The bookmark is at its very core a placeholder.  Whereas a single bookmark will suffice for a cozy read by the fireplace, bookmarking on the Web proves to be another matter entirely. Social bookmarking sites like Delicious and StumbleUpon allow users to tag their bookmarks, essentially leaving a digital breadcrumb.  Tagging enables users to search through their own previously saved bookmarks, those of friends in their networks, and the collective group of social bookmarking Faviki users, to find content related to their keyword interest.  Still, how do I know that other users share my own naming conventions (Semantic.Web vs. Semantic_Web vs. Semantic-Web) or perception of content meaning (“dough” as in a slang term for money or a baking ingredient for making pizza) when they tag their bookmarks?  Enter Faviki, a semantic social bookmarking service.

So What Does Faviki Do?

Glad you asked! Faviki enables Web users to remove the ambiguity of their social bookmarks and bridge the gap between tags and meaning.  By improving a user’s ability to find their place on the Web, Faviki also enriches the concept of a keyword search by insuring that the link between a keyword and the meaning behind it remain unambiguous.  Furthermore, Faviki restores much of the value of social bookmarking by maintaining the uniformity of “placeholders” all over the Web.

How Does Faviki Work?

Faviki works in conjunction with two collaborative Web initiatives, DBpedia and Wikipedia, to ensure semantic tagging of bookmarks. The use of DBpedia, which extracts structured Wikipedia entries, allows users to see the relationship between a tag and its meaning. Upon opting to bookmark a Web resource, Faviki leverages Zemanta to recommend commonly used semantic tags, as well as a Google Tag search of DBpedia to enable users to search tags with entries in Wikipedia. Used in conjunction these resources uphold the bookmark’s “object-concept” relationship. Furthermore, integration of the Delicious and Twitter APIs allow users to embrace social media and import bookmarks from Delicious as well as share their Faviki bookmarks on Twitter.

How Can Faviki Help Me?

By embodying a Semantic social bookmarking service, Faviki provides you with a tool to bookmark resources you find on the Web and retain their meaning by relating those tags to Wikipedia concepts.

• Simplicity – Tagging a bookmark in Faviki becomes especially simple due to to the semantic tag recommendation and search systems and concise user interface.
• Social Media – Integration with Twitter gives you the an easy option to share bookmarks on Twitter and let your followers know where you’re leaving Web placeholders.
• Eliminate Ambiguity – Semantic tagging means the tag you you’ve placed on a bookmark is backed by a clear and comprehensive concept in Wikipedia.
• Eliminate Redundancy – The ability to import bookmarks from Delicious means you don’t have to switch tools or bookmark twice or change tools or bookmark again.
• Power Search – Searching for a keyword on the Faviki homepage essentially amounts to a search of  all tagged Web resources on a given Wikipedia entry, as deemed by the collective Faviki community.

How Do I Use Faviki?

• Register for a Faviki account (free) and drag-and-drop the Faviki bookmarklet onto your browser’s bookmark toolbar.

User Homepage and Setup

1. Log into your user account and you’ll be presented with your homepage.
   • Delicious users : On the homepage, select Import then Delicious Account settings, to link to your delicious profile and import your bookmarks. Faviki will give you the option to convert your tags to a common tag equivalent.
     • Note to Yahoo! users: OAuth implementation has not yet been implemented, but to import your last 100 bookmarks put #import in the password section.
   • Twitter users: Under edit profile, you’ll find the option for Twitter Account Settings, enter your information and your good to go.
2. Back to the homepage and you’ll see:
   1. A list of your bookmarks.
   2. A user profile box with a tag cloud and your Faviki friends.
   3. A list of categories for all the bookmarks on page.
3. Faviki Search : Users can search Faviki for specific users, tags, and any combinations thereof.
   1. People field
   2. Tags field
   3. Google search
   4. Search button
   5. Searching by any tag (OR) or all tags (AND)

Bookmarking!

Navigate to the Web resource you’re looking to bookmark.

