302 Semantic Web Videos and Podcasts for review, another $15 million in funding for Twine (and at least three Twines on the subject already for Beta users!), a new ZDNET blog covering The Semantic Web, a weekly post by Danny Ayers with links related to Semantic technologies that could take a week to review, my Semantic Web folder in my RSS reader is bursting and there is just so much more out there around Semantic Web that sometimes i don't know which way to turn- and i don't think i am the only one.

But even so according to google trends the topic is still not at the level it was in 2004 (i also wonder if that is because specific semantic technologies are now being discussed separately from the 'semantic web' phrase?).


So how can anyone that is not working directly on Semantic Web Technologies but needs to keep up manage to do it? That is one of the items that the Semantic Library blog is trying to address for Information Professionals by exploring the meaning of the Semantic Web and how it might be used and developed in libraries

In a recent post on When and How to Learn about the Semantic Web, Fiona Bradley writes:
"it is difficult to find time to learn new things, particularly if you have no way to apply them in your current role. I learn best when I have a project I can apply my learning to, so for example, I started to use wikis in my work with library associations long before I used them in my job."

Great advice and her Blog the Semantic Library blog is going to be a great resource for information professionals trying to do just that.

Josh Catone has a post on ReadWriteWeb titled Will Social Bookmarking Pay Dividends with Search Result Augmentation? that points to research out of Standford University that seeks to provide some answers on whether social bookmarking can augment traditional search results on the Web.

The report titled "Can Social Bookmarking Improve Web Search?" includes eleven experiments using del.icio.us designed to evaluate "different aspects of social bookmarking and their impact on web search". The main end results lead to the issue of needing critical mass which is still not here- the paper's authors estimate that only about on tenth of the web has been bookmarked and tagged in del.icio.us and therefore (at least when using only this domain) tagging is not yet ready to make a significant impact on search results.

However the report makes some interesting points that i highlight below that they believe can still be used to improve how search engines work.

• about 25% of URLs entered into del.icio.us are not seen in search engines for 4 weeks to 6 months after publishing. So one of the conclusions is that social bookmarking could be used "as a (small) data source for new web pages and to help crawl ordering.". I think that especially for niche vertical search engines this would make a huge impact- and could help them win traffic over the general search engines
• Users of social bookmarking sites are probably acting largely out of self interest rather than in concert. This means that their actions are largely uncoordinated. del.icio.us has relatively little redundancy in page information for perhaps 50% of URLs and high redundancy for perhaps 20%. Once again i think that bigger benefits could probably be seen in the vertical search space and SPECIFICALLY in the Enterprise space- where users tend to be more community and task focused.
• Tags might be able to help a search engine if tags can be matched to a user's query. This is applying traditional taxonomy search engine optimization models which have proven to provide great value. The report states that the tags that users are applying are on the whole accurate- of course the definition of 'accurate' is wholly dependent on the users and what and why the tag was applied to. For example, a tag of 'produce' could mean a banana or a command for the user- so when a user searches for bananas a work order to produce an art commission might come up so further disambiguation is the key.
  
• del.cio.us is already experimenting with including bookmarked results results as art of the Yahoo! search interface so it will be interesting to hear more about this from them
  

One thing the report did not evaluate is the display of the results when the tags are applied- which i believe makes a big impact on usability.

The last item that i thought was very interesting (and of course if you have been reading my blog for a while you will know why!) is this one conclusion around Domain tagging in which their recommendation is to 'pay' librarians to tag entire domains.

We also asked our users in our user study whether tags applied only to the URL involved or whether they applied to the entire domain. Our users said that about one in five tags applied not just to the URL in question, but to the domain as a whole. Both of these statements, both in terms of prediction and in terms of our user study suggest that a well financed search engine could pay "librarians" to tag entire domains rather than single URLs. Our broad conclusion was that paying such librarians would be more efficient, and might obviate the need for about 20% of the tags on URLs bookmarked.

After watching Michael Pick's brilliant DataPortability Introduction video - as is usual when i get excited over something- i spouted my idea as a proposal for the DP community to do videos on what DataPortabilty means to them. A couple weeks later the project got even more specific via suggestions from others in the community to have the videos address five key questions.

So for better or worse - since i started the whole thing....here is my DataPortability and Me video.



