Ontologies

Ontologies: "Imagine that you have a beaker capable of holding 10cc of a liquid and you pour 5cc of water into it. Some people would say that the beaker is half-full ... others would say that it is half-empty ... and some would say that it is filled to one-half of its capacity or that it merely contains 5cc of water.

The point of this exercise is to demonstrate that we can portray the same item in various ways, with each representing a different perspective or mindset. Thus, when selections are made from the set of possible portraits and are then gathered together in the conceptual framework known as an ontology, the result is but one of several possible vistas."

Towards semantic web agents: Knowledge Web and AgentLink

Towards semantic web agents: Knowledge Web and AgentLink: "This paper presents an overview on the role of agents in the Semantic Web, that was the topic of the AgentLink Technical Forum Group on "Semantic Web Agents", aimed at fostering closer collaboration between the European communities working in these areas. The paper is structured in three main sections. In the first one, we argue how agents are an essential component of the Semantic Web, then we provide a brief history, by no means comprehensive, of how the Semantic Web vision -- that includes agents -- has evolved in the past fifteen years. We then conclude reporting on the topics presented and discussed during the Technical Forum."

IST Results - EU research driving the web services seismic shift

IST Results - EU research driving the web services seismic shift: "The growth of web services marks a seismic shift in computing. Web services, composed of a multitude of simple software applications, have the potential to crack the monolithic software application model and create a new online-services landscape, accessible to all. New research reveals that Europe is closely involved in setting the key standards for this development.

Web services provide a standard means of interlinking two or more discrete software applications, each of which could be hosted on quite different platforms and/or frameworks. Thanks to such interoperability, web services can be combined to carry out quite complex operations. Software programs offering simple services can interact with each other and in the process deliver sophisticated added-value services."

The semantic web is upon us, says Berners-Lee

The semantic web is upon us, says Berners-Lee - WebWatch: "The semantic web, where machines are able to read the contents of documents as readily as people can, now has all the standards and technologies it needs to succeed, according to W3C director Sir Tim Berners-Lee. Speaking at the WWW2006 conference in Edinburgh on Wednesday, he said it was now time for web developers and content producers to start using semantic languages in addition to HTML."

The Semantic Web Revisited

ECS EPrints Service - The Semantic Web Revisited: "The original Scientific American article on the Semantic Web appeared in 2001. It described the evolution of a Web that consisted largely of documents for humans to read to one that included data and information for computers to manipulate. The Semantic Web is a Web of actionable information--information derived from data through a semantic theory for interpreting the symbols. This simple idea, however, remains largely unrealized. Shopbots and auction bots abound on the Web, but these are essentially handcrafted for particular tasks; they have little ability to interact with heterogeneous data and information types. Because we haven't yet delivered large-scale, agent-based mediation, some commentators argue that the Semantic Web has failed to deliver. We argue that agents can only flourish when standards are well established and that the Web standards for expressing shared meaning have progressed steadily over the past five years. Furthermore, we see the use of ontologies in the e-science community presaging ultimate success for the Semantic Web--just as the use of HTTP within the CERN particle physics community led to the revolutionary success of the original Web. This article is part of a special issue on the Future of AI."

Content-based Ontology Ranking

ECS EPrints Service - Content-based Ontology Ranking: "Techniques to rank ontologies are crucial to aid and encourage the re-use of publicly available ontologies. This paper presents a system that obtains a list of ontologies from a search engine that contain the terms provided by a knowledge engineer and ranks them. The ranking of these ontologies will be done according to how many of the concept labels in those ontologies match a set of terms extracted from a corpus of documents related to the domain of knowledge identified by the knowledge engineer's original search terms."

New Siderean Software Navigates from Bird's-Eye to Bug's-Eye View

New Siderean Software Navigates from Bird's-Eye to Bug's-Eye View: "Seamark Navigator is location- and format-independent. "No longer are enterprise users forced to make decisions based on algorithmic results lurking behind a text box; now, users can make these decisions with confidence, knowing they have considered all the relevant content and relationships they may not have known existed."

