Category Archives: Semantic Web Applications

Andreas Blumauer

Do you like Google’s Knowledge Graph?

by , Category: Linked Data & Open Data, Mashups & Web services, Semantic Web Applications

Semantic Enterprise Search enters the second phase.

Finally the Knowledge Graph has arrived in Europe: What has been provided on google.com for the US-Market since May 2012, is now available also for most European countries. Search results are no longer only a list of documents (and advertisements) but also a mashup of facts, points of interest, events etc. referring to the search phrase.

For example, if the user is searching for ‘Wiener Philharmoniker’ (‘Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra’) a factbox including related searches is provided:

Do you like this rather new way of knowledge discovery? We do, except the fact that Google hasn´t properly explained to the audience which technology is behind the Knowledge Graph which is the Web of Linked Data aka the Semantic Web (Do you want to know more about the relationship between the Knowledge Graph and Linked Data? Click here).

But anyway, here are some benefits we can see, if search technologies make use of a ‘knowledge graph’, a ‘knowledge model’, a ‘thesaurus’ or generally spoken: Linked Data.

  • Facts around an object (or an entity) can be found nicely packed up to a dossier
  • Serendipity can be stimulated by ‘related searches’ which means: Users can discover the formely ‘unknown’ in a more comfortable way
  • Data from various sources can be pulled together to a mashup (e.g. ‘upcoming events’ could come from a different database than the basic facts of Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra)
  • Search phrases are well understood by the engine since they are based on concepts and not anymore on literals, e.g. if the user searches for ‘Red Bull Stratos’, also results for ‘Felix Baumgartner’ will be delivered
  • Search can be refined, e.g. if one searches for ‘Vienna’, a list of POIs will be displayed to refine the actual place the user is looking for

Now imagine you would have a search engine in your company’s intranet based on a knowledge graph which is about the enterprise you are working for.

Such an advanced search application would look like this:

  • Data streams and all kind of content from internal sources are nicely mashed with information from the web (e.g. from Twitter, Youtube etc.)
  • Search assistants are provided to help users to refine their information needs to make them more specific
  • Entities and their sub-concepts (e.g. subsidiaries of large companies or regions of countries) are nicely packed together to one dossier

The key question now is: “how to set up a customised knowledge graph for a certain company?”.

Corporate Semantic Web based applications can be realised on top of software platforms like PoolParty. They all have a customised knowledge graph in their core. This is always the basis for concept-based indexing of specialised content from a corporate intranet. The basic standard for this is SKOS which can be used together with advanced query languages like SPARQL. Such graphs can be used for semantic indexing but also to ask for relations like ‘is point-of-interest in’, ‘is event of’, ‘is related search for’ etc. This is the next-generation semantic search which help decision-makers, information professionals and all kind of knowledge workers to improve their work significantly.
One comfortable way to create customised knowledge graphs is to make use of Linked Data sources like Freebase (like Google does) or DBpedia. More details wanted? Take a look at the PoolParty approach for efficient knowledge modeling.
Thomas Thurner

Revealing Trends and Insights in Online Hiring Market Using Linking Open Data Cloud

by , Category: Calls & Competitions, Literature & Publications, LOD2, Semantic Web Applications, Tools & Software

How a business-related application that exploits open-data may look like is presented to the Semantic Web Challenge 2012 by Amar-Djalil Mezaour, Julien Law-To, Robert Isele, Thomas Schandl (SWC) and Gerd Zechmeister (SWC). The paper describes a prototypic linked data application for the Online Hiring Market.

”Active Hiring” is a search based application providing analytics on on-line job posts. This application uses services from the LOD cloud to disambiguate, geotag and interlink data entities acquired from on-line job boards web sites and provides a demonstration of the usefulness of linked open data in business setting.

from Active Hiring a Use Case Study, Paper, 2012

The search based application that combines semantic technologies and services to produce Human Resources (HR) analytics and highlight major trends on online hiring market. So Active Hiring is a demonstration of the benefit of combining open data sets and services with semantic tools as a support technology for increasing the accuracy of business applications. The Active Hiring demonstrator has been developed within the activities of the European project LOD2.

