K.A.I.E.C. http://blog.kaiec.org Kai's Automatic Indexing Evaluation Center Fri, 19 Sep 2008 10:35:07 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.2.3 en Various impressions from ECDL 2008 http://blog.kaiec.org/2008/09/19/various-impressions-from-ecdl-2008/ http://blog.kaiec.org/2008/09/19/various-impressions-from-ecdl-2008/#comments Fri, 19 Sep 2008 10:33:54 +0000 kai conferenceConferencesecdlnkossemtinel http://blog.kaiec.org/2008/09/19/various-impressions-from-ecdl-2008/ Together with my colleague Magnus Pfeffer, I attended this years European Conference on Digital Libraries (ECDL) in Aarhus, Denmark, as well as the colocated workshop on Networked Knowledge Organization Systems and Services (NKOS).

Magnus at NKOS Workshop

The conference gave us many interesting insights, as often, mostly because of the various possibilities to socialize and to meet new people. So this article is basically a response to Jakob Voß, who blogged about meeting Magnus and me.

The demonstration of our Semtinel prototype was quite successful, as for the first time, the people were asking us, where they could download it. :-) I hope that I can manage it to make it available in the next few weeks. If you want to get informed when there is a downloadable version, just drop me a mail or leave a comment.

Another interesting outcome are new ideas what we could actually do with our Semtinel. Maybe we can use it to visualize the Wikipedia in a new way…

]]> http://blog.kaiec.org/2008/09/19/various-impressions-from-ecdl-2008/feed/ Semantic Search with AskWiki http://blog.kaiec.org/2007/11/07/semantic-search-with-askwiki/ http://blog.kaiec.org/2007/11/07/semantic-search-with-askwiki/#comments Wed, 07 Nov 2007 11:59:19 +0000 kai askmenownatural languagesearch enginesSemantic Searchwikimedia foundation http://blog.kaiec.org/2007/11/07/semantic-search-with-askwiki/ Like in my posts about semantic search with Hakia and Lexxe, Tim Finin posted a set of questions posed to AskWiki, a semantic search engine that uses Wikipedia to answer questions. AskWiki is a collaboration project of Wikimedia Foundation and AskMeNow, a company that is specialized in answering questions in natural language via a mobile phone.

Enough said, here are the results: ebiquity.umbc.edu

]]> http://blog.kaiec.org/2007/11/07/semantic-search-with-askwiki/feed/ Paper on “Interactive Thesaurus Assessment for Automatic Document Annotation” accepted for K-CAP 2007 http://blog.kaiec.org/2007/07/24/paper-on-interactive-thesaurus-assessment-for-automatic-document-annotation-accepted-for-k-cap-2007/ http://blog.kaiec.org/2007/07/24/paper-on-interactive-thesaurus-assessment-for-automatic-document-annotation-accepted-for-k-cap-2007/#comments Tue, 24 Jul 2007 07:30:13 +0000 kai assessmentdocument annotationdocument indexingdocument retrievalinteractivePublicationsSemantic Searchstatistical methodsthesaurusvisualization techniques http://blog.kaiec.org/2007/07/24/paper-on-interactive-thesaurus-assessment-for-automatic-document-annotation-accepted-for-k-cap-2007/ The paper “Interactive Thesaurus Assessment for Automatic Document Annotation” written by Heiner Stuckenschmidt, Magnus Pfeffer and me was accepted for the Fourth International Conference on Knowledge Capture (K-CAP 2007) in Whistler, Canada.

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]]> http://blog.kaiec.org/2007/07/24/paper-on-interactive-thesaurus-assessment-for-automatic-document-annotation-accepted-for-k-cap-2007/feed/ Semantic Search with Lexxe http://blog.kaiec.org/2007/07/11/semantic-search-with-lexxe/ http://blog.kaiec.org/2007/07/11/semantic-search-with-lexxe/#comments Tue, 10 Jul 2007 23:34:36 +0000 kai hakialexxesearch enginesSemantic Searchsemantic search engine http://blog.kaiec.org/2007/07/11/semantic-search-with-lexxe/ After my last experiments with the semantic search engine Hakia, today I found this article about another semantic search engine: Lexxe. As Charles asked for Lexxe’s answers to other questions, I repeated my little set of questions and here are the results:

Again, I start with the question “What is the capital of Germany?”:

Answer: Berlin

A very good start, Lexxe gives us the precise and correct answer, where Hakia returned the Gallery of Germany, which contained the answer, too.

