Semantic micro-blogging may sound like a mouth-full of techno speak, but it’s actually a fairly simple subject that has attracted a large following recently. Semantic micro-blogging is essentially a publishing method that allows short bursts of information to be aggregated under umbrella categories and easily synthesized on the web. But to understand semantic micro-blogging, one must first understand its component pieces: blogging, micro-blogging, and the semantic web. What is a blog? A blog — short for weblog — in the broadest terms is a form of online commentary. It is often text-based (video blogs are called “vlogs”), separated into entries, and presented in reverse chronological order. Blogs and blogging have become popular over the past few years as a form of publishing short-form opinion, analysis, and even fiction on the internet. And with the growth of blogs and their emergence into mainstream society, many corporations and other large entities have begun “blogging” to keep the public at large abreast of their plans, ambitions, and day-to-day activities. At its core, a blog is an internet-based publishing platform. It is a cheap, easy-to-use method of disseminating information over the web. What is micro-blogging? Micro-blogging is blogging on a small scale (usually under 200 characters). The difference between micro-blogging and blogging is accessibility and readability. Micro-blogging involves recording very short, “stream of consciousness” thoughts onto whatever medium the micro-blogger wishes. Sites like Twitter and Facebook have popularized micro-blogging as a means of communicating quick thoughts to a large number of people instantly. It is a fast-paced, slimmed-down version of blogging that allows users to push thoughts, rather than ideas, out to a large network of people. The advantages of micro-blogging over blogging within the accessibility and readability parameters mentioned above are a function of a micro-blogs size. Small messages can be written and read very easily on mobile devices. This makes micro-blogging a much more practical means of communicating when away from a computer. One interesting implementation of micro-blogging has been through citizen journalism. This application of the service has added a new dimension to the platform and very well may prove to be its most important and compelling use. What is the semantic web? Semantics has to do with the meaning of words. And when applied to the web, it has to do with the association of content with different words. The essence of the semantic web is found in a web search — the results that come up when you search for a certain word or phrase. As the web becomes more semantic, search functions and content aggregations will become more precise. Putting it all together Semantic micro-blogging involves “grouping” micro-blogs together into threads via semantics. On the Twitter service, this involves using a hash (#) followed by a keyword to target a specific search term. The purpose is to collect messages of the same tone or purpose and make them easily digestible for research or educational initiatives. The reason semantic micro-blogging is innovative is that it’s basically a group of thoughts, categorized within a keyword or phrase, that can be archived indefinitely. It’s a recordable zeitgeist on the internet. For more information on Semantic Microblogging, visit semanticmicroblogging.com and micro-blogger.org
Want to Extend Your Lifespan?
read more
Semantics is not something new to the internet or websites. Semantics have been around since the ancient ages and we use them almost everyday in some situation or the other, vocally or in writing. Effective communication today consists of grammar, punctuation, sentence structure etc. But here is the surprising part: there are different sets of semantics being used around the world.
In English, you will not find the use of or as they are not English semantics. These differences can create problems in delivering effective communication through a semantic web.
HTML
HTML stands for HyperText Markup Language and it is like the universal web language. HTML is an easy to use and flexible code/language where you can integrate text and graphics together to create a scalable website. But HTML has one major drawback. Although it can define what content to place where on a web site page, it can not really discern the relationship between the content and its use for providing valuable results for various user queries. This is exactly the reason why SEM exist.
For example: There is a HTML page of product listings. The HTML code will define this as but it will not be able to identify item #2342 as a lip moisturizer that costs $3.99. This is the limitation of HTML and it will only be able to identify a text block that describes the lip moisturizer and it should appear right next to the image of the product.
SEM on the other hand use proper semantics to identify the relationship between various chunks of text on websites. The semantics help the visitors to identify the relationship between the lip moisturizer and its image.
There are two objectives that can be accomplished by web site owners by using different semantic standards. Firstly, the semantic standards will enable different web site designers to describe web site content accurately to SEs and secondly the semantics will facilitate a clearer mode of communication between SE spiders and the web site. As a result, your website will get targeted traffic.
RDF/ OWL/ XML
As you have learnt that there are certain limitations of HTML and hence to fight these limitations, different programming languages have been developed. Some of the programming languages include RDF or Resource Description Framework, OWL or Ontology Web Language and XML or eXtensible Markup Language. These programming languages have increased the usefulness multifold for the web.
