Semantic Web 2.0: Creating Social Semantic Information Spaces

Slide 1: Semantic Web 2.0: Creating Social Semantic Information Spaces Dr. John Breslin TTI / ITAG Event 30th November 2006 john.breslin@deri.org http://sw.deri.org/~jbreslin/ www.deri.ie © Copyright 2006 Digital Enterprise Research Institute. All rights reserved.

Slide 2: Overview 1. State of the Art in Semantic Web 2. The Path Ahead for Social Semantic Information Spaces 3. From Blogging to Semantic Blogging 4. From Wikis to Semantic Wikis 5. Semantic Search 6. Semantics in Digital Libraries 7. Semantics in Community Portals 8. Realising the Memex and NLS: From the Desktop and Web to Social Semantic Information Spaces 2

Slide 3: What is DERI? • Digital Enterprise Research Institute • Established at NUI Galway in June 2003 • One of the largest “Semantic Web” research institutes • About €25 million in funding from EU FP6, SFI, EI • Now has 80 members (staff and students) • Three main research clusters: – Semantic Web – Semantic Web Services – E-Learning with Semantics • About 100 project partners 3

Slide 4: Who am I? 4

Slide 5: What is the Semantic Web? – “An extension of the current Web in which information is given well-defined meaning, better enabling computers and people to work in cooperation.” • Sir Tim Berners-Lee et al., Scientific American, 2001: tinyurl.com/i59p – “…allowing the Web to reach its full potential…” with far-reaching consequences – “The next generation of the Web” 5

Slide 6: Where are we in the “Semantic Web layer cake”? You Are Here! 6

Slide 7: The current (syntactic / structural) Web 7

Slide 8: Was the Web meant to be more? 8

Slide 9: Hence, the Semantic Web… • The word “semantic” stands for “the meaning of”: – The Beatles were a popular band from Liverpool; Lennon was a member of the Beatles; "Hey Jude" was recorded by the Beatles • The Semantic Web is a Web that is able to describe things in a way that computers can understand 9

Slide 10: Describing things on the Semantic Web • RDF (Resource Description Framework) is an open format markup language for describing information and resources, and is the fundamental data model for the Semantic Web • Using RDF, we can describe relationships between things like: – A is a part of B or – Y is a member of Z • and their properties (size, weight, age, price…) in a machine-understandable format where each thing has a URI 10

Slide 11: A simple RDF example • Statement: – “Ora Lassila is the creator of the resource (web page) http://www.w3.org/Home/Lassila” • Structure: Resource (subject) http://www.w3.org/Home/Lassila Property (predicate) http://www.schema.org/#Creator Value (object) “Ora Lassila” • Directed graph: s:Creator Ora Lassila http://www.w3.org/Home/Lassila 11

Slide 12: Simple RDF example shown in RDF/XML s:Creator Ora Lassila http://www.w3.org/Home/Lassila <rdf:Description about=“http://www.w3.org/Home/Lassila> ” <Creator>Ora Lassila</Creator> </rdf:Description> 12

Slide 13: Can already describe lots of things semantically • Geographic coordinates: – GEO • Library books: – Dublin Core (DC) • Online discussions: – SIOC • People, social networks: – Friend-of-a-Friend (FOAF) • Maybe even hormones! – GeneOnt 13

Slide 14: The power of the Semantic Web • Interoperability and increased connectivity is possible through a commonality of expression • Vocabularies can be combined and used together: – e.g. a description of a book using Dublin Core metadata can be augmented with specifics about the book author using the Friend-of-a-Friend vocabulary • Vocabularies can be easily extended (modules, etc.) • Intelligent search with more granularity and relevance: – e.g. a search can be personalised to an individual by making use of their identity and relationship information 14

Slide 15: What is Web 2.0? • The term Web 2.0 was made popular by Tim O’Reilly: – http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/tim/news/2005/09/30/what -is-web-20.html • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_2.0 – “Web 2.0 … has … come to refer to what some people describe as a second phase of architecture and application development for the World Wide Web.” • The Web where “ordinary” users can meet, collaborate, and share using social software applications on the Web (tagged content, social bookmarking, AJAX, etc.) • Popular examples include: – Bebo, del.icio.us, digg, Flickr, Google Maps, Skype, Technorati, Wikipedia… 15

Slide 16: What are tagging and folksonomies? • Tag: – A keyword which acts like a subject or category • Folksonomy: – A collaboratively generated, open-ended labeling system that enables Internet users to categorise content using tags: • Web links and pages (e.g. del.icio.us) using “social bookmarking” • Online photographs (e.g. Flickr, Zooomr) • Events (e.g. Upcoming.org) • Blog entries, etc. • Tag cloud: – A visual depiction of the tags used on a website: • Equivalent to a weighted list in the field of visual design 16

