ITGumbo: spicing IT up

Context of an object/service is the information about the interactions and circumstances of an object/service. This context can be defined as an interface with operation, messages and input/output parameters. Semantics of an object/service is the meaning of the context, i.e. the ontology and value type for parameters. Semantics and context together identify the information and provide the meaning and syntax for the information that must be exchanged with the object/service for action. A web service implementation must include code for all contexts. If the context and semantics of the web service is not exposed then other applications will interface with the abstract form of the web service. This has following repercussions:

Semantic Technology Conference 2007 is ongoing in San Jose California. In this confluence of Information Technology leaders many news products, semantic technology strategies and solutions are expected to be presented and discussed. In the blog post What will it Take to Build the Semantic Technology Industry? Dave McComb and et al. discuss ideas and strategies on how semantic technology can be used and made popular. Some of the issues they have identified and solutions suggested by them are:

Comment on blog post Text mining for intelligent content & context search:

"insurance quotes cheapest car http://carcheapestinsu.spotbb.com car cheapest california insurance"

If you click the link in this comment you will not get to the web page of the cheapest car insurance provider, but you will get a Google list of the URLs of car insurance providers who have used the word 'cheapest' in the web content. Semantic web is expected to change this: you may get one URL of the cheapest car insurance provider found by the comparison of the lowest premium value in your given area according to the search parameters specified: global or area specific. The list of other insurance providers in ascending order of the premium may be attached by an intelligent search engine. The car insurance content providers will use the metadata provided by the insurance standards to enable semantic search of the web content.

The natural language query for 'car cheapest insurance' will be converted to a SPARQL Query and RDF database of 'car' with 'insurance' property will be searched for solution. The intelligent engine will convert the adjective 'cheapest' to an ascending order (lowest first) search for insurance premium.

CueCat flopped in early years of 21st century because web users did not like the idea of scanning barcodes for more online information. Either the information that was made available through this scanner was not of interest, or WWW and e-commerce were not very popular, or the web users were afraid of losing control over the private information that may be collected by the web sites visited or by the CueCat provider Digital Convergence. The web site of Digital Convergence had a message in 2004:

Power lines reach most homes around the globe as compared to cable wires, telephone lines or satellite signals. While web clean-up is in progress with new hardware and software architecture design, the World Wide Web has not yet reached every home. Fiber optic cables and optical switches are to build a strong backbone and carry signals to longer distance on fiber. But the cost of laying down fiber cables or installing satellite towers is not negligible even for the developed countries. E-governance and e-commerce cannot be practiced successfully until every citizen has access to WWW. The net of telephone wires, cable wires and power lines either underground or in air has associated maintenance cost. Subscriber receives different bills for every service. In the converged services era where voice, data and video have been converged on cable or satellite an isolated power service brings a separate utility bill to be fulfilled. When moving into a new house one has to ensure subscription to converged service or remain disconnected with the external world until the service provider activates the account. One can connect via 3G/4G mobile phone or WLAN connected laptop, but not at all places.

Cyberthieves could steal data from IT systems of T.J.Maxx parent company TJX. How robust is the wireless security mechanism? In a modern office all systems may work in a wireless mode, while you are working in your cabin an hacker may be sitting in a car nearby and reading all data flowing in the air. Data that was earlier contained in a wire and required physical access to the system for intrusion is suddenly insecure. The organization firewall protected all the systems behind it and the internal network was secure. Now do you need to keep a watch on what is going on outside your office. Any other cause of security failure other than insecure wireless access points must be considered an inappropriate information security policy.

Wireless Security

In the part 2 of this blog series the metadata elements that can be used for a resource description are identified. The metadata elements defined by Dublin Core Metadata Initiative are included in a RDF resource description by adding the XML namespace for these elements. The metadata elements defined by the standards organization are also included by adding their respective XML namespace.

Blogs create a massive consumer information database built by the individual opinion of web users. What is the utility of this information? It is used by online consumers, service providers, academicians, researchers and web surfers to gain knowledge, to share knowledge and to create a virtual social network that has no boundaries. There are many blog popularity web sites where blog links are listed to share information. How does this information sharing influence the web user?

Risk is the possibility of a harm, loss or danger. Risk can be due to unforeseen circumstances or known threats. While concrete measures can be taken to avoid risks due to known threats, only precautions can be taken for unforeseen circumstances. Security in all aspects of life is part of risk management. While there is lot of emphasis on IT Security, it is risk management that must be focused.

Highly Dynamic Systems (HDS) collect context data to provide advanced services. The consumer context data is collected by the businesses to find hidden information that can be used to boost marketing and sales figures. Integrated RFID data, consumer personal and context information and semantic web data can be used to provide comparative deals.

Text mining is a technique used to mine written information resources for new and undiscovered information. It is similar to data mining technique that is used to mine information resources for statistical data. The difference is that the former is used for structured information such as XML documents. Semantic web schema facilitates deep information search. To be able to extract meaning from the unstructured hidden information that has been published on internet for years the information must be organized systematically.

Some text mining technologies are:

• Pattern matching
• Topic-tracking
• Summarization
• Categorization
• Clustering
• Concept linkage
• Information visualization
• Question answering