ITGumbo: spicing IT up

It is noticed that weblogs more commonly known as 'blogs' are not only used to advertise about a product or service features but also to share opinion, give feedback and to review a product or service. Very often blogs are also used to compare products/services or to give an opinion on an opinion. This chain of comments and reviews not only creates an online social network of web users interested in a product/service but also contains a wealth of context data. Consumer sentiments and context data are the two crucial information elements that are used for business advancement.

A consumer has asked for help in finding a suitable credit card for credit score 550. How can semantic technology answer the question?

The credit report information is available to the Credit Reporting Agency (CRA), the credit card companies who want to offer pre-approved credit cards can search the protected CRA database for potential customers. The information about credit data available and accessible may be published and advertised through a Web Services Description (WSD) document. Access to the protected database may be controlled with user (the user may be an individual who has a credit record or credit company that can benefit from access to individual data) authentication and authorization. Different services may be made available to different type of users thus the database fields accessible to a user can be controlled. Federal laws for fair credit may be referred for guidelines. Credit agencies may use this data to calculate the credit score according to a proprietary formula or may use the credit score provided by CRA.