Diane-Michel.com

Recently I’ve been exploring Semantic Web applications as a way to understand how they might be able to help my group working within medical research. My latest find is a Semantic search currently in Beta, called True Knowledge. The following video from their Website describes their product.

Currently they are working on two products:
“1. The True Knowledge Answer Engine – a search engine-like consumer site which can answer questions, be used to add knowledge and also be used just like a conventional search engine.
2. An API product for computer-generated queries.”

References:
TrueKnowledge.com (2008). About Retrieved May 30, 2008, from http://www.trueknowledge.com/about/

Recently I discovered a semantic application based on brainstorming, and natural thought processes.  It is called IMINDI. They are now accepting Beta accounts, and it seems well worth your time.

According to the developer’s Website:

“IMINDI is a brainstorming, memory and collective intelligence tool. It will help you collect your thoughts and expand your mind in new and exciting directions by exploring and connecting with the thoughts of other Like Minds. Then, IMINDI gives you useful tools to share this information with others in notes, blogs, and embedded Mind Maps.

Two things make IMINDI unique. First, many of the functions in IMINDI exist elsewhere alone, but IMINDI is the first place to bring them all together: Mind Maps, social networking, semantic tagging, recommendations, and a database underneath them all. Secondly, that database is novel: a subjective yet concise encoding of how humans think. The Mindex is finally taking shape outside of our minds in a digital representation. Just imagine how useful this will be interfacing with all the other information on the internet.

At its core IMINDI is a “Thought Engine” that can augment the way we think of new ideas, concepts and questions, as opposed to a search engine which only helps you find information or answers to questions already formed in your mind.

The IMINDI Thought Engine enables you to add your thoughts and the connections between them in a naturally radiant fashion with one thought radiating outward to one or many associated thoughts; which themselves branch outwards or back towards others in an endless network. The interface is essentially a visual map of your mind that we call a “Journey.” Each Journey has its own theme, and once you have chosen a starting thought you can travel to wherever your mind takes you. You can also explore the thoughts and Journeys of other people using IMINDI if they have shared them with you or made them public. If you find that you like them you can connect your Journey to theirs; an act that quite literally expands your thoughts and takes them in directions that you might not have taken on your own.

Meanwhile, IMINDI keeps track of everyone’s Journeys, and those that are public are all put together and interconnected in a giant database we call the Global Mindex: literally the index of the human mind. IMINDI is new because it will allow everyone’s thoughts to be collected together, and because it will define more richly how those thoughts are linked together: not just that two thoughts are linked, but how they are linked, with categories like who, what, where, when, why, and how. Unlike sterile semantic tables and ontologies, IMINDI creates a new kind of database that describes the human mind in depth.

Reference
IMINDI.com (2008). What is IMINDI? Retrieved May 28, 2008, from http://www.imindi.com/help/04What.htm.

Powerset has just released a new search for Wikipedia this month.  According to their site: “Powerset’s technology improves the entire search process. In the search box, you can express yourself in keywords, phrases, or simple questions. On the search results page, Powerset gives more accurate results, often answering questions directly, and aggregates information from across multiple articles. Finally, Powerset’s technology follows you into enhanced Wikipedia articles, giving you a better way to quickly digest and navigate content.”

To see more about Powerset please view the following video:

Powerset Demo Video from officialpowerset on Vimeo.

References:
Powerset.com (2008). Ready Powerset go. Retrieved May 27, 2008, from http://www.powerset.com/

If you are interested in developing your own Semantic Web ontology or application, you may wish to check out TopBraid Composer.  Here you may download their data sheet which describes TopBraid and what it can do.  Even Nova Spivack, of Radar Networks apparently uses TopBraid, as he is quoted on the site as using the product.

You may download the product for a 30 day trial to use it.  Afterwards one must purchase a license.

According to a recent news release from the company on the product:

“TopQuadrant™, a leading semantic technology products company, today announced the general availability of TopBraid Live 2.0, a semantic application deployment platform that dramatically simplifies the creation of web services to a ‘click and connect’process. Users can easily connect data from RDF stores, relational databases, spreadsheets, email, RSS
feeds, as well as data in HTML and XML formats, without the need to understand programming languages. A new Flex API creates graphical ‘information spaces’ as the output, which allow users to browse dynamic information by following graphical links.

TopBraid Live web services can also be used to make existing data available to semantically enabled search engines such as Yahoo! SearchMonkey. TopBraid Live 2.0 marks the first application deployment technology that enables non-programmers to create and share web services that leverage the power of semantic data stores, semantic queries, semantic reasoning and semantic search engines.

References:
TopQuadrant.com (2008). TopQuadrant delivers TopBraid Live 2.0. Retrieved May 27, 2008, from http://www.topquadrant.com/documents/05-19-08-TB-Live2.0.pdf

Interested in having your own Semantic search application?  You might be interested in licensing technology from hakia.   Hakia is a new type of search engine based on semantics as opposed to ranking methods utilized by keyword search engines.  Keyword search engines use statistical algorithms, and popularity as a means of ranking sites.    However,  even though a particular page may be highly ranked it is not necessarily a high quality result.    Hakia has developed  it’s own proprietary OntoSem technology and will be offering it to other companies.  Third parties therefore can build their own semantic search applications based on this technology.

 At the moment according to their Website, they are currently indexing “verticals such as medicine, finance, law, science, travel, arts, history, and other content rich topics.”

Those interested in knowing more about hakia might consider register for the “hakia club”.

Reference:

Hakia.com (2008). Semantic search on its way.  Retrieved May 16, 2008, from http://company.hakia.com/about.html