The NEPOMUK Semantic Desktop

Effective support for knowledge work has to center on the activities and needs of the individual knowledge worker. The EU-funded project NEPOMUK realized a comprehensive work environment for improved personal knowledge work: the Social Semantic Desktop. Based on semantic web technology, the NEPOMUK Social Semantic Desktop allows access to information across various applications within a knowledge worker’s personal computer. It facilitates the interconnection, management, and ontology-based conceptual annotation of information items. Thus the knowledge worker is supported in maintaining a personal information model which can be (in whole or in part) shared and exchanged with colleagues and teams. NEPOMUK provides architecture blueprints, fundamental ontologies, and open-source reference implementations. The results have been successfully applied in various applications and are extended and commercialized in products and spin-off enterprises.