Semantic Web

Posted on March 13, 2011 by Jonny

The semantic web enables software to understand data on the web (http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/SW-FAQ). This week I have been looking into ways that semantic data can be added to the application in a standards compliant way.

The first port of call is FOAF where I found that it supports images through the Image element. Images can be said to depict something which essentially allows us to say “This image contains Jonny and Deep” but does not allow us to be more specific about which part of the image is which person, etc.

This more granular control is offered by pairing FOAF with Dublin Core, specifically the hasPart property.

An example of this is:
<foaf:Image rdf:about="http://example.com/test.jpg">
<img:height>480</img:height>
<img:width>640</img:width>
<img:area>307200</img:area>
<img:hasPart>
<img:Polygon>
<img:polypath>M1 141 L1 141L14 127 L24 127 L28 119 L28 99 L36 69 L59 38 L76 34 L101
40 L113 54 L133 105 L121 129 L122 139 L137 146 L152 166 L169 204 L185 229 L212 273
L229 294 L243 306 L263 315 L264 329 L253 333 L213 327 L204 311 L185 287 L127 201
L128 215 L125 230 L118 238 L112 250 L112 262 L113 270 L124 271 L133 284 L136 302
L132 349 L134 365 L140 428 L134 436 L117 439 L108 446 L102 480 L37 480 L16 449 L7
434 L3 420 L1 141 z</img:polypath>
<img:area>57442</img:area>
<svgr:InPosition>W</svgr:InPosition>
<img:fraction>0.187</img:fraction>
<foaf:regionDepicts>
<foaf:Person>
<foaf:name>Jonathan Scott</foaf:name>
<foaf:mbox_sha1sum>0f4a7e36214bb4e06a570d6aec8a131695aeb0e0</foaf:mbox_sha1sum>
</foaf:Person>
</foaf:regionDepicts>
</img:Polygon>
</img:hasPart>

This could be published at a url for example http://jscott.me/taggr/http.example.com.test.jpg.rdf# which could then be crawled to automatically populate a remote tagging application. I expect this will be implemented to some extent in the prototype before it is completed.

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Week 5

Posted on March 11, 2011 by Deep

This week we first reviewed the feedback of the survey. So far it is all looking positive with more than 84% of the 50+ responses indicating they believe the idea is unique and addictive.

Bharat and Deep submitted their analysis of tools similar to our system, and sumair posted on the blog the results of the findings from some relevant research articles.

Larry submitted a draft version of the requirements document.

Jonny update the project brief on the blog and continued blogging about technical and theoretical issues with the project which need to be solved.

It was decided that we should attempt as much as possible to complete the project by the end of the month, and the name was decided to be “etag” after much discussion from the group.

In the next week Bharat and Deep will find related news items in the tech media, Sumair will continue to study research papers, Jonny will post the mockups and ideas to the blog, and preparation will begin for the interviews and focus groups which can be performed after the prototype is ready.

Minutes of the meeting for 11th March,2010

1. Got an excellent feedback from the surveys where more than 84% said our idea was unique and addictive.
2. Bharat and Deep :- completed the analysis of almost similar tools.
3. Sumair :- Posted on the blog about his findings from the research paper.
4. Larry  :- Came up with the draft version of the requirement document.
5. Jonny  :- Was keeping the blog updated with his project brief.
6. Try completing the task based on the portfolio blog by the end of the month.
7. Discussed the idea of having a small video in the presentation on the drangon’s den.
8. The name of the idea has been decided as “etag”.
9.  Tasks allocated for Bharat and Deep are :- Links to related news items in the tech media.
Tasks allocated for Sumair and Jonny are :- Further study on the research papers and coming up with some more ideas.
Tasks allocated for Jonny :- Mockups and Ideas.
10. Preparation for the interviews with users or focus groups after the mockups and ideas has been completed by Jonny.

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Analysis of Similar Tools

Posted on March 11, 2011 by Deep

We have compared the tools and these are the findings that has been mentioned below :-

Tools Description

1)      Panoramio

  1. Ask users to organize images using tags allowing searchers to find images concerning to a certain topic(such as place name or subject).
  2. It was the first web site to implement tag clouds(provide access to images tagged with the most popular keywords).

Site: – http://www.panoramio.com/

 

 

2)     ITag

  1. Geocode your photos and movies by embedding GPS coordinates using Google Earth.
  2. Search for tagged files with iTag’s powerful search engine using keyword, rating, filename or even a street address if you have geocoded photo.

Site: – http://www.itagsoftware.com/

3)     TaggedFrog

  1. Based on the convenient drag’n’drop technique, TaggedFrog allows you to organize your files, documents and Web links. It also provides the functionality of searching your documents based on tags.
  2. This software is limited to tagging of any document pertaining to the personal computer or laptop.

Site: – http://lunarfrog.com/taggedfrog/

4)     Tag Galaxy

  1. It has a very good GUI and images are tagged with Geo Location
  2. Cross domain site which use flickr as the main source for images and based on tag names provides a very fast search.

