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University Launches Semantic Web Interface

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the new-looks dept.

kv9 writes "The University of Southampton has launched a new semantic web interface, called mSpace, that it says will make searching for information online, and learning about a subject, much easier. mSpace is a framework that gathers information sources and presents them to the user in a single window. It can potentially be applied to any subject, provided the basic information is available. The researchers say this means users will no longer have to wade through lists of undifferentiated data when researching a subject."

5 of 191 comments (clear)

  1. "Imagine Google on iTunes" by bigtallmofo · · Score: 5, Interesting

    From TFA:

    Imagine more than Google

    Imagine a better iTunes

    Imagine Google on iTunes

    Perhaps my early brain development was flawed, because I'm at a total loss to imagine what a "Google on iTunes" would be like or even what that means.

    --
    I'm a big tall mofo.
  2. Score for FireFox users... by lxt · · Score: 5, Interesting

    ...interestingly, the demo won't run on IE (at least, the versions I've tried, being IE 6 on default settings). Perhaps this is a sign of things to come - more and more applications just not running on IE, and preferring FireFox / Mozilla?

  3. Mozilla browser only? by Leadhyena · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Now that's a first. The classical demo requires a Mozilla-type (they say Gecko type) browser for the enhanced javascript capability. IE 6 won't even run it correctly.

  4. They've reinvented Turbogopker VR! by maggard · · Score: 3, Interesting
    Wow, an application that shows file types, link visualiations, meta-data, encourages you to explore, I guess what's old is new again - woohoo!

    Meatball Wiki page on GopherProtocol
    A copy of the Gopher FAQ
    MacOrchard page with TurboGopher VR

    --
    I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
  5. Metadata and meaning by saddino · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Although this project isn't strictly "wrapped around" (pardon the pun) Berners-Lee's semantic web, but rather an external semantic "space" defined by a conceptual foundation and then refined by users in the inteface, it still fails to address to metatag/metdata problem, namely:

    1) The metadata sink. Creating an "mSpace" around classical composers is one thing. Doing the same on "quantum mechanics and philosophy" is another. As you broaden the concept, you have to depend on a more-refined framework of contextual and categorical distinctions. Eventually, you may be creating more metadata than data.

    2) The metadata reflection problem. Metadata, in that it is not the data itself, cannot possibly reflect every notion, category of thought or context -- many of those things depend on the user's own interaction with the data (e.g. what you find "funny" I may find "dumb."). And, as often mentioned, metadata may in fact be missing, ouright misleading or incomplete.

    IMHO, though metadata projects such as these are intriguing, the true "holy grail" of classifying data is understanding context. Thus, why worry about metadata when you have the data write there in front of you? Even a statistical anaysis of word/phrase frequency over say, 100 pages returned by Google on "quantum mechanics and philosophy" can yield concepts and connections without any metadata creation/foundation at all (i.e. the user analyzing the key words/phrases can make those connections on his/her own).

    Clearly I'm biased, as I work on software for OS X that does just this, but still, I honestly believe that creating more data, just to describe what is an increasingly massive corpus (the web), is the wrong solution to the "understanding" problem.