• I’ll use the homepage of Cu3er, a free flash slider, as an example

1. Click the Faviki bookmarklet button on your toolbar.
2. From the Faviki tagging window, a list of Zemanta recommended tags appears, I’ll select some of the tags, and then click edit bookmark.
3. I’ll choose to leave the Bookmark title as it is.  I also want to leave the bookmark public so I won’t check the box marked private.
4. Under the Add Some Text From Page Tab, I’ll add some descriptive text from the “About Cu3er” page.
5. Under the Add A Personal Note tab, I’ll add some personal text for me on why I bookmarked Cu3er.
6. Clicking Save will save the bookmark to my Faviki profile.
7. I click Close and my bookmarking experience is complete!

Developers

Faviki offers developers an API should you wish to develop a website or online application and need a way to save or edit bookmarks.

In A Nutshell

Faviki offers a quick and easy way to save bookmarks, semantically tag them, search for new bookmarks related to tags, and share Web resources on Twitter. As a free bookmarking service, Faviki offers you the ability to contribute to the Semantic Web initiative and indirectly to Wikipedia. Faviki will only continue to grow as more and more users tag their favorite pages and edit Wikipedia entries.  As a user, Faviki provides a semantic bookmark opportunity for as many sites as their are on the Web, and that as we know is limitless.

Social Bookmark Tagging with a Semantic Twist, Faviki!

Other Helpful Articles on Faviki:

• Faviki: Social Bookmarking for 2010 by Henry Store
• Auto-Tag Delicious Bookmarks and Share Them Easily On Twitter With Faviki by Mahendra Palsule
• Faviki Wiki

When a child wants to build, he reaches for the nearest set of blocks and has at it.  For the semantic Web Developer or Information Architect, finding that perfect block proves a bit more difficult, as there many more Web tools available than letters in the alphabet.  If what you’re looking for is a resource that places database information in a semantic form, then one small block you might want to investigate is Triplify.  Triplify ‘semantifies’ Web Applications, bringing to light the semantic structures embedded in relational databases, and makes the Web mashable.

So What Does Triplify Do?

In short, Expose Semantics! Triplify provides for a knowledge representation of relational data and makes the content available in RDF, JSON or Linked Data form.  Furthermore, Triplify leverages its lightweight structure, a few files totaling less than 500 lines of code, to insure rapid deployment, reuse, and ease of implementation.

How Does Triplify Work?

Triplify capitalizes on the connections inherent in relational database queries, to retrieve data according to the queries of your choice and convert them to:

• RDF
• JSON
• Linked Data.

Generally, a minor 3 to 7 queries generates the majority of valuable information. After extracting database data, Triplify software constructs a shareable RDF, JSON or Linked Data semantic representation.

How Can Triplify Help Me?

Beyond simply preparing a semantic representation of your database on the Web, Triplify turns your Web Application into a data source for use in conjunction with other sources of data across the Web.

Notable uses include:

Semantic Search

• Sindice – A Semantic Web document index

Mashups

• Yahoo! Pipes – Pipe designer can utilize instances of Triplify as a data source.
• Simile Potluck – Mash Triplify data sources [No Programming Required!]
• Programmableweb – DB of API’s for use in conjunction with Triplify

Data Browsing

• OpenLink RDF Browser
• Tabulator
• Exhibit
• JSON Output – Access Triplify data without a parser
  • append ?t-output=json to any Triplify URI

Publishing Update Logs

• Publish a hierarchically structured update log as linked data.

Application Advantages:

• Search engines can better evaluate the content and more easily find content.
• Different application instances can easily syndicate dynamic content without the needing interfaces, content representations.
• Ability to create custom-tailored niche search engines. Easy searching for a product with certain characteristics.

How Do I use Triplify?

• Download and extract the Triplify script to your Web application.
• Create a Triplify configuration file according to your application.
  • Customizing the SQL queries to select information you wish to extract.
• Ensure the script registers your application instance with the Triplify registry so that it can be found by other Web applications.
• Enjoy your contribution to the Semantic Web initiative!

