Building Semantic Web Applications asInformation and Knowledge Sharing Systems

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

Difficulty of Semantic Web Applicationsz

Why semantic web applications are so difficult to become popular?
 Not only
 Because semantic web is difficult to understand and use But Because information and knowledge sharing is basicallydifficult to widespread

Hideaki Takeda / National Institute of Informatics

1

SW as information and knowledge sharing
The power of semantic web is realized only when information andknowledge are shared among peoplez Information Sharing is basically difficult to widespread“People are basically reluctant to exhibit their information”
 Information publishing is not easy for ordinary people Unbalance between information collecting and publishingz How to solve it?
 Groupware: Force people to use! (“Intranet” solution)
 Semantic Web: Cannot force people to use (“Internet Way”)
zHideaki Takeda / National Institute of Informatics

Instant Gratification
Need for Instant Gratification for semantic web Most SW applications lack feedback to users
 Mangrove: Rapid realization of users’ actionsz Instant Gratification alone is NOT enough for SW applications
 Information and knowledge sharing intrinsically needs time Information should be circulated via loop among people
zHideaki Takeda / National Institute of Informatics

2

Double-loop Gratification
Instant Gratification: Rapid feedback to users
 Clear benefits to users themselves
 Not necessary to be objectives of semantic web
 Keep users to use SW applications from the beginningz Delayed Gratification
 Benefits through long-run use of SW applications
 Real objectives of semantic web Often implicit
z e.g., sense of participation
 Users use them naturally and sometimes advocate to other peoplez Problems
 How to realize both types of gratification in a single application?
 How to connect two types of gratification to each other?
z

Hideaki Takeda / National Institute of Informatics

Translucence Strategyz

Put people in a situation where they can feel possible delayed
gratification within kissing distance Just a very small amount of extra efforts to join

information/knowledge sharing in addition to ordinary efforts toobtain instant gratification.

Hideaki Takeda / National Institute of Informatics

3

Case studies
Social experience WWW
z Our experience Community navigator Semblog
 (Ba-log: Location-based weblog)z

Hideaki Takeda / National Institute of Informatics

Case Study: World Wide Web
Instant Gratification:
 Authoring hypertexts
 A new fascinating method for people to organize own
information that is difficult to write down as stable wellorganized form like wordz Delayed Gratification: Publishing hypertexts
 New communication is established between information
publishers and readersz Translucence Strategy
 Authoring hypertexts and publishing them are so closely
connected
 Almost no extra efforts
zHideaki Takeda / National Institute of Informatics

4

Community Navigator:
Collaborative Scheduling Support System for Conferencesz

Support conference participants by helping their own scheduling andcommunication among them Used at JSAI annual conferences (2003, 2004)

Hideaki Takeda / National Institute of Informatics

Community Navigator:
Collaborative Scheduling Support System for Conferencesz

Instant Gratification:
 Work as a personal scheduler

Hideaki Takeda / National Institute of Informatics

5

Community Navigator:
Collaborative Scheduling Support System for Conferencesz

Delayed Gratification:
 Browsing personal network
 Recommendation through personal network

Co-author network(# of cluster: 73)

Know-link network(# of cluster: 5)
Hideaki Takeda / National Institute of Informatics

Community Navigator:
Collaborative Scheduling Support System for Conferencesz

Delayed Gratification:
 Browsing personal network
 Recommendation through personal network

Hideaki Takeda / National Institute of Informatics

6

Community NavigatorzTranslucence Strategy
 Show their “know” and“known” links explicitly intheir “my page”
 Just a single click to addpeople into your “know” list

Hideaki Takeda / National Institute of Informatics

Community Navigatorz

How does it work?
 # of participants: 558
 # of system users: 276
 # of users who added papers to schedules: 160 …(a)z Users for instant gratification
 # of users who added people to “know” list: 99 …(b)z Users for both instant and delayed gratification
 Rate (b)/(a) (60%) is better than publishers/readers of Web

Hideaki Takeda / National Institute of Informatics

7

Semblog Platform
Applying Weblog and Semantic Web technologies for Personal Knowledge
Publishing
Our Platform includes…
Weblog “Person” on Webzz

 Weblog: Information archive for individuals
 FOAF

Interpersonal relations
 Links between Weblogs

Weblog FOAF relations

WeblogTo realize personal knowledge publishing environment…
 Phase 1: Platformzzz

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

Recommendation
SearchHideaki Takeda / National Institute of Informatics

Semblog Productsz

Extended RSS aggregator Provides seamless support of searching, editing, and publishing
RSS-based contents
 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 Informatics8RNA: Personal RSS Portal
http://www.semblog.org/zzzz

Server-side RSS aggregator with Perl
User can…
 Register weblogs (Check) View entries from various aspect(HTML/RSS) Preserve interested entries (Clip)
RNA provides…
 Metadata Management
 TrackBack extraction from each entry
 Keep Metadata-added cache Re-distribution of RSS
 Publishing “Checked”, “Clipped”, and“Posted” entries
 FOAF Management
 FOAF TrackBack
Over 3,000 downloads in Japan.
Hideaki Takeda / National Institute of Informatics

Double-loop Gratification in Semblog
zzz

Instant Gratification
 Making Personal Memo / Agenda
 Clip “important contents for me” on the Web
Translucence Strategy
 Friends’ clips works as “human-filtered search engine”
 My clip will work as “human-filtered search engine” for my friend
Delayed Gratification
 Realizing Knowledge sharing and exchange Clip “important contents for others”!
 Better cost / performance with CMS and RSS

Aggregator

RSSWeblog
Hideaki Takeda / National Institute of Informatics

9Conclusionzzz

Analysis on why semantic web is difficult to be widespread Difficulty on information and knowledge sharing
 People do not want to “share” but to “get” information
 Concept of double-loop gratification is needed Instant gratification
 Delayed gratification
 Translucence strategy
 Put people within kissing distance and make feel possibility of delayedgratification
Some case studies (WWW)
 Community Navigator / Semblog Platform
Future work
 How to leverage “information sharing” to “knowledge sharing”
 RSS is too simple
 How we treat more complicated information with casual way
Hideaki Takeda / National Institute of Informatics

10