ITGumbo: spicing IT up

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a technique applied to increase the rank of a page in Search Engine Result Page (SERP). SERP is the list of URIs found for the user query and rendered in descending PageRank order on a single web page. Since most web users shall traverse the URIs on the first SERP or may be next few, most web content providers would want that their web page URI is included in the first few SERPs.

A FOAF file is a mechanism to publish one's social and professional profile. It is also used to publicize one's social and professional network, the people one knows besides work duties and the people one collaborates with on project or in an organization. FOAF vocabulary properties foaf:knows and foaf:person are used to document these relationships on the web.

"The foaf:knows property relates a foaf:Person to another foaf:Person that he or she knows" [1].

If one suggests in his/her FOAF file that he/she knows this person (linked with foaf:knows property), the other person is under no obligation to accept that he/she is socially or professionally associated with the FOAF file owner (value of property foaf:name in FOAF file).

"If someone foaf:knows a person, it would be usual for the relation to be reciprocated. However this doesn't mean that there is any obligation for either party to publish FOAF describing this relationship" [1].

Advantages & risks of FOAF file

"You probably know hundreds of people, yet might only list a few in your public FOAF file. That's OK. Or you might list them all. It is perfectly fine to have a FOAF file and not list anyone else in it at all" [1].

Is it okay to create a long list of acquaintances in the FOAF file by adding foaf:knows? It may be okay to do so until no other web application is developed that may use foaf:knows links for purposes other than being informed about one's social & professional standing. As soon as FOAF becomes popular amongst masses it may be used to establish credibility of a person, to establish trust and to authenticate a person. The name FOAF is expanded to "Friend-of-a-Friend", FOAF specification suggests:

"The name was chosen to reflect our concern with social networks and the Web, urban myths, trust and connections" [1].

A hyperlink to one's FOAF file may be embedded by anybody in the web content in order to add a reference to the person. The properties such as foaf:Project and foaf:Organization may be used to find a list of collaborators for a project or an organization. It is not necessary to include these people in the FOAF file with foaf:knows property, a SPARQL query on foaf:Project may be used to find people working on the same project. Many tools can be built to take advantage of this personal information in order to build and find trustworthy connections.

Strong authentication with FOAF

If two people trust each other they can project this information in their respective FOAF file by including each other's FOAF file IRI with foaf:knows property. This reciprocation is a way of establishing trust in each other and this trustworthy connection may be used for authentication. It may be used for responsibility delegation, endorsement and collaboration, etc.

A digital certificate that is used for strong authentication constitutes more than one factor. FOAF Identity (i.e. FOAF file IRI) may be used as one of the factors in the construction of a digital certificate. If 'A' and 'B' trust each other and agree to endorse each other's communications on a certain matter they may get a digital certificate with 'A' and 'B' FOAF Identify as one of the factor for strong authentication. The certification authority shall validate the authenticity of the suggested relationship between the two with the presence of reciprocated FOAF Id with foaf:knows property in 'A' and 'B' FOAF files respectively. The suggested relationship shall be verified by the certificate authority every time it receives a request to verify and decrypt the message encrypted with the issued private key. This verification shall ensure that the suggested trust relationship between 'A' and 'B' is not broken, i.e. digital certificate is valid only until this suggested trust relationship is present in both FOAF files. Example: If either 'A' or 'B' removes foaf:knows entry for the other then the 'knows' relationship is broken; if either 'A' or 'B' changes foaf:Project value then they are not working on the same project anymore.

The relationship may be suggested by specifying other FOAF properties as well, such as: foaf:Group, foaf:Project, foaf:member, etc. The relationship may also be rendered by the user agents such as browsers and e-mail clients in the same manner as VeriSign EV SSL shows certification authority in the green highlighted browser address bar. In e-mail client 'From' bar the relationships may be shown in a drop-down menu.

Conclusion: FOAF data is public information it may be used for strong authentication. If FOAF data is included in the construction of a digital certificate, other private factors must also be included for autentication of FOAF data. The other possible factors that may be used in the construction of digital certificate are: passport number, driving license number, etc. FOAF data may add authenticity to the information by virtue of relationship between the information originator and the foaf:knows people or other FOAF properties.

Reuters have launched a web service for annotation of content on web, they call it Calais.

We want to make all the world's content more accessible, interoperable and valuable. Some call it Web 2.0, Web 3.0, the semantic web or the Giant Global Graph - we call our piece of it Calais [1].

What Calais web service does?