Got something to add? It is not too late, you can also submit a video by tagging it dataportabilityandme from any video service!

I have twittered it, twined it and now i have to blog it because i am finding this javascript that Kent Brewster built using the MyBlogLog APIs and Yahoo! Tubes so useful/entertaining. (and because i tend to believe there are three different audiences in those different medians anyway).

Marshall Kirkpatrick over at ReadWriteWeb wrote a post from the point of view of a large traffic site editor (himself) who could use BlogJuice to learn more about the community that is visiting his site. I don't have a huge trafficked site or even a MyBlogLog visitor widget on this blog-but i am a MyBlogLog user which means that as i visit sites that have the MyBlogLog recent visitor widget, my mug is displayed like the example on the right from the PR2.0 blog. Clicking on my image/name takes you to my MyBlogLog profile page which i have populated with information about me and some of services i use including LinkedIn, Twitter, del.cio.us, Digg, Facebook etc.

My first look at MyBlogLog a while ago scared me off i admit- why would i want to leave a crumb of where i had been, did i really want any reader to a random blog to be able to get to my profile? But then i started thinking about it being like a 'calling card' that i control- a 'hey daniela was here and she reads what you read and this is what she is ok sharing with you' and i thought it would be a good way to network with those that have the same interests as i do.

So that is all fine and dandy, i can visit other visitor's MyBlogLog pages by clicking on their icon/name, and then clicking on their profiles-great- but i would have to do it one by one and very rarely have I actually done that unless it was for example a familiar face i had recently seen at a local meet-up or something.

So now comes BlogJuice a simple bookmarklet that you drag to your tool bar that uses the MyBlogLog API and was built by Kent Brewster who works at Yahoo! (but it is not an official Yahoo! product). When you land on any page that has the MyBlogLog recent readers widget, you simply click on the bookmarklet and a pop up window starts populating the profiles of the people that previously visited that site. Of course the more MyBlogLog users fill in their profiles the more useful this will be. For example when i landed on PR 2.0 this morning i was able to see the LinkedIn Profile for another visitor who could be a possible connection:
Some del.ciou.s tags that other visitors are using- a possible connection of interests?
What they have been twittering - someone new to follow perhaps?All interesting ways to connect with the community that is reading and participating in the same conversations that i am. Especially for someone like me that is always looking to connect with others and let's admit it a bit nosy to boot!

Ian Kennedy, Product Manager at MyBlogLog has a recent post on Broadcasting your Life Online- that addresses the topic of the 'Living Web' and some new features that MyBlogLog will be releasing shortly that aggregate your life online. He also addresses the ways that they address personal privacy requirements.

Because i was lucky enough to see Kent at the SIG conference last week in which he presented this BlogJuice tool- i KNOW that my profile is available through it. I also was aware of the MyBlog API- so i knew that the information i put into the MyBlogLog service could be presented in various ways- and i am ok with that because i signed up for it in order to share and since it is an opt-in service all others have as well. So i see this as a tool that is just saving me clicks to each individual profile and providing a useful aggregated view.

But i do have a handful of these 'lifecasting' profile- such as Plaxo's Pluse, Facebook, etc. all i have had to input my userids to different services (it isn't easy to find some of them!), or signed up for some application which is a bit tedious. I hope through the work of the DataPortability project that i am part of, my Online Identify can be better condensed and managed across services like this.

Kent twittered this morning that he was having a glorious day off (today was president's day in the US) and was refactoring BlogJuice so i am sure it will only get better.

I always have a long list of videos on my 'to watch' list. Although i love watching online video, especially interviews and presentations that i am not able to attend, it is rare that i have 'quiet' time to do it- usually something distracts me and it is usually hard to go back.

Last night we spent a couple hours watching some amazing video from our music video collection, tonight it was geek tv's turn. So here are some items that i watched today that you might find interesting:

- Microformats- The What, Where, Why and How- 34min Video presentation by Mark Meeker UI Engineering Architect at Orbitz Worldwide.

- Kathy Sierra: 30 min Video from the Tools of change for Publishing O'Reilly Conference on her her approach to creating passionate users.

- GOOD Magazine: Paying for Your Attention- the cost of physical Ads on billboards, taxis etc.

