Ashley Twichell
Comp Sci 49S
Scribe Notes 4/15
Perfect Search – search today is not as good as it could be, for many reasons – data is not
just HTLM data
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Semantic Web – best way to think about it is a web that solves the problem of
being able to connect different meanings and relationships to know what people
are really searching for
RDF, objects – relationships, reasoning
Example: dbpedia vs wikepdia
Wikepdia – online encyclopedia. Was an experiment of getting all of the users on
the web to contribute, and then create an encyclopedia – some flaws, may not be
very organized. Also, information not necessarily be completely true
Dbpedia – can actually ask queries that are already programmed in – objects and
can explain things in terms of relationships (ex: tennis players from Moscow, it
will know exactly what tennis means, what Moscow means) – makes it much
more easier and relevant
HTML has a very limited set of tags - RDF has many more tags
RDF seems to have many more promises, and therefore seems to be what we will
use in the future
Example: del.icio.us – social bookmarking webservice for storing, sharing and
discovering web bookmarks. With each bookmark, we can tag some information.
They are encouraging users to create tags for information they are interested in –
write some keywords with it – simple way in which RDF would be able to emerge
(users would tag) – take all the tags written by each and every user of del.icio.us
and put them all together, something very meaningful will emerge
How is this possible?
 Need taxonomy – Directory, Folksonomy
1. Directory - A classification of all types of objects (ex: movies, arts,
science, shopping). This information can be used to define tags – one way
to restrict the sort of tags people put on. If people are allowed to put
arbitrary tags, the mess of what the Web is today, remains. RDF restricts
people from putting whatever they want.
2. Folksonomy - If you let everyone create tags, it is highly likely that a large
fraction of people will come up with similar tags – so let people use any
tags they want – and something will emerge
 IBM’s WebFountain
1. You need tags along with webpages to get any meaningful. It takes the
current web and wants to create a place where people can write very
complex queries. Take web pages and they try to extract tags from them –
don’t depend on people like del.icio.us .for them, each and every page also
has fancy tags – this allows them to answer much more complex tags.
 What Paul Ford has to say
1. Article : how Google beat Amazon and Ebay to the semantic web
2. Ebay – allows users to buy and sell items – runs auctions on items. There
are different types of auctions, ways in which they differ – who gets to see
who is bidding, what is the price the person who wins it will pay? Not
always what he or she bid – sometimes there is the Vickrey Auction – the
winner, the price he or she pays is the price of the second highest amount
(as opposed to their actual bid) This is similar to AdWords. ebay is like a
middle man because ebay gets some of the money, ebay is a centralized
service. Amazon is similar
3. Google is able to get rid of Amazon and Ebay using the power of the
semantic web – a user can describe they items they want to sell on their
own computer (rather than on ebay and amazon when you have to describe
it in terms of their language) google can use the semantic web to close out
Ebay and Amazon
Danger of Semantic Web
 While it does make our lives a lot easier, it also makes the lives of terrorists to
buy and sell weapons, and you also have to have verification to get everything
going
How Search is Evolving
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New Search Interfaces
1. From a cell phone or personal device (remember the UPC scanning
example)
Blackberry, google makes a lot of money doing this – everything on a single
device, can carry it with you
1. GPS – can be combined with search. For example, finding the nearest
restaurant – GPS uses google maps to find these
Aggressive personalization
New types of data
1. RFID – implanting very small chips into things. Example: putting them in
Gillete razors, can track the razors – know if it has left the store without
anyone paying for it. Another example would be in luggage, so luggage
would never be lost and can always know where your luggage is – read
article online
2. Blogs – type of online diary, someone is writing their own thoughts,
opinions, etc.
3. Can we treat blogs as a normal website with HTML? Do we need to give
special attention to blogs? -- for the most part, they are similar.