If you use only HTML then it will not be possible for the search engine to produce useful links for keywords like graphic designers in Florida. The SERPs will display numerous graphic designer sites from all over the world, out of which some will be situated in Florida. It is not that this specific information is not available; the fact of the matter is that it is contained within web pages of different sites, all of which are indecipherable to web spiders.
W3C and Semantics
The W3C or the World Wide Web Consortiums primary objective is to standardize, and improve www. It is a daunting task and will also entail the standardization of different development tools, programming languages, as well as browser specs.
Among many challenges, one of the important is the standardization of the semantic web technology, which is under construction. One of the problems is that there is nothing as universal semantics. The semantics for English will not go with the French semantics. The writing styles like a research article with footnotes and bibliography is different from a blog and hence will employ different types of semantics. This makes W3C standardization of semantics virtually impossible.
Semantics and SEO
The main objective of creating semantic standards is for making the websites easily viewable or readable on different machines or browsers. Standardization of semantics will allow the SEs to spider the content and index it based on specifics. A good SEO will be able to do this during site optimization and you can very well imagine the kind of positive results that will arise out of optimization of semantics.
The future will see search engine users being able to access local events, news, local sales, and compile content which is similar from multiple sources access the data within a user-defined context.
The standardization of semantics is still in its early phases and we will have to wait some more before we get to benefit from the entire process.
Want to Extend Your Lifespan?
read more
You have heard words like Web 2.0, Web 3.0, SaaS, Mashups, Web as Platform, Rich Internet Applications (RIA), Small Pieces, Loosely Joined, Lightweight Service Models, SOA, Business Process Management, Governance, Collaboration, Right To Remix, Orchestration, Products, Enterprise Web 2.0, Global SOA, Web services, Ajax, JSON, SOAP, RSS, ATOM, REST, Encouraging Unintended Uses, Enterprise Mashups, Enterprise 2.0? Then you probably have tried to look into the crystal ball and trying to predict the next trend in web development and what is going to be the future of it.
Well, the future is already here, but we have not yet seen the blossoming of the web 3.0 yet. But it is right around the corner, and just a matter of seeing the emerging web development taking place.
Several IT gurus have mad a description and created visions of Web 3.0, well beyond pure play of Web mashups that we are witnessing. We see a great number of companies are building end-user solutions that can automatically navigate the Internet, weave together tapestries of online information to generate new, useful results. They can even take it a step beyond: dynamically generated situational Web applications that fully interact with the Web ecosystem. Such applications, which are self-assembled by these tools, can perform useful tasks such as planning you vacations, managing personal schedules, or even orchestrating complex, collaborative business processes for example including entire real-world projects. The vision is fantastic but yet futuristic. The rich fabric of the Web today, with hundreds of open APIs and even vaster reservoirs of content and raw data, now opens the door to the possibility.
There has been written lots about the trend in user generated software, applications developed by end-users that use the openness of the Web 2.0 era to interact with high value Web services.
The Programmable Web Mashup Matrix lets you visualize the web mashup ecosystem and enable you to see the various players in the market and how they utilize various API’s.
But we are seeing the emergence of the next step beyond the user generated software. We can see the dawn of applications being developed and tasks being completed intelligently by software itself. The trend in number of mashups is from around 1200 of them in 2006 to around 2800 in February 2008. So there has been a drastic increase in the number of mashups during this period of only 14-18 months time. Looking at the widespread use of badges and widgets on Facebook, MySpace, Lulu and other social networking sites indicate that average user are getting more and more comfortable with experimenting with their blog and personal space with content, code, and feeds from elsewhere on the Web. Much of the end-user mashup activity we see today is probably not very deep and do not represent any sophisticated functionality. The new tools we’re seeing every day are getting better and better and allowing users to take it deeper, creating a true mashup environment.
So what does really a mashup do for you?
A mashup software will help businesses get more from their data by making it easy for workers to mash together simple tools to create something better. This is known as mashups, these software applications have been very popular with consumers. But few people have the technical ability to create them. Social software developers in smaller and larger international companies say that Mashups will change that, by reducing the technical skill required to combine the applications, and by adding features to protect sensitive data. The ultimate goal of mashups is to make the process simple: users can be able to connect existing applications by dragging and dropping them on the screen without having to program any codes what so ever.
