OpenRaiser/Intern-Atlas huggingface dataset:
How to make a semantic web browser
Authors: Dennis Quan, David R. Karger
Venue: WWW
Year: 2004

Two important architectural choices underlie the success of the Web: numerous, independently operated servers speak a common protocol, and a single type of client the Web browser provides point-and-click access to the content and services on these decentralized servers. However, because HTML marries content and presentation into a single representation, end users are often stuck with inappropriate choices made by the Web site designer of how to work with and view the content. RDF metadata on the Semantic Web does not have this limitation: users can gain direct access to information and control over how it is presented. This principle forms the basis for our Semantic Web browser an end user application that automatically locates metadata and assembles point-and-click interfaces from a combination of relevant information, ontological specifications, and presentation knowledge, all described in RDF and retrieved dynamically from the Semantic Web. Because data and services are accessed directly through a standalone client and not through a central point of access (e.g., a portal), new content and services can be consumed as soon as they become available. In this way we take advantage of an important sociological force that encourages the production of new Semantic Web content while remaining faithful to the decentralized nature of the Web.
Educanext: a framework for sharing live educational resources with isabel
Authors: Juan Quemada, Gabriel Huecas, Tomás de Miguel, Joaquín Salvachúa, Blanca Fernandez, Bernd Simon, Katherine Maillet, Efiie Lai-Cong
Venue: WWW
Year: 2004

EducaNext is an educational mediator created within the UNIVERSAL IST Project which supports both, the exchange of reusable educational materials based on open standards, as well as the collaboration of educators over the network in the realization of educational activities. The Isabel CSCW application is a group collaboration tool for the Internet supporting audience interconnection over the network, such as distributed classrooms, conferences or meetings. This paper describes the conclusions and feedback obtained from the integration of Isabel into EducaNext, it's use for the realization of collaborative educational activities involving distributed classrooms, lectures or workshops, as well as the general conclusions obtained about the integration of synchronous collaboration applications into educational mediators.
Is question answering an acquired skill?
Authors: Ganesh Ramakrishnan, Soumen Chakrabarti, Deepa Paranjpe, Pushpak Bhattacharyya
Venue: WWW
Year: 2004

We present a question answering (QA) system which learns how to detect and rank answer passages by analyzing questions and their answers (QA pairs) provided as training data. We built our system in only a few person-months using o#- the-shelf components: a part-of-speech tagger, a shallow parser, a lexical network, and a few well-known supervised learning algorithms. In contrast, many of the top TREC QA systems are large group e#orts, using customized ontologies, question classifiers, and highly tuned ranking functions. Our ease of deployment arises from using generic, trainable algorithms that exploit simple feature extractors on QA pairs. With TREC QA data, our system achieves mean reciprocal rank (MRR) that compares favorably with the best scores in recent years, and generalizes from one corpus to another. Our key technique is to recover, from the question, fragments of what might have been posed as a structured query, had a suitable schema been available. One fragment comprises selectors: tokens that are likely to appear (almost) unchanged in an answer passage. The other fragment contains question tokens which give clues about the answer type, and are expected to be replaced in the answer passage by tokens which specialize or instantiate the desired answer type. Selectors are like constants in where-clauses in relational queries, and answer types are like column names. We present new algorithms for locating selectors and answer type clues and using them in scoring passages with respect to a question.
Hearsay: enabling audio browsing on hypertext content
Authors: I. V. Ramakrishnan, Amanda Stent, Guizhen Yang
Venue: WWW
Year: 2004

In this paper we present HearSay, a system for browsing hypertext Web documents via audio. The HearSay system is based on our novel approach to automatically creating audio browsable content from hypertext Web documents. It combines two key technologies: (1) automatic partitioning of Web documents through tightly coupled structural and semantic analysis, which transforms raw HTML documents into semantic structures so as to facilitate audio browsing; and (2) VoiceXML, an already standardized technology which we adopt to represent voice dialogs automatically created from the XML output of partitioning. This paper describes the software components of HearSay and presents an initial system evaluation.
Automatic detection of fragments in dynamically generated web pages
Authors: Lakshmish Ramaswamy, Arun Iyengar, Ling Liu, Fred Douglis
Venue: WWW
Year: 2004