Site: – http://taggalaxy.de/

Tool Comparison

Tool Name Advantage Disadvantage
Panoramio Shows the actual location where the picture was taken and opens that location using google maps Dependent on Google maps.It’s a website showing this functionality.
ITag ITag embeds GPS coordinates in the pictures.Provides a very powerful search engine to search a picture via Name, Tags or even GPS location. Dependent on Google Earth.Its a software that needs to be installed for using its functionality.
TaggedFrog Based on a Drag and drop technique and a very handy tool to organise any kind of document using concept of tagging. This software is limited to tagging of documents pertaining to the personal computer or laptop.Again a software tool.
Tag Galaxy Excellent User Interface and a avery fast and efficient search based on tags. Dependent on Flickr.It is a web page that does the cross site referencing to Flickr.

Done by :- Deep and Bharat

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Scaling images

Posted on March 11, 2011 by Jonny

The same image can be posted a number of times at different sizes, for example:

To deal with this we will simply store the tag position in the database relative to the full sized image, and scale the tags on each image to match the resized image. Our initial prototype (and the one running on this blog) did not have this however it has been implemented on the latest prototypes as such:

/**

* Get the original size of an image

* @param {string} img The location of the image

* @return {{width: number, height: number}} The dimensions of the image

*/

me.jscott.taggr.getImageSize = function (img) {

var i = new Image();

i.src = img;

return {“width”: i.width, “height”: i.height}

}

var original_size = me.jscott.taggr.getImageSize(imgs[i].src);

var size = goog.style.getSize(imgs[i]);

imgs[i].setAttribute(‘_tgr_width_scale’, size.width / original_size.width);
imgs[i].setAttribute(‘_tgr_height_scale’, size.height / original_size.height);
// …
// position tag
goog.style.setSize(container, new goog.math.Size(parseInt(a.getAttribute(“_tgr_width”),10), parseInt(a.getAttribute(“_tgr_height”),10)));
goog.style.setPosition(container, new goog.math.Coordinate(parseInt(a.getAttribute(“_tgr_absolute_x”),10), parseInt(a.getAttribute(“_tgr_absolute_y”),10));
(although the actual code is a lot nicer formatted with comments and everything…. honestly!)
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Tagging:What it is

Posted on March 11, 2011 by Sumair

Considering this a social networking system/project, the term feasibility is very broad. It can include the items of the pre-requirement report of a conventional software project and literature from computer science and non-computer science fields. Therefore, we have to include surveys, questionnaires, relevant research papers, articles, books, blog posts and numerous other sources of information and statistics.

Let’s have a look at some keywords, the first obvious keyword is ‘tagging’. Now this term is used in computer science in numerous contexts, so it is vital to clarify that what we are using this term for.

Having said that all the perspectives concerning the term tag/tagging are somewhat related. In computer science, particularly in web 2.0 this term refers to a non-hierarchical keyword assigned to the piece of information.

With the advent of this concept or to be precise after the birth of the semantic web followed many terms such as tag (metadata), tag system, tag cloud and tagging etc. with the key idea “add meaning to the web”. From then on this is an active area of research and many significant milestones have been reached. Terminologies and frameworks have been defined to structure the whole process of adding some sense to the web thanks to the article by Sir Tim Berners Lee (2001).

Tagging is the process of assigning personal keywords (“tags”) to resources by users. The related concept folksonomy is the set of labels that emerges from the tagging process. This term is a contraction of the words “folk taxonomy.”

The rise of social bookmarking Web sites have skyrocketed tagging systems into the mainstream. Two of the most visible examples of this phenomenon are Del.icio.us, a site for tagging Web bookmarks, and Flickr, a site for sharing and tagging photographs. Many tagging systems require that tags be a single word, however, others don’t, and conceptually there’s nothing to prevent tags being multiple words long.

Many tags users create are essentially subjects for the resource, for example, a topic covered by a Web site, or the people or location present in a picture. Yet others are more administrative in nature, and due to the personal nature of tags, only meaningful to the individual who created them, for example, the name of a project to which a resource was relevant, “todo” or “unread” to remind a user to take some sort of action, or “español” to bring out other non-topical aspects of a resource.

Tagging receives criticism from library circles for lacking some of the benefits a predefined controlled vocabulary offers. The primary arguments are that tagging doesn’t offer synonym control or distinguish between two meanings of a word.

Interestingly, the criticisms given generally don’t cover another, more powerful, feature of controlled vocabularies also lacking in tagging systems: known relationships between terms.

Use of Such Systems
 The tag lines of del.icio.us (keep, share, discover), and Flickr (store, search, sort, share) give insight into the goals and possibilities of tagging systems. The goal of tagging systems is generally for individual users to manage resources for personal use. Most provide some facility to share the tagging (and possibly resources) with others, and some store copies of resources for the user. The key is that tagging is a personal phenomenon—the primary goal is to assist an individual with resource management tasks.

Tagging sites have built upon the data created by users for that personal management purpose to provide other services, such as resource discovery. The nature of both the resources that tend to be managed by tagging sites and the tagging process itself support users who casually browse for interesting resources. However, many tagging implementers realize that synonym and homonym control could improve the services provided on top of tag data.

