RESTful services on the Web expose information through retrievable resource representations that represent self-describing descriptions of resources, and through the way how these resources are interlinked through the hyperlinks that can be found in
those representations. This basic design of RESTful services means that for extracting the most useful information from a service, it is necessary to understand a services representations, which means both the semantics in terms of describing a resource, and also its semantics in terms of describing its linkage with other resources. Based on the Resource Linking Language (ReLL), this paper describes a framework for how RESTful services can be described, and how these descriptions can then be used to harvest information from these services. Building on this framework, a layered model of RESTful service semantics allows to represent a services information in RDF/OWL. Because REST is based on the linkage between resources, the same model can be used for aggregating and interlinking multiple services for extracting RDF data from sets of RESTful services.
The W3Cs Geolocation API may rapidly standardize the transmission of location information on the Web, but, in dealing with such sensitive information, it also raises serious privacy concerns. We analyze the manner and extent to which the current W3C
Geolocation API provides mechanisms to support privacy. We propose a privacy framework for the consideration of location information and use it to evaluate the W3C Geolocation API, both the specification and its use in the wild, and recommend some modifications to the API as a result of our analysis.
Many Web-based data sources and services are available as feeds, a model that provides consumers with a loosely coupled way of interacting with providers. The current feed model is limited in its capabilities, however. Though it is simple to implemen
t and scales well, it cannot be transferred to a wider range of application scenarios. This paper conceptualizes feeds as a way to serialize query results, describes the current hardcoded query semantics of such a perspective, and surveys the ways in which extensions of this hardcoded model have been proposed or implemented. Our generalized view of feeds as query result serializations has implications for the applicability of feeds as a generic Web service for any collection that is providing access to individual information items. As one interesting and compelling class of applications, we describe a simple way in which a query-based approach to feeds can be used to support location-based services.