The Seamark navigation engine uses "facets" (properties, categories, features) to guide users to relevant content. The Seamark Navigator provided faceted navigation in its earlier versions, but Petrossian noted that the key distinguishing piece of the new version is the new dynamic capabilities. Seamark Navigator 4.0 stitches metadata together on-the-fly, using RDF (resource description framework), a Semantic Web specification from the W3C (http://www.w3.org/RDF). It's flexible and doesn't require data models to be fixed, he explained. Because of this, the product can illustrate unseen relationships. Products from competitors also can bridge information silos but require "considerable coding in advance and lots of heavy-lifting proprietary technology," according to Petrossian. Seamark Navigator is also a bidirectional system, in that it allows users to contribute tags."

Vikings Set Out to Conquer Semantic Web

Vikings set out to conquer Semantic Web: "German scientists are working on a project they call Wikinger (German for 'Viking') based on the concept of Wikipedia to provide virtual knowledge networking in addition to the classic exchange of knowledge at Congresses. The goal of the project is to create a domain-neutral platform for scientists to allow them to perform research in knowledge bases regardless of where they are and to generate new knowledge via the Internet in collaboration. The researchers are paying special attention to support for colleagues in networking new contributions with current knowledge. To this end, techniques from the Semantic Web are being used."

Image Annotation on the Semantic Web

Image Annotation on the Semantic Web: "Many applications that involve multimedia content make use of some form of metadata that describe this content. The goals of this document are (i) to explain what the advantages are of using Semantic Web languages and technologies for the creation, storage, manipulation, interchange and processing of image metadata, and (ii) to provide guidelines for doing so. The document gives a number of use cases that illustrate ways to exploit Semantic Web technologies for image annotation, an overview of RDF and OWL vocabularies developed for this task and an overview of relevant tools."

Searching and Ranking Ontologies on the Semantic Web

Searching and Ranking Ontologies on the Semantic Web: "The number of ontologies available online is increasing constantly. Tools that are capable of searching, retrieving, and ranking ontologies are becoming crucial to facilitate ontology search and reuse. In this document, we describe OntoSearch, which is a tool for capturing and searching ontologies on the Semantic web. We also briefly describe AKTiveRank which is used to rank OWL ontologies based on certain ontology-structure analysis."

Freedom and Restraint: Tags, Vocabularies and Ontologies

Freedom and Restraint: Tags, Vocabularies and Ontologies: "The benefit of metadata is widely recognized. However, the nature of that information and the method of production remains a topic of some debate. This division is most noticeable between those who believe in ’free tagging’, and those who prefer the more formal construction of an ontology to define both the vocabulary of the domain and the relationships between the concepts within it. Looking at the community surrounding online amateur authors and the descriptive metadata they have developed over the last thirty years we consider what we can learn from a mature but amateur tagging community. This paper considers how these two systems might be used together to add the easy usability of free tagging to ontology descriptions and the conceptual richness of ontologies to free tags."

Caboodle Launches Open Source Semantic Web-Based Search Engine

LinuxElectrons - Caboodle Networks Launches Open Source Semantic Web-Based Search Engine: "BURLINGAME, Calif.: Caboodle Networks has launched an open source search engine based upon semantic web standards. This new search engine, Kit, (available for free at http://semantical.org) is ideal for finding digital content and services otherwise poorly suited to discovery by traditional text-retrieval search engines the company claims. Kit can intelligently recommend related digital content such as games, music, images, and video, thereby truly leveraging the value hidden in the “long tail” of published content. Now companies and individuals hosting Internet gaming and music sites, as well as companies such as wireless carriers with mobile portals, have access to the very best standards-based solution for locating and recommending their downloadable content and services."

IST Project Wide

Project Wide: "WIDE aims to provide a basis for improving the quality and efficiency of innovative product design. The objectives are to investigate and demonstrate the application of emerging Semantic Web (SW) technologies and methods in an integrated, scalable and reconfigurable design information support management and knowledge sharing system. The key to improving innovative design lies in better information management and knowledge sharing support of the inter-working of multi-disciplinary design teams. The machine-understandable semantics of information sources, offered by the SW, driven by a general design process ontology (based upon an existing Knowledge Level theory of designing), together with meta data based filtering and presentation techniques, thus form the key components of the information support management and knowledge sharing system to be developed in the project."