Check out the RDF data source for DavidKuhta.com at the Triplify Registry!

- Modeled after the WordPress configuration file below

Community contributed configuration files for some major Web applications:

• WordPress 2.7+ : by Andrei Mihăilă
• OpenConf 2.0 : by Sören
• Drupal 5.x : by David
• WackoWiki 4.2 : by Sören
• OpenJournalSystems 2.0 : by Sören
• Joomla! :  by Le Phuoc
• osCommerce : by Elias
• OMDB : by Sören
• phpBB : by Elias
• Gallery : by Elias

Important Considerations:

• Privacy – Triplify is accessing your database! Be judicious in your queries, insuring that only the data that is accessible to the web is accessible to Triplify.
  • Triplify recommends creating a separate “Triplify” database user for whom only read access is granted.
• Beta – As of this writing, Triplify v0.7 is still in beta and as any beta software still has some kinks to work through.
• Performance – Triplify currently caters to small to medium size apps, but retains the ability to cache for more extensive applications

Developers:

Triplify strongly encourages developers to become a part of the Triplify Community, and welcomes contributions of any kind. So, if you’re looking for an opportunity to contribute to a Semantic Web initiative, here’s your opportunity.

In A Nutshell

Triplify ‘semantifies’ the web, providing developers with a resource to semantically extract relational database information and make it available to the Semantic Web.  With its lightweight code, robust structuring, and ease of use, Triplify proves to be a valuable Semantic blocks for Web Applications. Likewise, Triplify’s approach in bypassing the chicken-and-egg dilemma of “simultaneously lacking of semantic representations and semantics-conscious Web search facilities” makes a push for the Semantic Web, today!

Simplify Semantics with Triplify!

A twist on traditional Semantic Web Technologies, OpenAmplify looks to go beyond simply data categorization or classification and strike at the heart of what content means. By its own definition, “OpenAmplify is a web service that brings human understanding to content.” In doing so, it decodes the linguistic structure of content and returns the embedded topics, brands, people, perspectives, emotions, actions and timescales. OpenAmplify provides a unique tool and resource to the Semantic Web community.

So What Does OpenAmplify do?

Put simply, Amplify Meaning.  OpenAmplify identifies the parts of speech in text and captures indicators of emotional meaning. By utilizing OpenAmplify, text can be analyzed from a semantic standpoint while retaining the ability to look at meaning of the underlying content.

How Does OpenAmplify Work?

OpenAmplify analyzes text content from any source using language processing technology and returns different ‘signals‘ in an XML structure.

5 different text analyses exist to chose from individually, but the option to amplify text using all analyses is available as well.

Analyses of the text include:

• The Topic Analysis – Which returns topical signals including a positive or negative perception (polarity) and degree to which guidance is sought (guidance).
• The Action Analysis – Which returns signals related to actions detected in the text including the likelihood of the action being taken (decisiveness), degree to which guidance is sought (guidance) and time when the action might take place (temporality).
• The Style Analysis – Which returns stylistic signals indicating how elaborate and decorative the linguistics are (flamboyancy) as well as the degree to which the text invokes slang vocabulary (slang).
• The Demographic Analysis – Which returns the likely age, gender and education level of the text’s author or audience.
• The TopicIntentions Analysis – Which  reports topics with associated action signals (A hybridization of Topic and Action).

Upon submission, OpenAmplify returns an XML structure, denoting an amplification of the content corresponding to the desired analysis.

How Can OpenAmplify Help Me?

OpenAmplify provides a tool and resource for both individuals and corporations.

Distinct uses for OpenAmplify include:

• Online Advertising – By enabling advertisers, publishers and ad networks to monitor brand safety, reputation management, targeting and SEO online through real-time content analysis in XML structure which can be dynamically incorporated and acted upon.
• News Analytics – By providing a qualitative data component, generated from precision amplification of topic representation, to a quantitative news flow.
• Blog post-tagging and comment analysis – By providing feedback for content generators on the tone and structure of their language and writing style, bloggers can know how to tag their posts and how readers perceived it via comments.