- Another Mike Wesch video Information R/evolution- which explores the changes in the way we find, store, create, critique, and share information. From the notes provided "This video was created as a conversation starter, and works especially well when brainstorming with people about the near future and the skills needed in order to harness, evaluate, and create information effectively."

- Bruce Cahan's Google Tech Talks presentation on Helping Consumers Buy Products that Reflect their Values-How Google Mobile Ad and Search Platforms Can Green Commerce to build Sustainable Societies Worldwide. So what is the impact of our shopping and investing habits? Does a conscious consumer deserve better interest credit rates on their purchases? Is a web service that gauges if what you buy matches your social beliefs and goals possible? I met Bruce at a conference in fall 2006 and thought what he was talking about was extremely interesting, although i have seen him comment etc. at other conferences, i never had the chance to hear his complete presentation until now.

- Danah Boyd Discover Magazine's Interview on the work that she does around social networks on youth culture.

- Catching up on the multiple videos from the 'What does DataPortability mean to me' video project including some by Marc Canter, Chris Saad, Tim Miller, Khurt Williams, Duncan Riley, Tom, Charlie Perry, and a snippet (not submitted as part of the project) on DP from Alex Albrecht and Kevin Rose on Diggnation,

Do you want to participate in the DataPortabilty Project? You still have a couple of days- Feb 20th- so what a prefect thing to do on your day off if you are celebrating President's day tomorrow (that is what i will be doing):

Here are the questions that are being addressed as part of the video project:

* What does DataPortability mean to you?
* How do you imagine DataPortability might change the way you use
the web?
* How would you explain the value of DataPortability to Vendors -
those that store the data.
* How would you explain the value of DataPortability to Users -
those that create and own the data.
* Ideally, what would you like to see from the DataPortability
Project in the next 12 months? 24 months?
* What else would you like to say? Make up a question and answer
it!
* Finally, if you agree with the sentiment, please say "My name is
[your name] and I want Data Portability" at the end of your video.

To submit the video, please post it to one of the video sharing sites
and tag it 'DataPortabilityAndMe'.

Image of vintage tvset on Flickr by Roadsidepictures

The LibraryLookup Project is not new (began in Dec 2002!) but i had not heard of it before so when Phil Wolff from Skype Journal mentioned it to me the other day after the DataPortability Meetup, i put it on my to do list- and today i have done it.

This afternoon, i called one of my local libraries that is open on Sunday (not that many are open on Sundays anymore!) to find out that the Peninsula Library uses a Catalog by Innovative. So having that information i gave the LibraryLookup Generator a try- but was unsuccessful (test page worked but bookmarklet did not so perhaps not compatible with current version of Firefox?). So a quick search brought me to WorldCat's xISBN bookmarklets that already had my local library system configured, so with one quick drag to my toolbar and bingo- i was good to go.

So what does the LibraryLookup tool do?

So let's imagine that i am on Amazon.com and i am looking at David Weinberger's book 'Everything is Miscellaneous'. I don't have a Kindle so no easy download for me- and perhaps i am not sure i want to commit to having a copy in my book collection before i read it (well this book i actually do-and well marked it is!).

So before purchasing of Amazon.com, I decide to see if my local library system- in my case the Peninsula Library System (PLS)- has the book available. Clicking on the Peninsula Library Bookmarklet i installed- extracts the ISBN from the URL on the bookseller's page (Amazon in this example) and then goes to a library catalog and searches by ISBN.:
A search against the PLS Catalog shows me libraries in my Library System that i can borrow from that have the book in their collections. I can then cruise down to that location to pick it up, place a hold on the book if it is checked out, or put a request for interlibrary loan right from my browser. There are also many ebooks available from my PLS library system so i can get immediate access to those.


Great stuff- i can't believe i did not know about it all these years! Thanks for the tip- Phil!

Do you live in the Pennisula and don't have a library card (shame on you!)- get it here or find your own public library nationwide.

I had a colleague ask me today what i thought were the latest trends in consumer generated media- what "i thought was exciting and gaining traction". My thoughts are below- my definition of media is obviously not just text based media but content that is created through multiple formats that represents an idea, an opinion, an endorsement, a conversation etc.

What have i missed (not specific service providers but additional categories)? Please add to comments. Thanks!