The extended version of “Is Berlin or Bonn the capital of Germany?” resuls in…

Answer: No.

The answer of Hakia to this question were very impressing, but Lexxes is not appropriate. Even if you consider the question not as a decision between Berlin and Bonn, but as “Is one of the cities the capital?”, the answer should be yes. To be fair, I should mention that Lexxe gave us an hint to this problem:

 Tip: Lexxe cannot answer “Alternative Questions” (those with “or” in questions). You may try “Affirmative Questions” (those beginning with “Is/Are/Do/Does/Did/Can” etc).  

 

Then I reformulate my question to “Is Bonn the capital of Germany?”

Answer: the answer might not be reliable, due to lack of sufficient information. Yes.

The question mark indicates, that the answer might not be reliable, due to lack of sufficient information. The search first two results to the second questions where

Bonn - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

… agencies relocated to the former capital from Berlin and other parts of Germany. … Roman road linking the provincial capitals of Cologne and Mainz cut …

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonn,_Germany - 77 KB

German Capital Moves from Bonn to Berlin - Geography

… in Berlin, signaling the transfer of the capital of Germany from Bonn to Berlin. … the Countries and Continents of t…Capitals of Every Country …

http://geography.about.com/library/misc/blbonnberlin.htm - 22 KB

On both pages, we can find correct explanations to these questions. So let’s move on to the philosophical questions: “What is the meaning of life?” Beside the unspectacular “Answer: Personal Philosophy“, the results are not bad:

Meaning of life - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

… is about the concept of the meaning of life. For the Monty Python film, see … 1 Scientific approaches to the meaning of life. 1.1 Science and the five questions …

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meaning_of_life - 103 KB

Meaning of Life - gimme a break!

Thoughts on the Meaning of Life, How to win and/or play the Game, A provocative, … back to the first page. waste some more of my time. who said what? send in a …

http://www.bek-bek.com/ - 6 KB

God, religion, and the meaning of life

God, Religion and the ‘meaning of life’ explained. Don Camillo stories in easy to read format. … What Is The Meaning of Life? …

http://www.meaning-of-life.info/ - 15 KB

At this point, I want to point on a nice feature of Lexxe that is not offered by Hakia, a clustering of the results. Lexxe identifies the following top 3 clusters (beside others):

The clustering is a very nice feature to narrow the search results on the really interesting ones. In this case, you probably should decide if you are looking for a movie or some philosophical guidance. (Some could argue that one doesn’t necessarily eliminate the other, but thats beyond the current scope…)

With the next question, Lexxe takes a firm stand: “Does God exist?”

Answer: Yes.

The search results contain another point of view:

Odds on that God exists, says scientist | Higher | EducationGuardian.co.uk

A scientist has calculated that there is a 67% chance that God exists. … Dr Unwin maintains that he is personally around 95% certain that God exists. …

http://education.guardian.co.uk/higher/sciences/story/0,12243,1164894,00.html - 43 KB

So after all, I am curious to the answer on my last question: “What is the answer to life, the universe and everything?”

Answer: the answer might not be reliable, due to lack of sufficient information. Lives.

This time, Lexxe missed by a mile, the results give no answers as well. Probably Lexxe had difficulties with the complexity of this question with three combined parts.

Summary: Like Hakia, Lexxe is a promising approach to a semantic search engine. Both Hakia and Lexxe try to give explicit answers to your questions. Hakia seems to find the ansers on web pages. So, in many cases, the ansers are a bit diffuse, but often very good. Lexxe on the other side seems to answer the question with a short generated answer and often fails on more complex questions.

]]> http://blog.kaiec.org/2007/07/11/semantic-search-with-lexxe/feed/ Semantic Search with Hakia http://blog.kaiec.org/2007/07/05/semantic-search-with-hakia/ http://blog.kaiec.org/2007/07/05/semantic-search-with-hakia/#comments Thu, 05 Jul 2007 12:01:50 +0000 kai hakiasearch enginesSemantic Searchsemantic annotationssemantic search enginesemantic web http://blog.kaiec.org/2007/07/05/semantic-search-with-hakia/ A fairly new approach to overcome the problems with the set up of the semantic web is the development of semantic search engines. Instead of relying on the (mostly not existent) semantic annotations of web pages, these engines are powered by a semantic model of the world and should be able to “understand” the content of arbitrary web pages. This approach differs from search engines for the semantic web, like Swoogle which only searches and analyses pages with semantic annotations. One such a semantic search engine is Hakia. (more…)

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