OSCA Foundation, Nepomuk, and the Importance of Semantics
by Kristin Shoemaker - Jan. 05, 2009Comments (0)- Related Blog Posts
- OStatic Buffer Overflow...
- Amarok Refreshed: Better, Stronger, Faster!
- Four Super Tools to Rock Your Clipboard
- Open-Xchange and SugarCRM Join Forces to Integrate and Share Data
- Windows (L)users Are People, Too
Last month's Technology Review featured a piece on semantic computing. Semantic technology -- whether it's applied on the web or the desktop -- seems almost impossibly complex, as it tries to bring some very human traits of relating and connecting information to a machine environment. The artificial intelligence field, relatively speaking, is in its infancy, and since the human brain is largely an indistinguishable mix of biology and culture, it would seem semantic technology would be confined to psychology departments and computer science labs.
That isn't the case, of course. And when you consider that semantic technology deals with computers and people, and that any technology or study ultimately benefits from larger participant pools, it's little wonder that the Nepomuk project is open source and now even comes integrated with the KDE desktop.
At least for now, semantic computing relies heavily on adding relevant tags and metadata to make connections between files. Ideally, as items on a system are labeled and indexed, they are linked not only by the traditional -- common tags, keywords, creation dates -- but by more obscure, "human" connections. If I were to search for the keyword "chicken" on my desktop, for instance, I'd get a few recipes and likely many more photos of my nervous little dog. This isn't particularly new, conceptually, but Nepomuk seems better positioned for long term success, as adding generalized metadata is automated (using crawler applications to associate files) and this data can be modified at any time. Semantic search is useful, but associating files is time consuming, and Nepomuk has lessened the burden.
Nepomuk was managed previously by the German Research Centre for Artificial Intelligence (please note that the previous link references a Wikipedia entry, as the official site isn't resolving currently). In December, Nepomuk's official funding ended, but it continues as an open source effort, and the newly incorporated Open Semantic Collaboration Architecture Foundation (OSCAF) plans on working closely with Nepomuk (and similar applications) to further new developments in semantic technology.
Nepomuk, while incorporated with the KDE desktop, is available for Windows, OS X, and Linux systems (regardless of desktop environment). There is also a "simple" (though limited) plugin offered for Firefox and Thunderbird integration.
These types of projects lend themselves so well to the open source approach. Except in this case, it isn't necessarily the variety of hardware the applications get tested on, or the number of knowledge programmers looking at the code that are the major advantage -- it is a diverse world of users, making common connections in different ways.
Comments