Full paper: Revealing Trends and Insights in Online Hiring Market Using Linking Open Data Cloud: Active Hiring a Use Case Study (PDF)

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Martin Kaltenböck

ADMS implemented in PoolParty Thesaurus Manager (PPT) 3.1.0 Release

by , Category: Corporate Semantic Web, Linked Data & Open Data, Ontology Engineering, Open Government Data, Semantic Web Applications, Tools & Software, Vocabularies & Languages

ADMS – the Asset Description Metadata Schema of the European Commission Joinup Initiative, is a metadata vocabulary to describe semantic interoperability assets.

The Asset Description Metadata Schema (ADMS) is a common way to describe semantic interoperability assets making it possible for everyone to search and discover them once shared through the forthcoming federation of asset repositories.

 

One of the main objectives of ADMS is e.g. to foster cross-boarder services in Europe by the efficient re-use of semantic assets in e-Government.

 

Description of ADMS
ADMS will allow public administrations, businesses, standardisation bodies and academia to:
  • keep their own system for documenting and storing semantic assets;
  • improve indexing and visibility of their own assets;
  • describe semantic assets in a common way so that they can be seamlessly cross-queried and discovered by the community through a single access point (Joinup);
  • retrieve, compare and potentially link semantic assets to one another in cross-border and cross-sector settings;
  • identify assets to be reused avoiding duplication and expensive design work.

Outreach of ADMS
ADMS is the first step towards a federation of european assets repositories. From mid 2012, Joinup will make available a large number of semantic interoperability assets, described using ADMS, through a federation of asset repositories of Member States, standardisation bodies and other relevant stakeholders. Through this federation, semantic interoperability assets will become retrievable and available via a single point of access.

Please consult the ADMS brochure for further information.

 

ADMS implemented in PoolParty Thesaurus Manager (PPT) 3.1.0 Release

 

The current release 3.1.0 of the PoolParty Thesaurus Manager (PPT) of the Semantic Web Company provides now full ADMS capability!

Figure: PoolParty GUI for metadata management of controlled vocabularies – ADMS tab.

 

Therefore PoolParty Thesaurus Manager (PPT) now allows the content architect to fill in the full description of a controlled vocabulary (a SKOS Thesaurus) – means the meta data of a controlled vocabulary – following now also ADMS standards – these ADMS relevant meta data is automatically published with a controlled vocabulary using the ADMS RDF schema and thereby can be used to publish a vocabulary in the repository of Joinup or another relevant repository of semantic assets to ensure re-use of the controlled vocabulary and thereby interoperability for services et al.

 

Example

The SWC Social Semantic Web Thesaurus Linked Data Frontend: http://vocabulary.semantic-web.at/semweb.html

And: the corresponding ADMS description in RDF:
http://vocabulary.semantic-web.at/semweb/adms/0.1.rdf

More information also available in PoolParty Thesaurus Manager (PPT) 3.1.0 Release Notes.

If you are interested in this topic around Joinup and ADMS as well as the respective PoolParty implementation then participate in the SEMIC2012 conference on 18 June 2012 in Brussels, Belgium.

Andreas Blumauer

Re-vamped PoolParty Knowledge Discoverer has been released

by , Category: Conferences & Events, Semantic Web Applications

PoolParty team has released a brandnew version of its knowledge discoverer to showcase the power of knowledge models in combination with linked data and text mining.

First of all: PoolParty Knowledge Discoverer is more about collecting context information about documents which deal with domain-specific ‘things’ like persons, places, companies etc. than a search engine in a ‘classical’ sense.

PoolParty Knowledge Discoverer

Don´t expect to find a pizzeria in your neighbourhood with this kind of tool. If you want to build a similar tool like this, take a look at the PoolParty product family.

How does it work?

Provide some text either by

  • typing your topic or
  • by retrieving text from a URL or
  • by entering a text directly into the editor

PoolParty will analyse your text.

Now you will get smart recommendations and context information:

  • related contents from Wikipeda
  • categories related to the text
  • images related to the text
  • tags relevant for the text

For example: If you want to get a quick overview over an interesting article of ‘The Guardian’ about open data, just click on the bookmarklet which can be installed to use the Knowledge Discoverer instantly, and you will be redirected to the following page.

The tool is a blueprint for many use cases in different sectors, here are some examples:

  • find relations between open positions and applicants in your recruiting database
  • find those pieces of your technical documentation which are related to a concrete description of a customer´s problem
  • save time when analysing new markets by collecting and linking information about your target market from different databases

Interested? Wanna see how this could work in established platforms like Confluence? Come to Atlassian Summit or SemTechBiz (both to be held in San Francisco) next week and visit us at the PoolParty booth!