Although there’s been an explosion of widgets on the Web in the past year, in most cases, it’s easy for users to make widgets share space on a Web page, but not to make them share data, they’re mixable, but not mashable. For example the Facebook users can paper their profiles with a variety of simple applications, but those applications are isolated from each other. In contrast, mashups allows users to combine widgets, so that taking an action within one widget triggers the others to act too. For example, a user could build an application for tracking stock prices of different companies, using a chart as the central widget. The chart could include company name, location, and ticker symbol. Clicking a line in the chart could send data to several connected widgets, such as one that looks up the company name on Google, one that maps the location of the company headquarters, and one that retrieves the most recent stock price for the company. Several companies is participating in the Open Ajax Foundation’s effort to create standards for widgets, which will hopefully make it more common for widgets from different sources to share data.
The development of the Semantic Web has been the goal of many endeavors on the web ever since Tim Berners Lee proclaimed this type of web development within the W3C Semantic web consortium. The semantic web is the evolving extension of the World Wide Web in which web content can be expressed not only in natural language, but also in a format that can be read and used by automated tools, thus permitting people and machines to find, share and integrate information more easily. But due to the fact that the challenge is large and complex, the development of Semantic Web has not yet been successful.
The core of semantic web comprises a set of design principles, collaborative working groups, and a variety of enabling technologies. Some elements of the semantic web are expressed as prospective future possibilities that have yet to be implemented or realized. Other elements of the semantic web are expressed in formal specifications. Some of these include Resource Description Framework (RDF), a variety of data interchange formats (e.g. RDF/XML, N3, Turtle, N-Triples), and notations such as RDF Schema (RDFS) and the Ontology Web Language (OWL), all of which are intended to provide a formal description of concepts, terms, and relationships within a given knowledge domain.
You will need a software that can coordinate the delivery of construction materials to a job site for the least total cost including materials and shipping, just in time and in the correct order as the items on the construction schedule are completed? Well, it seems like only Mashups and Semantic Web Apps will make this happen and get you up and running with tasks similar to this.
At the moment we see development of tools/ business units enabling the automation of software creation and process management. Interestingly enough they are usually not via true Semantic Web technology, but by virtue of open, simple, easy-to-describe-and-consume services of the Web 2.0 generation. So this will probably create the start of web 3.0 with its mashups and semantic web forming the base for web 3.0.
Web 2.0 is what happened while we were waiting for the Semantic Web 1.0.
Will there be a standardized web 3.0 or will we have a pragmatic Semantic Web beta first?
The latest generation of tools seen in the market seems to be built on simple yet proprietary codes or approaches and not on the open but formal Semantic Web technology. RSS 1.0 had the same issue about userability as semantic web 1.0 can have. Therefor it is more likely that the next generation of approaches will be the Pragmatic Semantic Web beta although we have to be concerned about the lack of standards. This will create a challenge as we see the development of so many mashup tools creating the ability to mashup widgets from all sorts of sources on the internet. Let us not get the battle of which format should survive instead of creating the best tools to solve the consumer and business needs, namely to effectively utilize a collective knowledge collection and analysis of it.
Stig-Arne Kristoffersen
An explorer
Want to Extend Your Lifespan?
read more
Web 3.0 describes the next evolution of the World Wide Web. The term “Web 3.0” has been floating around for quite a while now, but what does it exactly mean? The true definition of Web 3.0 has been unclear ever since it has been created. When trying to get a hold of the concept it is important to keep in mind that Web 3.0 is rather a buzzword and doesn’t clearly define anything.
The semantic web
The term Web 3.0 is very often mentioned together with “the semantic web”. Some people refer to the semantic web as an equal to Web 3.0, others consider the semantic web part of Web 3.0. What does “the semantic web” mean though?
A clever example in an attempt to make sense of the semantic web has been made by Peter Berkel. Take the words Paris Hilton; is there actually anybody who’s thinking of the Hilton Hotel in Paris? The meaning (semantics) of these two words can be interpreted in multiple ways.