Slide 17: The path to Semantic Web 2.0 • The Semantic Web effort is mainly towards producing standards and recommendations that will interlink applications • The Web 2.0 meme is about providing user applications • Not mutually exclusive: – http://www.oreillynet.com/xml/blog/2005/10/is_web_20_killing_th e_semantic.html – With a little effort, many Web 2.0 applications can and do use Semantic Web technologies to great benefit – We will now discuss Web 2.0 and describe what happens when we combine it with the Semantic Web 17

Slide 18: From Web 1.0 to Semantic Web 2.0 Web 1.0 Web 2.0 Semantic Web 2.0 Personal Websites Blogs Semantic Blogs Content Management Wikis, Wikipedia Semantic Wikis Systems, Britannica Online Altavista, Google Google Personalised, Semantic Search DumbFind, Hakia CiteSeer, Project Google Scholar, Book Semantic Digital Libraries Gutenberg Search Message Boards Community Portals Semantic Forums and Community Portals Buddy Lists, Address Online Social Networks Semantic Social Networks Books … … Semantic Social Information Spaces 18

Slide 19: Metaweb ≡ social semantic information spaces 19

Slide 20: 1+1>2 • Semantic forums • Semantic blogs • Semantic wikis • Semantic social nets • Semantic desktop Semantic Web + social software > sum of its parts 20

Slide 21: Social semantic information spaces: SW 2.0 Web 2.0 and social software 21

Slide 22: Blogging: a phenomenon for a new generation? • Cincinnati Enquirer, October 2004 22

Slide 23: What are blogs? • Weblog, web log or simply a blog • A web application which contains periodic time-stamped posts on a common (usually open-access) webpage • Individual diaries -> arms of political campaigns, media programs and corporations (e.g. the Google Blog) • Posts are often shown in reverse chronological order • Comments can be made by the public on some blogs • Latest headlines, with hyperlinks and summaries, are syndicated using RSS or Atom formats (e.g. for reading favourite blogs with a feed aggregrator or reader) 23

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Slide 25: The state of the “blogosphere” • Source: Technorati (March 2003 to October 2006) 25

Slide 26: Why semantic blogging? • Users collect and create large amounts of structured data on their desktops • This data is often tied to specific applications and locked within the user's computer • Semantic blogging can lift this data into the Web 26

Slide 27: Releasing your data to the Web scenario John‘s Computer writes Post Blog Post Knud annotates Post Blog Post Knud‘s Computer Metadata Blog Post imports publishes Post Blog Post metadata Metadata Metadata reads Post Web John 27

Slide 28: Creating a semantic blog post with semiBlog Annotating a blog entry with an address book entry. <foaf:Person rdf:ID="andreas"> <foaf:homepage> http://sw.bla.org/~aharth/</foaf:homepage> <foaf:surname>Harth</foaf:surname> <foaf:firstName>Andreas</foaf:firstName> <!-- ... more properties ... --> <rdf:value>Andreas Harth</rdf:value> </foaf:Person> 28

Slide 29: What are wikis? • A community-developed documentation project • “A piece of server software that allows users to freely create and edit Web page content using any Web browser. Wiki supports hyperlinks and has a simple text syntax for creating new pages and crosslinks between internal pages on the fly.” • Wiki comes from the Hawaiian word for quick • In brief: JohnGrisham – Interlinked websites – Collaborative editing He is the author of PelicanBrief. – Simple syntax He lives in Mississippi. – e.g. Wikipedia.org He writes a book each year. He is published by RandomHouse.

Slide 30: Some uses of wikis • Wikis are being used for: – online encyclopaedias – free dictionaries – book repositories – event organisation – software development – writing research papers – project proposals – personal info management

Slide 31: Entering information • Anyone can edit an existing wiki article • If an article does not exist on a particular topic, you can create it • If someone messes up an article (deliberately or erroneously), there is a revision history so you can revert the contents

Slide 32: Problems with traditional wikis • Structured access JohnGrisham • Information reuse He is the author of PelicanBrief. He lives in Mississippi. He writes a book each year. He is published by RandomHouse. Structured access: ✗ Other books by JohnGrisham (navigation) ✗ All authors that live in Europe? (query) Information reuse: ✗ The authors from RandomHouse (views) ✗ And what if I don't speak English? (translation) 32

Slide 33: What are semantic wikis? • Semantic wikis (with an underlying model of the knowledge) allow us to capture or identify further information about the pages (metadata) and their relations • Knowledge model available in a formal language, so that machines can (at least partially) process and reason on it • A semantic wiki would be able to capture that an "apple" article is a "fruit" (through an inheritance relationship) and present you with further fruits when you look at apple • Some are used for personal knowledge management, others aimed at KM for communities 33

Slide 34: Information reuse 34

Slide 35: Towards a Semantic Web search engine • Currently, Google searches mainly plain text • Need integrated, conceptual query answering over various sources and kinds of data: – semi-structured data (RDF, actual SW data) – unstructured data (i.e. human language text) – structured data (i.e. databases) • Goal to provide answers instead of document lists (or both) 35