Dividing web pages into fragments has been shown to provide significant benefits for both content generation and caching. In order for a web site to use fragment-based content generation, however, good methods are needed for dividing web pages into fragments. Manual fragmentation of web pages is expensive, error prone, and unscalable. This paper proposes a novel scheme to automatically detect and flag fragments that are cost-effective cache units in web sites serving dynamic content. We consider the fragments to be interesting if they are shared among multiple documents or they have different lifetime or personalization characteristics. Our approach has three unique features. First, we propose a hierarchical and fragment-aware model of the dynamic web pages and a data structure that is compact and effective for fragment detection. Second, we present an efficient algorithm to detect maximal fragments that are shared among multiple documents. Third, we develop a practical algorithm that effectively detects fragments based on their lifetime and personalization characteristics. We evaluate the proposed scheme through a series of experiments, showing the benefits and costs of the algorithms. We also study the impact of adopting the fragments detected by our system on disk space utilization and network bandwidth consumption.
Semantic information portals
Authors: Dave Reynolds, Paul Shabajee, Steve Cayzer
Venue: WWW
Year: 2004

In this paper, we describe the notion of a semantic information portal. This is a community information portal that exploits the semantic web standards to improve structure, extensibility, customization and sustainability. We are in the process of developing a prototype directory of environmental organizations as a demonstration of the approach and outline the design challenges involved and the current status of the work.
Web accessibility: a broader view
Authors: John T. Richards, Vicki L. Hanson
Venue: WWW
Year: 2004

Web accessibility is an important goal. However, most approaches to its attainment are based on unrealistic economic models in which Web content developers are required to spend too much for which they receive too little. We believe this situation is due, in part, to the overly narrow definitions given both to those who stand to benefit from enhanced access to the Web and what is meant by this enhanced access. In this paper, we take a broader view, discussing a complementary approach that costs developers less and provides greater advantages to a larger community of users. While we have quite specific aims in our technical work, we hope it can also serve as an example of how the technical conversation regarding Web accessibility can move beyond the narrow confines of limited adaptations for small populations.
Self-learning web question answering system
Authors: Dmitri Roussinov, Jose Antonio Robles-Flores
Venue: WWW
Year: 2004

While being quite successful in providing keyword based access to web pages, commercial search portals, such as Google, Yahoo, AltaVista, and AOL, still lack the ability to answer questions expressed in a natural language. In this paper, we present a probabilistic approach to automated question answering on the Web. Our approach is based on pattern matching and answer triangulation. By taking advantage of the redundancy inherent in the Web, each answer found by the system is triangulated (confirmed or disconfirmed) against other possible answers. Our approach is entirely self-learning: it does not involve any linguistic resources, nor it does require any manual tuning. Thus, the propose approach can easily be replicated in other information systems with large redundancy.
Structuring and presenting annotated media repositories
Authors: Lloyd Rutledge, Jacco van Ossenbruggen, Lynda Hardman
Venue: WWW
Year: 2004

We generate hypermedia presentations from annotated media repositories using simple document structure as an intermediate phase. This poster applies Web style technologies to this process. Results include style specification for accessing semantically annotated media repositories, for determining document structure from semantic structure and for applying this document structure to the final presentation.
HPG: a tool for presentation generation in WIS
Authors: Bas Rutten, Peter Barna, Flavius Frasincar, Geert-Jan Houben, Richard Vdovjak
Venue: WWW
Year: 2004

Web Information Systems (WIS) support the process of retrieving information from sources on the Web and of presenting them as a hypermedia presentation. Most WIS design methodologies focus on the engineering of the abstract navigation (hyperlinks). The actual presentation generation is less supported. Hera is one of the few WIS methodologies that offer a tool for presentation generation (HPG). The HPG transforms RDF data obtained as the result of a query into a Web presentation suited to the user (in HTML or WML).
A query algebra for xml p2p databases
Authors: Carlo Sartiani
Venue: WWW
Year: 2004

This paper describes a query algebra for queries over XML p2p databases that provides explicit mechanisms for modeling data dissemination, replication constraints, and for capturing the transient nature of data and replicas.
CS AKTive space: representing computer science in the semantic web
Authors: Monica M. C. Schraefel, Nigel R. Shadbolt, Nicholas Gibbins, Stephen Harris, Hugh Glaser
Venue: WWW
Year: 2004

We present a Semantic Web application that we callCS AKTive Space. The application exploits a wide range of semantically heterogeneousand distributed content relating to Computer Science research in theUK. This content is gathered on a continuous basis using a variety of methods including harvesting and scraping as well as adopting a range models for content acquisition. The content currently comprises aroundten million RDF triples and we have developed storage, retrieval andmaintenance methods to support its management. The content is mediated through an ontology constructed for the application domainand incorporates components from other published ontologies. CS AKTive Spacesupports the exploration of patterns and implications inherent in the content and exploits a variety of visualisations and multi dimensional representations. Knowledge services supported in the applicationinclude investigating communities of practice: who is working, researching or publishing with whom. This work illustrates a number ofsubstantial challenges for the Semantic Web. These include problems of referential integrity, tractable inference and interaction support. Wereview our approaches to these issues and discuss relevant related work.
Accurate, scalable in-network identification of p2p traffic using application signatures
Authors: Subhabrata Sen, Oliver Spatscheck, Dongmei Wang
Venue: WWW
Year: 2004