How Do I use OpenAmplify?

However you want! Currently OpenAmplify hosts an OpenAmplify repository of applications built by the OpenAmp Team and community users. Two Notable applications include: TweetyPants and the OpenAmplify Gmail Add-On (which requires Grease Monkey).

To use OpenAmplify for a personal web service like the Gmail Add-On or a Drupal plugin, you will need to:

1. Join the OpenAmplify community.
2. Go Edit Profile, and copy your OpenAmplify API Key to enter in any OpenAmplify applications of your choice.

Note: OpenAmplify provides 1,000 free “transactions” per day, once you’ve registered for your free API key. This proves generous enough for the average user. A premium service is available to individuals and organizations looking for responses in excess of that.

Can’t find that perfect tool to meet your text amplification need? Amp it yourself!

OpenAmplify offers a wide range of tutorials and developer resources. ranging from code samples, tutorials, and documentation to help you construct that perfect application. I’m currently developing a free OpenAmplify WordPress plugin for semantic tagging and linguistic text feedback, so if your a WordPress blogger, hold tight, there’s a solution in the works!

In A Nutshell

All in all, OpenAmplify is pretty unique in its construct and contribution to the Semantic Web.  The vast array of solutions and web applications it offers are powerful. Furthermore, interface with an API offers the web community a sure fire way to amplify content as best they see fit. If your looking to take your content generation and analysis to a whole new level and see what it really means, give it a try.

OpenAmplify is ready for you, Loud and Clear.

So today I wanted to take a look into a Semantic Web Technology that is invading the blogosphere, Apture.  Apture is a free web service that allows for the integration of multimedia and links within published content, such as to dynamically create a new layer of user experience and interaction.  But what does that really mean? Apture essentially provides another method of communication.

So what can you integrate with Apture?

Well some things are better left done than said (click on the links):

• Documents
• Images
• Video
• Maps
• Audio
• References
• People
• News Articles
• Links to Websites
• All of The Above

Apture even assists in embedding content directly into the content:

How does Apture work?

Apture does all this by dynamically aggregating information from 50+ sources including:

• Documents: SlideShare, Google Books, and Scribd
• Images: Flickr, Yahoo Image Search, Wikimedia Commons, and Bing Image Search
• Video: YouTube, Reuters, Truveo, Dailymotion, Hulu, Comedy Central, ESPN, and Metavid
• Maps: Google Maps
• Audio: National Public Radio
• References: Wikipedia, Amazon, CrunchBase, U.S. Congress, and IMDB
• People: Twitter, LinkedIn, and U.S. Congress
• News: Daylife, Reuters, Guardian, NYTimes, Washington Post, and BBC News

How Can Apture Help My Site?

For the publisher, Apture elimates much of the fieldwork in searching for relevant content and media, and reduces it to a concise search for a relevant term. Furthermore, Apture works not only on WordPress but on other blogging platforms as well, notably: Typeface, Ning, Drupal, Blogger, and Movable Type.

How Do I Use Apture?

The first step is to goto the Apture site and download the plugin (WordPress users can also install the plugin directly from the backend of their blog after a quick search for ‘Apture’).  For your first use, after installing and activating the plugin, you’ll be prompted to create an account with Apture.  After logging in and linking your domain to your site, the dynamic fun begins.  Two new buttons will appear in the “upload/insert” section of the visual editor for your posts:

• Add Apture Link 
• Add Apture Embed

Clicking on either of these (While having text selected for ‘Add Apture Link’) brings up the Apture editing  hub allowing you to search for a term and adding your content accordingly :

After selecting the relevant content, click “Create Embed” and bam! your done.  Check out your post on the frontend and enjoy the fact that users aren’t being led away from your site every time you want to provide them with external content

In A NutShell

A free service with the capabilities of a premium plugin, Apture offers rapid integration of content and creates another layer of user experience that can be rivaled.  Coupled with the large array of contents feeding the apture search, you’ll be sure to find that perfect media complement to your own content.

Looking forward to hearing how Apture is enriching the way you post!