Slide 36: SWSE • “Semantic Web Search Engine” • When you search for something, you can specify what type of “something” it is that you are looking for, e.g.: – Person – Event – Image – Wikipedia article – etc. 36

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Slide 39: Semantic digital library technologies and research • JeromeDL – e-library with semantics – A digital library based on the Semantic Web – Conforms to librarian standards (like MARC21) – Semantic query expansion and ontology based navigation • FOAFRealm – identity management – Can define polices based on social networking information – Access rights delegation, social semantic collaborative filtering • MarcOnt – semantic bibliographic description initiative – Bibliographic ontology compatible with MARC21, BibTeX, DC – MarcOnt portal for collaborative ontology lifecycle management – MarcOnt ontology mediation service • HyperCuP - lightweight peer to peer implementation – Efficient broadcast algorithm – Domain-based overlay networks 39

Slide 40: Information management in JeromeDL 40

Slide 41: Example of social semantic collaborative filtering foaf:knows xfoaf:include xfoaf:bookmark 41

Slide 42: Evolution of online community sites Online community sites: • Provide a valuable source of information • May contain rich meta-information • But are isolated from one another: – Many sites discussing complementary topics Next steps: • Connect sites together • Add more value: – Let other sites know more about the structure and contents – Make more use of tagging and semantic metadata 42

Slide 43: timbl on the Semantic Web and online communities “I think we could have Sir Tim Berners-Lee, podcast both Semantic Web interview during ISWC 2005 technology supporting online communities, but at the same time also online communities can support Semantic Web data by being the sources of people voluntarily connecting things together.” 43

Slide 44: What is SIOC? • Semantically-Interlinked Online Communities (SIOC) • Connecting forums, posts from many types of online communities (blogs, forums, mailing lists, etc.) • Interesting possibilities: – Distributed linked conversations – Decentralised discussion channels and communities – “I […] think the concept is HOT” – Robert Douglass, Drupal Developer – “It just dawned on me that the burgeoning SIOC-o-sphere (online communities exporting and exposing content via SIOC Ontology) is actually: Blogosphere 2.0” – Kingsley Idehen, Founder and CEO of OpenLink Software 44

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Slide 47: The main concepts in SIOC 47

Slide 48: How can SIOC data be used? 48

Slide 49: SIOC browser (4) A SIOC browser 49

Slide 50: Browsing SIOC with TimeLine 50

Slide 51: Other community users of SIOC 51

Slide 52: timbl tries out SIOC • Some weeks ago, Tim Berners-Lee was experimenting with SIOC data in the Tabulator application • Wahey! 52

Slide 53: Realising social semantic information spaces Web/Desktop: Help individuals in managing information on the Web / their PC Semantic: Make content available to automated processing Social: Enable exchange across individual boundaries Person Email Event friend Topic acquaintance Person Website Document colleague Image Personal Semantic Web: a semantically enlarged Social protocols Social semantic peers intimate supplement to memory and distributed search peers 53

Slide 54: Motivation for social semantic information spaces • Current problems: – Low level communication, everything is just e-mail... • Insufficient collaboration infrastructure: – High cost of setting up / maintaining – Difficult to support ad-hoc collaboration 54

Slide 55: Realising social semantic information spaces: The first society-scale semantic web application Driven by today's needs, in the Today necessary technologies & communities exist: spirit of seminal visions Standardised metadata: Semantic Web Scalable distributed infrastructure: P2P Computing InspiredMemex (Vannevar Bush) by sociological Knowledge articulation and interaction: Desktop Technology perspectives: is “a device in which an A memex individual stores all his books, Processing of unstructured and legacy information: NLP On grouprecords, and communications.” forming: Human centric information exchange: Online Social Networks Viral communication (Reed) Challenge: Extension & merging of research streams On innovative IT-based interaction and Open Hypertext System Phase 1 Phase 2 Phase 3 feedback:(Doug Engelbart) “The open hyperdocument system Social translucent systems (OHS) is a standards-based, open Desktop / Semantic Desktop (Erickson and Kellogg) source framework for developing Web Social Semantic Smart Mobs (Rheingold) collaborative, knowledge Information Spaces management applications.” On network modeling and algorithms: NLP Social network (Tim Berners-Lee) WWW research “There was a second part of the Semantic P2P Ontology- Small world propertiescould then use dream […] we Driven computers to help us analyse it, Power law distribution Distributed make sense of what we re doing, P2P Networks (Barabasi and Huberman) Social where we individually fit in, and how we can better work together.” Semantic Web Networking Link-based authority algorithms, recommender algorithms (Perugini) Ontology-Driven Social Networking Social Networking 55

Slide 56: Nepomuk social semantic desktop 56

Slide 57: Conclusion Semantic (Web 2.0) => (Semantic Web) 2.0 (or Web 3.0 ) 57