The ability to accurately identify the network traffic associated with different P2P applications is important to a broad range of network operations including application-specific traffic engineering, capacity planning, provisioning, service differentiation,etc. However, traditional traffic to higher-level application mapping techniques such as default server TCP or UDP network-port baseddisambiguation is highly inaccurate for some P2P applications.In this paper, we provide an efficient approach for identifying the P2P application traffic through application level signatures. We firstidentify the application level signatures by examining some available documentations, and packet-level traces. We then utilize the identified signatures to develop online filters that can efficiently and accurately track the P2P traffic even on high-speed network links.We examine the performance of our application-level identification approach using five popular P2P protocols. Our measurements show thatour technique achieves less than 5% false positive and false negative ratios in most cases. We also show that our approach only requires the examination of the very first few packets (less than 10packets) to identify a P2P connection, which makes our approach highly scalable. Our technique can significantly improve the P2P traffic volume estimates over what pure network port based approaches provide. For instance, we were able to identify 3 times as much traffic for the popular Kazaa P2P protocol, compared to the traditional port-based approach.
Semi-automatic annotation of contested knowledge on the world wide web
Authors: Bertrand Sereno, Simon Buckingham Shum, Enrico Motta
Venue: WWW
Year: 2004

We describe a strategy to support the semantic annotation of contested knowledge, in the context of the Scholarly Ontologies project, which aims at building a network of interpretations enriching a corpus of scholarly papers. To model such knowledge, which does not have 'right' and 'wrong' values, we are building on the notion of active recommendations as a means to sparkle annotators' interest. We finally argue for a different approach to the evaluation of its impact.
Adapting databases and WebDAV protocol
Authors: Bita Shadgar, Ian Holyer
Venue: WWW
Year: 2004

The ability of the Web to share data regardless of geographical location raises a new issue called remote authoring. With the Internet and Web browsers being independent of hardware, it becomes possible to build Web-enabled database applications. Many approaches are provided to integrate databases into the Web environment, which use the Web's protocol i.e. HTTP to transfer the data between clients and servers. However, those methods are affected by the HTTP shortfalls with regard to remote authoring. This paper introduces and discusses a new methodology for remote authoring of databases, which is based on the WebDAV protocol. It is a seamless and effective methodology for accessing and authoring databases, particularly in that it naturally benefits from the WebDAV advantages such as metadata and access control. These features establish a standard way of accessing database metadata, and increase the database security, while speeding up the database connection.
Network arts: exposing cultural reality
Authors: David A. Shamma, Sara Owsley, Kristian J. Hammond, Shannon Bradshaw, Jay Budzik
Venue: WWW
Year: 2004

In this article, we explore a new role for the computer in art as a reflector of popular culture. Moving away from the static audio-visual installations of other artistic endeavors and from the traditional role of the machine as a computational tool, we fuse art and the Internet to expose cultural connections people draw implicitly but rarely consider directly. We describe several art installations that use the World Wide Web as a reflection of cultural reality to highlight and explore the relations between ideas that compose the fabric of our every day lives.
Using urls and table layout for web classification tasks
Authors: Lawrence Kai Shih, David R. Karger
Venue: WWW
Year: 2004

We propose new features and algorithms for automating Web-page classification tasks such as content recommendation and ad blocking. We show that the automated classification of Web pages can be much improved if, instead of looking at their textual content, we consider each links's URL and the visual placement of those links on a referring page. These features are unusual: rather than being scalar measurements like word counts they are tree structured---describing the position of the item in a tree. We develop a model and algorithm for machine learning using such tree-structured features. We apply our methods in automated tools for recognizing and blocking Web advertisements and for recommending "interesting" news stories to a reader. Experiments show that our algorithms are both faster and more accurate than those based on the text content of Web documents.
Browser-based applications: positive transference or interference?
Authors: Mark S. Silver, Sidne Gail Ward
Venue: WWW
Year: 2004

Applications that run on top of web browsers dominate the Internet today. Given the many similarities among these applications' features, positive transference from one to another is often seen as an important source of ease-of-use for such applications. This paper examines the many differences in the way similar features are implemented in different browser-based applications, analyzing the way these inconsistencies can lead to negative transference (interference) that degrades rather than enhances usability.
Enhancing the SCORM metadata model
Authors: David Simões, Rui Luís, Nuno Horta
Venue: WWW
Year: 2004