This web service will accept the text content and scan it to find data for semantic annotation. The service shall find the appropriate metadata for semantic annotation. There is a provision that the content provider can suggest a vocabulary to be used for semantic annotation. The service shall store the RDF triples generated from the semantic annotation in a central repository and provide a Globally Unique Identifier (GUID) to the content provider. The service shall also provide these RDF triples to the content provider.

What should Calais web service user do?

The content provider who will use Calais web service must proivde the returned Calais GUID to those who need RDF triples corresponding to the published content. Any web application that needs RDF triples for the published content will find these triples in Calais central repository by providing the GUID.

Using the Calais GUID, any downstream consumer is able to retrieve this metadata via a simple call to Calais [1].

The content provider may also use RDFa to include the metadata terms from the RDF triples returned by the Calais web service for semantic annotation of the content.

What are the advantages of Calais web service?

The Calais web service has following advantages:

1. It shall find appropriate metadata for semantic annotation of the input content. The content provider does not have to search for appropriate vocabularies and metadata for semantic annotation of the content.
2. It shall generate and store RDF triples for the content in a central repository. The content provider does not need to include GRDDL transformations for RDF generation.

Conclusion: The Calais web service provides RDF triples for annotable data in the input content. The Calais web service does not use RDFa for semantic annotation of the content. The web content provider must hand annotate the web content by using RDFa and metadata from RDF triples returned by the Calais web service. An unanswered question is whether Calais web service will use normative metadata from a standard ontology. Use of RDFa and normative metadata are key to building semantic web/Giant Global Graph. The use of GUID may not be considered as a replacement to GRDDL transformation; the former will require that every time the content is updated the RDF triples stored in Calais repository must be updated and if GUID is changed then all users of this GUID must be notified. By using GRDDL transformation instead of GUID the users of RDF triples need not be notified about any changes to the content. The web server cache may store the latest updates to RDF triples.

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.

In order to incorporate the semantic annotation in the blog post, the standard ontology shall have to be used by blogging tools like MovableType, WordPress, etc. These tools use proprietary values for HTML element ‘div’ attributes id, class, etc. to annotate the published content stored on the web server. The limitation of the present practice of proprietary annotation is that the blogger has to register the blog in various forums by submitting the blog URI and Search Engine indexing is based on keywords defined in the META element and other HTML element attributes like id, etc. As described in the previous blog post a method is required to automate the process of blog discovery. I.e., classification of blog post is required for categorization.

As more data on WWW is made available with semantic annotation of web resources the categorization of web resources based on classification with characteristics identifiable by normative metadata shall be the key to development of semantic web applications. The inclusion of normative metadata from standard ontology as web resource descriptors in POWDER DR or embedded in the web content with RDFa shall provide data for search engine indexing to build SE taxonomy.

• Characteristics are properties of a 'thing'.
• Classification is the identification of characteristics for categorization.
• Categorization is grouping of resources with same characteristics.
• Taxonomy is the process of classification.

The value of HTML language elements and attributes such as content attribute in META element with attribute name='keywords', heading elements, alt, name, title, hreflang and media, etc. are used by search engines to classify web content. While these attributes may still be used for web resource classification, the normative metadata shall extend the vocabulary that is used for web resource classification. The difference is that HTML element and attribute tag value and not tag name are used for web resource classification, the RDF/OWL class property (predicate) as well as values (object) shall be used for classification of semantic web resources (subject). It is important to note that HTML tag names do not mean name attribute value but tag names such as META, TH, A, H1-H6, etc.

POWDER specifications provide mechanisms for defining and identifying trust worthy web resource descriptions. The web resource description is the description of web resource characteristics described with normative metadata. The use of normative metadata is the basis of proof and trust requirements of semantic web. The metadata terms defined in the POWDER specifications provide a structure to semantic annotation of a web resource.

Data is the building block of the semantic web; therefore security of all data in the semantic web is the essential requirement for the success of semantic web. The web service provider and web service requester data must be secured. Web services specifications and semantic technologies provide mechanisms to define and execute security policies for different types of data. Data that must be secured is:

• Published data - Data that has been published by the web service provider as HTML web content or is accessible according to Message Exchange Pattern (MEP) described in Web Service Definition (WSD) document.

• Concealed data - Data that is stored in the internal storage media of the web service provider and is not available for public access. Data that is stored in the personal computer storage media of the web user who connects to the semantic web.

• Personal Identifiable Information - Data that is provided by the web service requester and is collected by the web service provider.