In no particular order:

• Twitter and other microblogging platforms
• Social Networks- content created through things like Facebook feeds
• User generated Metadata (Library of Congress Flickr project, increase in Microformat adoption, FOAF, enablers like Reuters Calais project etc.)
• Visualization – taking data and making visual engaging media–Swivel , ManyEyes, Gapminder
• Portable content- content that consists of friends lists, attention filters etc. see dataportability.org
• Video Video Video – but not just uploading/sharing video- Services like Seesmic that enable conversations and EyeJot- new communication to replace emails etc.
• Self publishing, Lulu.com, Blurb.com etc.
  
• User Generate product creation, Zazzle, Cafepress,- all the rage is to create your own merchandise – smart vendors are jumping on board see the partnerships that folks like Zazzle have with Disney,Lucas etc.
• Self publishing tools for creating business marketing, e-learning material etc. Flypaper, slideshare,
• Online Digital Picture tools- Picnik, Scrapblog
• Data that creates data- mashups that are taking user generated content and generating content from that data for the user on the fly. Tools like MyBlogLog’s enablement of Blog Juice
  
• Mobile content- be it video, pictures or good old text

What else?

PRWeek has a front page story on LinkedIn in their February 4th issue (sorry subscription only) about how their marketing and communications professionals work together to 'spread' the message about LinkedIn. I know their Community Evangelist Mario Sundar, but i am also a big fan of what they are doing with new features and how they promote their services including how they communicate with their community, so i was glad to see a major publication for PR professionals in big companies in the U.S. highlighting their work.

The article highlights the way that LinkedIn uses Social Media, like their blog, their Answers feature, their YouTube channel and their Twittering (by multiple LinkedIn employees).

A lot of what is covered in the article is not new to the social media savy PR department, but what i thought was an important part of the article was the way that PRWeek author Aarti Shah highlights the shift of communications- moving from corporate PR and even to 'assigned' community managers, to their engineering community. From the article:

"For example, last month data portability was a hot topic in the blogosphere. Though the company did not plan to address the issue in its PR strategy, two of its engineers were able to insert LinkedIn into the dialogue by adding a post that addressed the topic from the company's perspective.
As most savvy tech companies have discovered, bloggers don't like PR pitches, but may listen when an engineer suggests an idea. So the company's blog is a way for engineers, working on projects they are passionate about, to communicate their excitement to bloggers, without watering the message down with corporate-speak from the communications department, Luo notes. 'A challenge with a blog is, it's not something your PR department can create,' Luo notes. 'It's a totally different psyche than I have as a PR professional.'

Many companies allow their engineers/developers to be a part of their public voice, take a look at for example the Microsoft and Sun Microsystems blogging communities to see how their engineering communities are huge evangelists for their products. Some use their corporate 'sanctioned' blog but many blog, twitter, etc. under their own domains and i have no doubt that for major issues there is back and forth communication between the bloggers and their executive and PR departments- for example when they come out to support initiatives like the decision to joined the DataPortability Workgroup.

What i find to be the most fascinating thing that this article highlights, is that it is not only senior executives in technology positions that are making important decisions on where their platforms are going- many decisions are being pushed bottom up- sure not new you might say but more and more with the support and ear of their PR/Corporate Communications groups.

I love it when i find things like this that i had wish i had attended and someone managed to get on video and upload on the web. Dave Clarke Director of Global Taxonomy at Dow Jones was in Singapore this summer at a iKMS conference as a presenter and i just found these videos that Patrick Lambe at the Green Chameleon Blog posted back in September.

The best part is that i have seen Dave give this talk multiple times, but never managed myself to get it on video so I am glad these are out there because now i can always reference them. Thanks!

Patrick Lambe who posted these also just published a book on taxonomy development titled: Organising Knowledge: Taxonomies, Knowledge and Organisation Effectiveness that has been receiving positive reviews in the community.

To watch, i threw this up on my big monitor and watched the video while following the slide deck which was a good way to see all the slides.

Part One: Dave introduces Synaptica from Dow Jones and other Taxonomy management tools and how to use these tools to collaborate around taxonomies


Part Two: Dave take the audience through using Synaptica to create taxonomies


Part Three: Dave discusses integrating taxonomies into a business infrastructure, talks about the different systems that are typically integrated with a taxonomy management tool and the importance of using open standards (RDF, SKOS, OWL)


If you find these video's interested Patrick Lambe has other videos on his Blip.tv channel that might interest you.