Semblog Project
Personal Information Distribution with Social Network

Hideaki Takeda, Ikki Ohmukai{takeda, i2k}@nii.ac.jp

National Institute of Informatics (NII)&The Graduate University for Advanced Studies (Sokendai)
Hideaki Takeda / National Institute of Informatics

Information and Communication Activities
zTwo layers for our activities Information layer concerns how information is explicitly represented
and processed.
 Communication layer concerns how relationship among people are organized
and maintained, which is potential route for information.
Information Layer

CollectCreateDonate

Communication Layer
Collaborate
RelatePresentHideaki Takeda / National Institute of Informatics

1

Information Activitiesz

A cycle of information exploitation
 Collect Find and retrieve information
 Create Process (classify, extract, combine, mix, …) information
 Generate new information
 Donate Publish and distribute information

Information Layer
CreateCollect

DonateHideaki Takeda / National Institute of Informatics

Communication Activitiesz

A cycle of human relationship exploitation
 Relate
 Find and contact people
 Collaborate
 Work with other people (organized work, teamwork, cooperation, …)
 Present Identify and contribute ourselves to communities

Communication Layer
Collaborate
RelatePresent

Hideaki Takeda / National Institute of Informatics

2

Information and Communication Activities
zz

Not ICT(Information and Communication Technology)
But ICA (Information and Communication Activities)!

Collect

CreateDonate

集める
創る

見せる

Collaborate
RelatePresent

繋がる協働する現す

Hideaki Takeda / National Institute of Informatics

Web as Information and Communication Activitieszz

Web itself: Donate
Service on Web: Collect, Create

Collect

CreateDonate

集める
創る

見せる

Collaborate
RelatePresent

繋がる協働する現す

Hideaki Takeda / National Institute of Informatics

3zz

Blog as Information and Communication Activities

Blog itself: Create, Donate
Service on blog: Collect, (Relate), (Collaborate), (Present)

Collect

CreateDonate

集める
創る

見せる

Collaborate
RelatePresent

繋がる
協働する

現す

Hideaki Takeda / National Institute of Informatics

Information and Communication Activity Navigation(ICAN!)
zz

Explicit services to both layers
Seamless services

Collect

CreateDonate

集める
創る

見せる

Collaborate
RelatePresent

繋がる
協働する

現す

Hideaki Takeda / National Institute of Informatics

4Semblog Project
Applying Weblog and Semantic Web technologies for ICA support.
z Model “Person” on WebzWeblog

 Weblog: Information archive for individuals
 Foaf

 Interpersonal relations
Weblog

 Links between Weblogs
 Foaf relations

zWeblog

Steps Phase 1：PlatformWeblogzMetadata designz

Basic tools for seamless support in searching, editing, and publishing Phase 2: Applications
zz

Recommendation
SearchHideaki Takeda / National Institute of Informatics

Weblog Architecturez

Four layers for Weblog

Application

SearchRecommendation

Aggregation

RSS Aggregator

Management

Blog Tools

MetadataRSS

AtomHideaki Takeda / National Institute of Informatics

5

Community Web Architecturez

Extended to Social network and ontology

Application

Egocentric Search

RNA AllianceAggregation

RNAGlucose

Management

Blog Tools

FOAF TrackBack

Metadata

PermaRSS

FOAF

Personal Ontology

Contents

Social NetworkOntology

Hideaki Takeda / National Institute of Informatics

Semblog ProductszRSS-based information exploiter Extension of RSS aggregator Seamless support of searching, editing, and publishing Searching: search from myself (egocentric search) Editing: (weblog tools)
 Publishing: Three ways
z Check: which weblogs I am readingz Clip: which entries I am interested
z Post: what I am thinking
 Developed Tools
z RNA：Server-side scripts
z glucose：Windows client
Hideaki Takeda / National Institute of Informatics

6RNA: Personal RSS Portalzzzz

http://www.semblog.org/

Extension of RSS aggregator
User can Register weblogs (Check) View entries from various aspect(HTML/RSS) Preserve interested entries (Clip)
 (Post)System does
 Metadata Management
 TrackBack extraction
 Keep Metadata-added cache Generation of ParmaRSS Re-distribution of RSS
 Publishing “Checked”, “Clipped”, and“Posted” entries
 FOAF Management
 FOAF TrackBack (formally “acsh”)
Over 3,000 downloads in Japan.
Hideaki Takeda / National Institute of Informatics