In order to understand semantics on the web we also need to look at the syntax. If we use the sentence “Mike loves Kate”, the syntax refers to the composition and structure of the sentence. The semantics indicate that Mike really likes Kate. If we change “loves” into a heart symbol, the syntax will change but the semantics will stay the same.
In the example of Paris Hilton we see a reversed situation, in which there are multiple semantics but only one syntax.
In the communication between computers on the net, the syntax has an important role. When you request a website to show up in your browser, you’re actually doing a request to a web server. This server looks up your request and returns this in HTML format. Your browser reads the HTML syntax and translates this into a designed page. The meaning of what’s on this page will stay unknown to the computer.
The same thing happens when we search for information on the internet. A search engine searches through billions of pages to find the keywords that you requested. It will then show you a list of pages that include the keywords you were looking for. The search engine knows which keywords are in these pages, but the real content of the pages remains unknown. This could be compared to learning a parrot a couple words, which it will replicate without knowing the actual meaning of the words.
Using this analogy, the current web can be considered as a “web of documents”. These documents are all linked to each other in one way or another, but for web applications the content of these documents is undefined. The content however is what’s of interest to us. These documents are about people, history, companies, countries, etc. Right now we’re not talking about documents anymore, but about “entities” that are inside of these documents. The goal of the semantic web is to let computers understand the entities within these documents.
So the semantic web gives meaning to entities in web pages and relationships between those entities. In contrast to the current web, this would be a web of entities.
The benefits of the semantic web
So now we got to a better understanding of the semantic web, how can we benefit from this? Take the example of Paris Hilton. If a search engine would understand that I’m trying to find a Hilton Hotel in Paris, all results about the celebrity Paris Hilton could be excluded. This brings us to better, more accurate and faster results. This is still a plain and basic example. A next step would be an application that understands Hilton is a hotel in Paris, which can offer me more services. If you are searching for a Hilton Hotel in Paris, a Hilton Hotel could be found, while a flight to Paris could be booked together with a restaurant to eat at. This makes the results on your request a lot more valuable.
Maybe this sounds pretty familiar; when you book a flight you’ll be asked if you want to rent a car as well. This question however has been realized through a cooperation of multiple web applications. In the semantic web no cooperations or agreements have to be made since all information is universally available.
The semantic web will have a huge scale availability of information. Roughly, there are two different approaches that will lead to a semantic web: the bottom-up and the top-down approach.
The bottom-up approach implies adding information to all existing documents on the internet and making them understandable for web applications. This ‘information’ describes the entities in a webpage and all their relations. This can be done through RDF or Microformats.
Supporters of the top-down approach consider the bottom-up approach very unpractical. They don’t believe in a fully annotated internet. The top-down approach supports the development of applications that are able to have a better understanding of the data in documents. Think of tracking back the meaning of entities out of the context of a page, but mainly applications that can understand natural/logical language. Hakia (www.hakia.com) and (www.powerset.com) are Search Engines that do an attempt on understanding English in the way humans understand it.
Whatever approach will be used, the web will be more meaningful and more valuable. All entities will gather a cloud of attributes and relations. A danger would be an information overload. Ideally we only want to absorb information that raises our interest. The need of ‘personally tailored information’ will keep on getting more important.
Personal preferences
Personal preferences could be left under the control of the user. The APML (Attention Profile Markup Language) workgroup has been working towards this concept. Your profile in APML can be seen as a file with your personal preferences. Web applications are able to read this file which results in your information being filtered to your own interest.
An even bigger amount of profile information will be outside of the users’ control. At this very moment, organizations such as Google, Amazon and Yahoo are registering the clicking behavior of its visitors. In a semantic web this information will become way richer. A lot more is known about the people that visit their websites. Next to that, the web is becoming more pervasive. We are in contact with the internet all the time and will do so more and more; in our browser, our cell phone, our car, home devices, etc. Web applications will be able to register information everywhere. Profiles will be built full with information about yourself, without you noticing it.
Within this new relationship between the Web and its users, marketers will have to ‘slip into someone else’s conversation’. Brands will have to be relevant to the user’s situation, setting and desires. When the semantic web is realized and successful, it will create a huge load of information exchange between organizations and individuals, producing a new level of findability and knowledge sharing.
Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_3.0
http://www.mediapost.com/publications/index.cfm?fuseaction=Articles.showArticleHomePage&art_aid=57532
http://www.frankwatching.com/archive/2008/06/09/de-klassieke-benadering-van-web-
http://www.tamingthebeast.net/blog/online-world/semantic-web-30-0707.htm
http://www.chiefmartec.com/2008/03/marketing-in-th.html
Lifecapture Interactive (www.lifecaptureinc.com) provides interactive solutions for our clients that are directly responsible for a rise in sales and brand awareness or a drop in costs within your organization. Each solution is custom to the client served. More articles can be found at
Want to Extend Your Lifespan?
read more
Semantic Web Languages can be a useful programming tool, and be used for creation and editing of E-Learning objects (Stutt and Motta, 2004). For enabling User Driven Programming, it’s necessary to experiment with using Semantic Web Languages as programming languages. The two main approaches that can be used are:-
Option 1 – To put all the data in Semantic Web languages e.g XML (eXtensible Markup Language) (W3C, 2007a), SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) (W3C, 2007c), RDF/XML (Resource Description Framework) (W3C, 2007b), OWL (Web Ontology Language) (Bechhofer and Carrol, 2004), and then display them using a programming language such as Flash, or Java (applets) – (Hale, 2007a).
Want to Extend Your Lifespan?
read more
The need for information is infinite and the more you get the more you want. Information is the key to making informed decisions. The more we know the better we get and the better we get the more want to know.
Internet, a powerful source of information has the potential to quench our thirst for information. However, looking for information in this vast database is a daunting task. The Introduction of search engines opened the flood gates and made the already available information more accessible. But can a search engine understand a human query like any other human would do? Can they tell with accuracy, if someone meant ‘apple’ for a fruit or computer in reference to context? Let’s set upon a journey to find out if they can.
Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA),according to Wikipedia, is a techniques employed in natural language processing, for analyzing relationship between a set of documents and the terms they contain, by producing a set of concepts related to the documents and terms. In simple words, it is an umbrella term for a family of techniques used for searching and organizing large digital data collection. The motive is to find symmetry in unstructured data and use these patterns to offer more effective search and categorization. Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA) is sometimes also referred as Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI).
Until recently, keyword density ranked high on every search engine optimizer’s agenda. Most of them agreed that the keyword density per web page should be in the region of 2%-7%. With the advent of LSI, keyword density has lost some of its importance. The emphasis now lies on semantically related words and phrases and their co-occurrence. Terms, synonyms, buzz words, acronym etc., anything that can be used to establish the topic, context and theme of any given page will have an impact on how it is perceived by search engines. The relevance of theme words and phrases would indisputably play a crucial role, as more search engines incorporate LSI or part of the concept in their ranking algorithms.
LSI is often misunderstood in its true purpose because of the mathematical complexity involved in making it work. Vector space model, the concept behind LSI involves intricate calculations and understanding. However, this fact should not discourage anyone because the idea is to understand its impact on search engine rankings and not on how it is implemented.
LSI or parts of it is employed at some level in a ranking algorithm, to alleviate issues with ranking pages solely by matching text patterns. Search results purely based on matching text patterns would produce irrelevant results because relevance to context would be absent. For example a person looking for “apple” and “computer” will also be interested in “Mac OS” as they are interlinked and hence relevant. It’s all about trying to anticipate and understand more about the nature and intent of the user query. By doing so search engines endeavor to return information in context with the user’s searched term.
The most amazing thing about implementing the essence of LSI is the way in which it has made search engines more human. They can now discern a link between related term, for example a link between a cat and a dog. We as human know they are household pets and hence can categorize them accordingly. It is easy for a human brain to comprehend this but not for search engines. LSI technique has taken search engines a step further in helping them draw this analogy. They are better equipped to provide users with information in a more contextual term.
LSI featured in rare discussions until its principles were adopted by search engines as a potent tool. The concept of LSI has been around for more than a decade. Parts of it has been used by search engines to refine their search and abused by unethical marketers to mislead people who lack knowledge in this particular field. The author hopes that his article would clear some mystery and myths surrounding LSI. Its application made search engine more effective and efficient, and with advances being made to improve this technique, the author is sure that search engines would achieve new milestones.
Real Time InternetWant to Extend Your Lifespan?
read more