Named Graphs as a Mechanism for Reasoning about Provenance

ECS EPrints Service - Named Graphs as a Mechanism for Reasoning about Provenance: "Named Graphs is a simple, compatible extension to the RDF abstract syntax that enables statements to be made about RDF graphs. This approach is in contrast to earlier attempts such as RDF reification, or knowledge-base specific extensions including quads and contexts. In this paper we demonstrate the use of Named Graphs and our experiences developing new kinds of semantic web application that build on Named Graphs for digital signatures, provenance, and semantic reasoning. We present a working example based on the Named Graphs for Jena (NG4J) API, from which we developed a semantic version control system for Software Engineering capable of reasoning about Named Graph-based provenance. We go on to discuss the implications of Named Graphs for Description Logics and semantic inference strategies."

Smart RSS Readers at Attensa

Smart RSS Readers at Attensa: "The Attensa RSS network is based on unique, proven intellectual property in a scaleable RSS architecture that efficiently organizes, distributes and measures RSS news feed articles and their associated attention metadata. Using Attensa network attention streams that accommodate the Attention.xml standard, metadata is unobtrusively fingerprinted and triangulated through collaborative filtering to deliver the most relevant information. By sharing, aggregating and triangulating the attention streams (anonymously and in near real-time) generated by the millions of people using RSS feeds, new possibilities emerge to provide individuals with higher value content. This metadata can be used to rank the popularity of articles by measuring the audience size and appetite for news from specific bloggers and news sources. It can also be used to create privacy protected anonymous user profiles, based on permission, that can recommend content, refine blog and Website searching and enhance the experience of tracking the news that matters to millions of people."

Mind the Gap: Another Look at the Problem of the Semantic Gap in Image Retrieval

ECS EPrints Service - Mind the Gap: Another look at the problem of the semantic gap in image retrieval: "This paper attempts to review and characterise the problem of the semantic gap in image retrieval and the attempts being made to bridge it. In particular, we draw from our own experience in user queries, automatic annotation and ontological techniques. The first section of the paper describes a characterisation of the semantic gap as a hierarchy between the raw media and full semantic understanding of the media's content. The second section discusses real users' queries with respect to the semantic gap. The final sections of the paper describe our own experience in attempting to bridge the semantic gap. In particular we discuss our work on auto-annotation and semantic-space models of image retrieval in order to bridge the gap from the bottom up, and the use of ontologies, which capture more semantics than keyword object labels alone, as a technique for bridging the gap from the top down."

Ontology Construction from Online Ontologies

ECS EPrints Service - Ontology Construction from Online Ontologies: "One of the main hurdles towards a wide endorsement of ontologies is the high cost of constructing them. Reuse of existing ontologies offers a much cheaper alternative than building new ones from scratch, yet tools to support such reuse are still in their infancy. However, more ontologies are becoming available on the web, and online libraries for storing and indexing ontologies are increasing in number and demand. Search engines have also started to appear, to facilitate search and retrieval of online ontologies. This paper presents a fresh view on constructing ontologies automatically, by identifying, ranking, and merging fragments of online ontologies."

Enter the Semantic Grid

IST Results - Enter the Semantic Grid: "The upshot is a technological infrastructure in which semantically-aware middleware allows collections of resources - computing, storage, data sets, digital libraries, scientific instruments, businesses and people – to rapidly come together to form virtual organisations to solve a specific problem and disband just as easily once a solution is found. By overcoming cross-organisational, cross-industry and cross-country boundaries, and increasing interoperability by making semantic assumptions explicit, the Semantic Grid promises to aid organisations and businesses in any field where input from multiple and potentially highly differentiated actors is required."

SiberLogic, XML, RDF, and OWL

SiberLogic, XML, RDF, and OWL: SiberLogic, based in Toronto, has some very interesting products that seem to be putting it all together. "SiberLogic today offers a complete and cost-effective environment for teams producing technical documents. A flexible family of products provides not only fundamentals such as version and workflow control, conditional and multi-channel publishing, and staging & deployment options, but also leading-edge functionality that includes semantic enablement via emerging standards such as OWL and RDF, full DITA and S1000D support, real-time fragment reuse analysis, and dynamic generation of a cross-platform knowledge base."

SMEs Get Better Targeted Web Searches

IST Results - SMEs get better targeted Web searches: "'The problem with existing search engines, especially for SMEs seeking an exact response to a query, is that they find many hundreds of sites that may be of little use,' says Sonia Bergamaschi of the University of Modena in Italy and coordinator of the IST project SEWASIE that developed the engine. 'Our idea was to develop a set of ontologies related to specific industry sectors, in order to limit the search to sites that are really useful.'"