RNARNA index

RNA Index

Hideaki Takeda / National Institute of Informatics

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glucose: RSS Aggregator / Weblog Editor
http://glucose.dip.jp/zzz

A client program to support searching, editing, and posting
User can Register weblogs (Check) View weblogs with 3-pane interface
 TrackBack extraction (Followed by “Re:”) Preserve entries (Clip) Cooperated with RNA
 Post via weblogs (Post) Built-in Weblog editor
 View FOAF
Over 150,000 downloads in Japan

Hideaki Takeda / National Institute of Informatics

GlucoseglucoseList Pane

Channel Pane

Content Pane

Hideaki Takeda / National Institute of Informatics

8Application

FOAF Management

Aggregation
ManagementContents M.D.

Social M.D.

Maintaining social network to determine information channel
 FOAF: Friend Of A Friend is open metadata format to describe humanrelationship with RDF.
 Self introduction section e.g., name, e-mail address, weblog URI…
 Human relationship section with <knows>
FOAF TrackBackknows Our proposal
 Provides an easy way
to expand social network
isKnownByzz

Information
Level

collectcreate

Communication
Level

relatecollabo. presentdonate

Hideaki Takeda / National Institute of Informatics

Application

PermaRSS

Aggregation
Management
Contents M.D.

z

Social M.D.

PermaRSS is a permanent entity of an RSS for each blog entry.
 Our proposal
 Including…
 Link and TrackBack relationship with other entries.
 Topics and categories with rdf:resource
 Each blog entry has different PermaRSS files.

Information
Level

collect

createCommunication
Level

relatecollabo. presentdonate

Hideaki Takeda / National Institute of Informatics

9RNA Extensionsz

RNA as personal information portal
 RNA can cope with other application via XML-RPC
 Glucose can post clipped entries to RNA Can be aggregation sites for dynamic personal information
 e.g., location-based application

Hideaki Takeda / National Institute of Informatics

RNA Extensionsz

RNA Alliance：Cooperation among multiple RNA sites
 RNA can work as P2P application
 RNA sites can communicate to each other Information exchanging on personal network is realized P2P Information Recommendation
 Recommendation with similarity between RNA sitesz Input
 Registered weblog sites
 Categories (ontologies)z Output Weblog sites
 Entries Extending personal network Really Friend of a Friend!
 Community Discovery
Hideaki Takeda / National Institute of Informatics

10Friends' RNA with FOAF link

RNA FOAF link

Friends' RNA with FOAF

Hideaki Takeda / National Institute of Informatics

RNA Alliance and Recommendation

RNA Alliance

Recommended Sites

Hideaki Takeda / National Institute of Informatics

11

Construction of Personal OntologyzBottom-up ontology construction
 We regard personal categorization as implicit “personalknowledge” → Personal Ontology
 Establish “personal knowledge” with metadata
 FOAF / Contents RSS / RDFS Ontology
 Compatibility with conventional blog systemz Distributed management modelHideaki Takeda / National Institute of Informatics

Personal Ontology
Contradiction?
 Explicit specification of a shared conceptualization that holds in aparticular context [Schreiber]z Possible under the following two hypotheses
 People share most concepts in a deep level
 Personal ontology is ontology
 People explicate their concepts only from a particular context
 Personal ontology is personalz Aggregation of personal ontologies is important Some concepts and their relations are shared Some concepts and their relations are different
 The aggregated personal ontologies can be (general) ontology
zHideaki Takeda / National Institute of Informatics

12

Construction of Personal OntologyzBottom-up ontology construction
 We regard personal categorization as implicit “personalknowledge” → Personal Ontology
 Establish “personal knowledge” with metadata
 FOAF / Contents RSS / RDFS Ontology
 Compatibility with conventional blog systemz Distributed management model

Hideaki Takeda / National Institute of Informatics

RNA Alliance with Personal Ontology
Infrastructure building and exchanging personal ontology
z Build personal ontology with RNA
 Categorization of contents In cooperation with blog toolsz Publishing personal ontology with RNAz Ontology integration with friends’ RNA
 Recommendation for sites and categories
 Integration methods
 Content-based [Hamasaki02]
 Instanced-based [Ichise03]

Hideaki Takeda / National Institute of Informatics

13

Conclusion
Concept for Information and Communication Activities
 Six activities model Four Layered model for contents, social network, and ontologyz Semblog tools RNA: server-side aggregator / publisher Glucose: client-side aggregator / editorz Semblog application
 Recommendation by RNA alliancez

Hideaki Takeda / National Institute of Informatics

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