, #foaf or #code4lib. (I’ve also started using a nick of zemantos as an experiment, on 27 Feb 2008 this gave zero Google results). You can also skype me using the name ian_davis although I prefer chat to voice. My URI is http://iandavis.com/id/me (it redirects to my FOAF file using the rules for Linked Data)

I am a technical architect, active on the Internet since the early nineties. My primary area of interest is around the Semantic Web, with more emphasis on the Web and its network effects than on semantics. I advocate the use of Web standards including HTTP, URIs and RDF to build scalable distributed applications. I prefer to use agile development practices especially test-first design. In 2000 I was co-author of the RSS 1.0 specification and I have contributed to many RDF-related developments including vocabularies, frameworks, specifications and standards. I have founded three technology startups in the areas of large scale search, syndication and semantic web architectures. I have a strong personal interest in genealogy.

Currently I’m serving as the Chief Technology Officer of Talis, a UK-based company with expertise in semantically rich metadata and in delivering software and services for information management. At Talis I’m leading the development of a new web-based platform for building human-centric, information-rich applications that enable them to take advantage of the network effects produced when huge numbers of people interact over the Web.

I’m a graduate of Royal Holloway College, University of London where I read Physics with Astrophysics for a year before changing to Theoretical Physics.

I currently live in Rothwell, Northamptonshire in the United Kingdom, located at latitude 52.422400, longitude -0.803000, relatively near to Luton Airport

My interests range across FOAF, Wikis, XML, RSS,metadata,
genealogy, the Semantic Web and RDF

Projects…

A selection of projects that are currently occupying my time to various degrees.

• Spiral, the Semantic Planet RDF Library is a project which I created with James Carlyle in 2004. It provides common services for RDF parsing and manipulation and is written in C#
• Carp stands for Convenient API for RDF Programing and is designed to provide a simple API for programming with RDF without losing the power of the underlying model. Another project which I created with James Carlyle in 2004. It too is written in C#
• Shared Past will be a community for genealogists and local historians.

Friends and neighbours…

• James Carlyle

Various homepages…

• My personal home page
• ESW Wiki
• ianalchemy on del.icio.us
• My profile on ecademy (with more foaf)
• ianalchemy
  on technorati
• ianalchemy on audioscrobbler
• ianalchemy on musicbrainz
• ianalchemy on connotea
• ianalchemy on digg
• ianalchemy on last.fm
• My profile on LinkedIn
• iand on Videntity
• ianalchemy on LibraryThing
• ianalchemy on MySpace