Rescentris Releases Version 2.5 of its Semantic Notebook, CERF - The ELN for Biology

Rescentris Releases Version 2.5 of its Semantic Notebook, CERF - The ELN for Biology: "Rescentris, Ltd., a leading provider of electronic laboratory notebook (ELN) software for biology and multi-disciplinary life sciences, today announced the immediate availability of CERF 2.5 and the CERF Development Kit (CERF-DK) to help life sciences organizations better manage their research information. CERF (Collaborative Electronic Research Framework(TM)) is the industry's only ELN built on semantic web technologies. The semantic engine in CERF enables it to capture the meaning and relationships in R&D information as well as the experimental context in which data are collected - all transparently, while the scientists do their work."

A Semantic Solution to Finding Information among Peers

IST Results - A semantic solution to finding information among peers: "Peer-to-peer systems have advantages over centralised server-reliant networks, but finding information among multiple distributed databases can prove difficult. European researchers solved the problem by adding Semantic Web technology to P2P networks."

The Shape of i-Technology to Come @ SYS-CON AUSTRALIA

LinuxWorld Viewpoints: The Shape of i-Technology to Come: According to Danny Ayers: "The rebranding of the Semantic Web as 'Semantic Technologies' and 'Web of Data' will enable previously dismissive pundits to hype it as the Next Big Thing. There will be real growth in these areas, but not as yet meteoric. Yahoo! will reveal its answer to Google Base, built using Semantic Web technologies. Nokia will join VoIP to the Semantic Web."
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Support for RSS in Microsoft Vista and Internet Explorer 7 will be indistinguishable from Windows 95’s Active Channels following the company’s removal of new features due to security concerns. There will be massive growth in enterprise-oriented knowledge management systems based on RSS and Atom. There will be a new generation of RSS/Atom aggregators exploiting data published using XHTML microformats and Structured Blogging."

National Center for Biomedical Ontology

National Center for Biomedical Ontology: "The National Center for Biomedical Ontology is a consortium of leading biologists, clinicians, informaticians, and ontologists who develop innovative technology and methods that allow scientists to create, disseminate, and manage biomedical information and knowledge in machine-processable form. The Center's resources include the Open Biomedical Ontologies (OBO) library, the Open Biomedical Data (OBD) repositories, and tools for accessing and using this biomedical information in research. The Center collaborates with biomedical researchers conducting Driving Biological Projects (DBPs) to enable their research and to stimulate technology development in the Center. The Center is undertaking outreach and educational activities to train the future generation of researchers in using biomedical ontologies and the Center's tools to enhance scientific discovery."

IST Results - Semantic Web Travel Services on a Voyage of Discovery

"Opening up travel Web services
The industry is making moves to improve the situation, and has formed a consortium called the Open Travel Alliance (OTA). The OTA is producing XML message specification schemas to be exchanged between the trading partners, including availability checking, booking, rental, reservation, query services, insurance. This will improve matters, but not every travel company's applications can be expected to produce and consume OTA-compliant messages.

The SATINE project developed a secure peer-to-peer network that enables peers to deploy their semantically-enriched travel Web services and allows others to discover these services semantically. 'The concept, 'semantic web services', is very important for the tourism industry since the industry is structured as a distributed environment, because of its nature, and tourism companies need to reach the services in this distributed environment,' says Dr Dogac. 'By introducing semantics to Web services, we have addressed the interoperability issue on the semantic level and constructed a peer-to-peer network that eases service discovery.'

The project also developed mechanisms to enrich ebXML (e-business XML) registries through OWL-S ontologies to describe the Web service semantics. OWL itself is a markup language for publishing and sharing data using ontologies on the Web. Ontologies are the vocabularies that allow machines to identify specific services or information. For example, a human operator would understand the term 'booking', but it needs to be defined in a special way for a machine to understand. "

When Sir Tim Berners-Lee Starts Blogging . . . .

The Father of the Web Joins the Blogosphere: "On December 12, 2005, accordingly, the first-ever blog entry by Sir Tim Berners-Lee went online. And within days no fewer than 455 comments accumulated."