The Semantic Web: What IAs Need to Know About Web 3.0

The Semantic Web: What IAs Need to Know About Web 3.0 - Presentation Transcript

The Semantic Web: What IAs Need to Know About Web 3.0 Chiara Fox IA Summit • March 20, 2009 1

Sir Tim Berners-Lee Photograph by Stephen Fry 2

A Quick Story 3

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Interesting Bits Sharing of Data Smart Agents Variety of Platforms 22

What is the Semantic Web? An extension of the current World Wide Web. A seamless web of all the data in your life. It is a collection of standard technologies to realize a Web of Data. 23

How Do We Make It Go? 24

Making the Semantic Web Go Structure data and content Explain relationships between concepts Share ontologies & data 25

Machine vs People 27

HTML -> XHTML -> XML HTML Combined structure and presentation XHTML Allowed us to pull presentation out from the content with CSS XML Get data out of flat files and proprietary databases Explicitly call out what data is 28

Identify the Bits Uniform Resource Identifiers (URI) The name of a resource or thing Use it to name everything URL (Uniform Resource Locator) is the type of URI we are most familiar with Both identifies AND locates 29

Link It Up Link data not documents. Break down the silos that exist between data Put it in a universal format that everyone shares 30

Resource Description Framework (RDF) It’s a language that allows machines to know what the bits of data are. It’s an XML framework. Used to identify things on the web A phone number Things not directly retrieved on the web User preferences for info delivery 31

Parts of RDF Statements The RDF Triple Subject Thing the statement is about Predicate Property or characteristic of subject Object Value of the property 32

What’s It Look Like? <?xml version=\"1.0\"?> <rdf:RDF xmlns:rdf=\"http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#\" xmlns:contact=\"http://www.w3.org/2000/10/swap/pim/contact#\"> <contact:Person rdf:about=\"http://www.w3.org/People/EM/contact#me\"> <contact:fullName>Chiara Fox</contact:fullName> <contact:mailbox rdf:resource=\"mailto:chiara@chiarafox.com\"/> <contact:personalTitle>Ms.</contact:personalTitle> </contact:Person> </rdf:RDF> 33

Diagram by Chris Bizer 34

Sharing Between Data Repositories Need shared, domain specific context How do you know this subject and that subject are the same? Need more than just the same format. 35

What’s an Ontology? A thesaurus on steroids Contains the map of all kinds of relationships More than hierarchical or equivalence Limited to a specific domain 37

Typical Thesaurus Entry PT: mobile phone UF: cell phone, cellular phone SN: electronic device used for mobile voice or data communication BT: telephone NT: iPhone clamshell non-flip style 38

Typical Ontology Entry PT: mobile phone Made by: phone manufacturers UF: cell phone, cellular phone Use network of: telecom SN: electronic device used service providers for mobile voice or data communication BT: telephone NT: iPhone clamshell non-flip style 39

Thesaurus to Ontology Can convert a thesaurus to an ontology Written in OWL (Web Ontology Language) Add needed relationships Express relationships in RDF statements Links data to other data 40

Web Ontology Language Expressed in Web Ontology Language (OWL) Builds on RDF and RDF Schema Deeper relationships in properties and classes Designed for use by applications that need to process the content of information. 41

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Semantics Being Used Today 45

Already Using The Semantic Web... Kinda Mash Ups are starting to do that Ad hoc Different APIs, logic, structures Social tagging Tags add metadata to individual pieces of data Even travel sites arrogate data from multiple sources 46

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Friend of a Friend FOAF Project Decentralized social-networking system Ontology describing persons, their activities and their relations to other people and objects LiveJournal & TypePad supports it Uses RDF & OWL 48

Using Semantics for Search Google isn’t great at all kinds of searches. Semantics are great for research searches Dissertations, literature reviews, research Good at disambiguation Searches for meaning or concepts, not just facts Can pull data from multiple data sources and compare it 49

Can Ask Different Questions Looking for drugs to treat Alzheimer’s What proteins are involved in signal transduction and are related to pyramidal neurons? Google: 223,000 hits, 0 results Linked healthcare data: 32 hits, 32 results 50

How Do IAs Help? Think beyond the CV & thesaurus What do our interfaces look like when we bring all different types of data together? How can we use UX design for these applications? These are the backend systems -- what are the problems they are solving? 51

Learn More 52

Where To Go W3C Semantic Web Activity http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/ Semantic Web Wiki http://semanticweb.org/wiki/Main_Page Semantic Technologies Conference http://www.semantic-conference.com/ 53

Book Resources A Semantic Web Primer, 2nd Edition by Grigoris Antoniou & Frank van Harmelen Finding the Concept, Not Just the Word: a Librarian's Guide to Ontologies and Semantics by Brandy E King & Kathy Reinold Semantic Web for the Working Ontologist by Dean Allemang & Jim Hendler 54

Thank You! Feel free to contact me with questions & comments. Email: chiara@adaptivepath.com This presentation is available at: www.chiarafox.com 55

April 2-3, 2009 May 11-14, 2009 September 15-18, 2009 Berlin San Francisco San Francisco June 15-18, 2009 San Francisco http://uxweek.com/ http://adaptivepath.com/ November 2-5, 2009 events/2009/apr Washington, D.C. http://adaptivepath.com/ events/2009/uxi/ Use promotional code FOCF and get 15% off the registration price. 56