Nowadays, the leading e-learning platforms are converging towards standardization. This paper presents an extension to the SCORM, today's most well acclaimed e-learning standard, enabling the modelling of course related entities that surround learning objects and content aggregations, therefore increasing the standard's modelling scope and allowing for gains in efficiency in knowledge dissemination. A prototype is being implemented and tested on VIANET, an original e-learning platform with extensible support for the SCORM. content aggregations.
A generic uiml vocabulary for device- and modality independent user interfaces
Authors: Rainer Simon, Michael Jank, Florian Wegscheider
Venue: WWW
Year: 2004

We present in this poster our work on a User Interface Markup Language (UIML) vocabulary for the specification of device- and modality independent user interfaces. The work presented here is part of an application-oriented project. One of the results of the project is a prototype implementation of a generic platform for device independent multimodal mobile applications. The poster presents the requirements for a generic user interface description format and explains our approach on an integrated description of user interfaces for both graphical and voice modality. A basic overview of the vocabulary structure, its language elements and main features is presented.
A semantic approach for designing business protocols
Authors: Ashok U. Mallya, Munindar P. Singh
Venue: WWW
Year: 2004

Business processes involve interactions among autonomous partners. We propose that these interactions be specified modularly as protocols. Protocols can be published, enabling implementors to independently develop components that respect published protocols and yet serve diverse interests. A variety of business protocols would be needed to capture subtle business needs. We propose that the same kinds of conceptual abstractions be developed for protocols as for information models. Specifically, we consider (1) refinement: a subprotocol may satisfy the requirements of a superprotocol, but support additional properties and (2) aggregation: a protocol may combine existing protocols. In support of the above, we develop a formal semantics for protocols, an operational characterization of them, and an algebra for protocol composition.
Distributed ranking over peer-to-peer networks
Authors: Dexter Chi Wai Siu, Tak Pang Lau
Venue: WWW
Year: 2004

Query flooding is a problem existing in Peer-to-Peer networks like Gnutella. Firework Query Model solves this problem by Peer Clustering and routes the query message more intelligently. However, it still contains drawbacks like query flooding inside clusters. The condition can be improved if the query message can send directly to the query destination, as the message does not need to send hop by hop. This can be achieved by ranking. By ranking, the network can know the destination and the information quality shared by each peer. We introduce distributed ranking in this paper. We give background of FQM, outline of the proposed method, and conduct a series of experiments that demonstrate the significant reduction of query flooding in a P2P network.
Trust-serv: model-driven lifecycle management of trust negotiation policies for web services
Authors: Halvard Skogsrud, Boualem Benatallah, Fabio Casati
Venue: WWW
Year: 2004

A scalable approach to trust negotiation is required in Web service environments that have large and dynamic requester populations. We introduce Trust-Serv, a model-driven trust negotiation framework for Web services. The framework employs a model for trust negotiation that is based on state machines, extended with security abstractions. Our policy model supports lifecycle management, an important trait in the dynamic environments that characterize Web services. In particular, we provide a set of change operations to modify policies, and migration strategies that permit ongoing negotiations to be migrated to new policies without being disrupted. Experimental results show the performance benefit of these strategies. The proposed approach has been implemented as a container-centric mechanism that is transparent to the Web services and to the developers of Web services, simplifying Web service development and management as well as enabling scalable deployments.
Augmenting semantic web service descriptions with compositional specification
Authors: Monika Solanki, Antonio Cau, Hussein Zedan
Venue: WWW
Year: 2004

Current ontological specifications for semantically describing properties of Web services are limited to their static interface description. Normally for proving properties of service compositions, mapping input/output parameters and specifying the pre/post conditions are found to be sufficient. However these properties are assertions only on the initial and final states of the service respectively. They do not help in specifying/verifying ongoing behaviour of an individual service or a composed system. We propose a framework for enriching semantic service descriptions with two compositional assertions: assumption and commitment that facilitate reasoning about service composition and verification of their integration. The technique is based on Interval Temporal Logic(ITL): a sound formalism for specifying and proving temporal properties of systems. Our approach utilizes the recently proposed Semantic Web Rule Language.
Optimization of html automatically generated by wysiwyg programs
Authors: Jacqueline Spiesser, Les Kitchen
Venue: WWW
Year: 2004

Automatically generated HTML, as produced by WYSIWYG programs, typically contains much repetitive and unnecessary markup. Thispaper identifies aspects of such HTML that may be altered whileleaving a semantically equivalent document, and proposes techniques to achieve optimizing modifications. These techniques include attribute re-arrangement via dynamic programming, the use of style classes, and dead-coderemoval. These techniques produce documents as small as 33% of original size. The size decreases obtained are still significant when the techniques are used in combination with conventional text-based compression.