Think Semantically - Nepomuk and the social semantic desktop

Nepomuk is known for being a desktop search solution. Searching, however, is just a small part of the project that aims to be the glue to connect all applications in a semantic fashion.

Through Nepomuk applications are provided with a lot of data that they normally would not have access to. An email client can directly access images depicting the email sender, a task manager can show files related to the tasks, a web browser can organize web pages by projects or persons and so on. Nepomuk also serves as an important tool in categorization of data and the gathering of statistical usage data.

Nepomuk started as a European Research Project in 2006 which aimed to create the foundation for the semantic desktop of the future. The KDE integration was only a small part of this rather large research effort. After the end of the project in 2008 Nepomuk lived on in the KDE implementation which became an integral part of the KDE system.

Nepomuk is currently being used by high profile projects like Akonadi and Telepathy. It serves as a powerful backend and allows everything to be linked together in a web of semantic information which ultimately leads to a richer user experience.

This talk aims at dispelling common myths about Nepomuk and explain the real goal of the project. The talk will showcase exciting things Nepomuk can do and that can be done with Nepomuk. Finally it will present the road that lies ahead, the dream that is the semantic KDE 5.