A Web search should reveal various methods currently in various stages of implementation to attempt to identify (and in some cases, prevent) synonyms and homonyms in tagging systems, and identify relationships between tags.

Tag clouds (see, for example, the tag cloud for the Flickr all-time most popular tags) are graphic representations of frequently-used tags from a particular service. The size and weight of the font of a tag represents its relative frequency to the other tags. Tag clouds provide an at-a-glance view of the contents of a tagged collection.

Posted in Analysis of existing similar tools, Related academic work, Weekly Updates | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Results so Far…….

Posted on March 10, 2011 by Bharat

The survey is still On and we have got quite a good response.
84.8 % people think so far that our idea is unique and addictive ! and 57.6 % people would like to use our application !
Cheers to Tag4Fun !

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Week 4

Posted on March 2, 2011 by Jonny

This week we evaluated the survey created by Deep and Bharat and agreed upon the final questions. These will be published on this blog shortly.

We looked at the initial requirements document produced by Larry and agreed to create it as a shared Google Docs document so we can work on it collaboratively until it is ready. Once the document is finalised it will be posted here. It was felt that the document does not currently go into enough detail on specific features such as person/page/label tagging, and does not separate the requirements between creating tags, viewing them, and sharing them on social networks.

There was technical discussion regarding how to present all of the tagged photos to a user. We discussed embedded it in facebook (using a browser plugin), a facebook app, and also an external website hosted by us which shows all tagged photographs.

The database schema was briefly discussed and will be designed collaboratively for the prototype at a later date.

The problem of what to do if an image is changed or deleted was discussed and there is already a post on this blog which covers the majority of our discussion here.

We discussed the rights of domain owners to opt out of the system and how to identify who owns a website. It was decided that we should try to support websites which do not have their own domain (and instead allow people to establish ownership of a subdirectory rather than a domain). We discussed a potential permissions system which would allow granular control over what features are enabled on a particular site and how to deal with hotlinking of images. This will be elaborated on in a future blog post.

There was some disagreement over how much of the system should be hosted on our own server and how much should just be posted to the existing social networks. We reached a consensus however these discussions will likely continue in future and there will be a blog post with the final decisions taken here.

We decided that for the next week we should get our preliminary research complete, including similar systems, academic work, and relevant news. These will be posted individually in their own sections of the blog.

For next week:
Jonny: Welcome and project brief
Bharat and Deep: Analysis of Similar problems and Links to related news items in the tech media
Sumair and Larry: Relevant academic work

Minutes (by Sumair)
survey is done by deep and bharat, ready for distribution
requirements documents has been made, needs discussion
discussion on functional requirements of the system such as labels, object tagging, tagging pages etc.
jonny discussed the components of the system, like a website(html page where the actual URL will be displayed), a facebook app, server and the source (blog/www)
server is suppose to check periodically that the picture is still there….
what if the picture is changed……hash of the picture….
issues like privacy and who can tag and untag….ownership issues… ownership of the image…..domain checking
sumair and deep stressed on the part the system should have a GUI where you can see the tags/links and some comments etc
comments and labels should be there in the system…..
things for the next week
jonathan: welcome and project brief
bharat and deep: analysis of similar systems and Links to related news items in the tech media
sumair and larry: relavent academic work

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This is the link for the surveys that needs to be conducted to get the feedback about our idea

Posted on March 2, 2011 by Deep

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/VD8BPHL

Done by :- Bharat and Deep.

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Requirements of taggr – the Global Tagging System

Posted on February 28, 2011 by Larry Lan

Requirements updated, feedbacks welcome.

Many thanks, mates.

Click the following link and it will bring you the to document.

https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B1QgZZg_2Nu7YjM5MTkxYzctMjZlMS00NjM4LTk4MzQtZWZjZjUzMWEwNjcw&hl=en&authkey=CMamicMC

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Week 3

Posted on February 26, 2011 by Jonny

This week we discussed the targets for the following week which are:

    Larry will produce the list of requirements
    Sumair Deep and Bharat will perform a Feasibility Study
    Deep and Bharat will create the survey/questionnaire

        Jonny will write blog posts covering all of the issues we have discussed so far, and also work on technical problems to be used in the prototype

      These tasks will also influence the roles of each team member (Jonny will likely continue managing the blog and prototype primarily, for example.) although specific roles are yet to be determined.

      It was recommended that we read the book “Social semantic web” which has a section on tagging which may be applicable to our project. It was also discussed by us that we should look into semantic web standards for tagging and see if they could be used. The reading of further research on tagging will also be required in the near future.

      We want the project plan to be completed for next week so we have a clearer vision going forward, and we also want to find a reasonable way to publish and collect the results of the surveys. It is preferred that we find a way that we can distribute via facebook so we can target the sort of users the tagging system is targeting.

      We will continue to create these weekly blog posts about what happens at each meeting (and perhaps more broadly what has been completed over the week) and will also create posts on specific topics and problems encountered, to try to give a complete picture of the project.

      As soon as the prototype is ready it will be installed on this blog so that the images can be tagged. This should provide a reasonable example of the functionality on a real website.

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