Part 4: Mindswap tools

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Part 4 Mindswap tools
Maryland Information and Network Dynamics
Laboratory Semantic Web Agents Project http//www.
mindswap.org/
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Adding power via Semantic Web

• Tools can be domain independent
• Your tool should be usable in lots of contexts!
• Use the standards
• OWL and its successors crucial
• Tools should assume multiple ontologies
• Its the links, stupid
• Ontology search, collection, integration
  crucial
• Check out the DAML crawler (http//www.daml.org/cr
  awler)
• BackEnd technologies must be scaleable
• Can co-evolve with Semantic Web size
• But remember, the Web is HUGE

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Semantic Web Knowledge Acquisition

• Virtually no one will create ontologies from
  scratch
• High-End ontology developers will be a tiny
  percentage (10,000 High end Web Designers
  1/10,000 of users)
• It is easier to read then to create ontologies
• Expect cut and paste (HTML analogy)
• Most used OWL editor to date is Emacs
• Can Bootstrap from existing content
• HTML screen scrapers, structured data, Excel
  spread sheets,
• No training allowed
• Motivated users will skim the docs on occasion
• Most users want to use it now
• Everyone has a browser - deploy tools through
  that
• Common metaphors must be used Form fill, menu,
  search
• Note No formal justification for any of these -
  but it worked before!

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GIVE IT AWAY!!!!!

• There is, and will be, no market for any of this
  unless we create it!
• No one will make money selling their tools until
  we have MANY more users
• Make small, cheap, easy to download version of
  your tools available
• Give it away
• The big winners on the web made it available for
  free
• Browsers Mosaic, Netscape, IE
• Plug-ins Flash, RealPlayer, Quicktime
• Tools Adobe, Real Media

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RIC Allow extensibility

• Users MUST be able to add their own concepts
• Semantic Web (and OWL) allow this
• Advanced users will become ontology providers
• It will be cool to have yours be the ontology
  of choice in a domain
• Consistency CANNOT be maintained on the web
• May be a useful heuristic
• Insist on consistency and the Semantic Web fails!

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Smore Making Markup Easier
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Common Metaphor across tools
Photo SMORE
Mail SMORE
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Web travel agents
How many cows are there in Texas?

• Query processed 73 answers found
• Google document search finds 235,312 possible
  page hits.
• Http//www/CowTexas.html claims the answer is
  289,921,836
• A database entitled Texas Cattle Association
  can be queried for the answer, but you will need
  authorization as a state employee.
• A computer program that can compute that number
  is offered by the State of Texas Cattlemans
  Cooperative, click here to run program.
• ...
• The sex network can answer anything that
  troubles you, click here for relief...
• The UFO network claims the all cows in Texas
  have been replaced by aliens

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Web Agents need Service Descriptions
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Grounding in DAML-S
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Reasoner-based composer
Advanced information management capabilities
Discovery, Filtering, Composition
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Putting all this together
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Provides a beginning
Are there any mountains in Europe bigger than Mt.
Blanc?
document
service
database
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Distributed trust relationships
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TrustMail