=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-369/paper-17
|storemode=property
|title=zLinks: Semantic Framework for Invoking Contextual Linked Data
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-369/paper16.pdf
|volume=Vol-369
|dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/www/BergmanG08
}}
==zLinks: Semantic Framework for Invoking Contextual Linked Data==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-369/paper16.pdf
zLinks: Semantic Framework for Invoking Contextual
Linked Data
Michael K. Bergman Frédérick Giasson
Zitgist LLC Zitgist LLC
Coralville, IA USA Quebec City, Quebec Canada
mike@zitgist.com fred@zitgist.com
ABSTRACT positioned at its core [3].
This first-ever demonstration of the new zLinks plug-in shows However, the Linked Data community readily acknowledges that
how any existing Web document link can be automatically the existing semantics and basis for relating compliant datasets
transformed into a portal to relevant Linked Data. Each existing are relatively poor. Moreover, there presently are no techniques
link disambiguates to its contextual and relevant subject concept or methods for relating non-Linked Data to the rapidly growing
(SC) or named entity (NE). The SCs are grounded in the storehouse of LOD-compliant datasets.
OpenCyc knowledge base, supplemented by aliases and WordNet
synsets to aid disambiguation. The NEs are drawn from The newest release of the zLinks plug-in (see Figure 1) and its
Wikipedia as processed via YAGO, and other online fact-based supporting server-side infrastructure directly addresses the issues
repositories. The UMBEL ontology basis to this framework of improved semantics for Linked Data matching and relating
offers significant further advantages. The zLinks popup is Linked Data with standard Web content. Our demonstration
invoked only as desired via unobtrusive user interface cues. shows how normal hyperlinks in standard WordPress blogs can be
automatically related to contextually relevant Linked Data.
Categories and Subject Descriptors This précis first describes the technical underpinnings to zLinks’
H.3.3 [Information Search and Retrieval]: Information filtering, semantic framework, then overviews the application and possible
Query formulation; H.5.4 [Hypertext/Hypermedia]: Navigation; future directions.
H.5.2 [User Interfaces]: Interaction styles.
2. SEMANTIC FRAMEWORK
W-O-W-Y is the term we apply to the semantic framework for
Keywords relating a given hypertext link to its relevant Linked Data. The
demo, Linked Data, zLinks, OpenCyc, Wikipedia, WordNet,
term is derived from the constituent resources of WordNet2 (W),
YAGO, UMBEL.
OpenCyc3 (O), Wikipedia4 (W) and YAGO [4] (Y). Via the
WOWY framework, we first determine if the link refers to either
1. INTRODUCTION a named entity (NE) or a subject concept (SC) as well as to
Linked Data [1] follows recommended practices for identifying, disambiguate alternate senses. If an NE, the entity is also related
exposing and connecting data on the semantic Web. A robust to its parent subject concept; every link thus has a SC basis.
Linked Open Data (LOD)1 community has rapidly developed
around the practice with literally billions of compliant data items All canonical SCs are embedded in a subject structure ontology –
now available. the “backbone”. Use of this ontology brings inference and other
relationship advantages. These various semantic frameworks are
A notable catalyst to the Linked Data movement has been described below.
DBpedia [2], which exposes Wikipedia data in best-practices
format. It is appropriate that the flagship figure showing the 2.1 Subject Concepts
interrelationships of many Linked Data sources has DBpedia Subject concepts (SCs) are the core constituents to the framework.
All SCs are based on existing concepts in OpenCyc, the open
Figure 1. zLinks toggle popup
2
1
http://wordnet.princeton.edu/
http://esw.w3.org/topic/SweoIG/TaskForces/Community 3
http://www.opencyc.org/
Projects/LinkingOpenData 4
Copyright is held by the author/owner(s).
http://en.wikipedia.org
LDOW2008, April 22, 2008, Beijing, China.
source version of the Cyc [5] knowledge base. SCs are the there are multiple contextual overlays. The basic results
concrete, non-abstract topic-related classes within Cyc. About paradigm is taken from Zitgist’s related DataViewer for RDF
22,000 of them were vetted from Cyc (paper in preparation). data.8
Aliases for these concepts as maintained by Cyc were combined
with matching WordNet synsets to produce the SC 4. FUTURE DIRECTIONS
disambiguation lexicon. This initial zLinks design is but a mere taste of the possibilities
with Linked Data from the twin perspectives of additional
2.2 Named Entities relationships and presentation templates. We expect rapid
The named entities (NE) are drawn from Wikipedia as processed developments in both areas.
via YAGO, and other online fact-based repositories. NEs are the
instances of the SC classes in the standard definition of the term5. A generalization of the plug-in architecture will enable extension
NEs also have aliases for disambiguation purposes (such as the to other user-content platforms. Still further extending this
many ways to refer to the “United States”). generalization to the Web browser would bring zLinks
capabilities to every Internet user for all existing Web content.
Each NE is mapped to a governing SC for ontology purposes.
The basic zLinks design also lends itself to incorporating
2.3 UMBEL Ontology additional sources of named entity lookups and Linked Data.
All of the SCs are expressed in the UMBEL (Upper-level
Mapping and Binding Exchange Layer)6 ontology. UMBEL is a 5. CONCLUSIONS
lightweight structure of subject concepts and their semantic Linked Data has been a triggering event in the nascent emergence
relationships. There is a direct overlap of UMBEL subject of the semantic Web. We expect to see similar innovations to
concepts to a subset of class concepts within OpenCyc. zLinks – such as Wikify9 – emerge to test out different paradigms
and interfaces for how best to exploit a Web of Data.
Quick relations can be determined from UMBEL for a given SC;
more involved inferencing can be directed to OpenCyc. An older zLinks prototype may be found at
http://zlinks.zitgist.com/; an updated demo based on the version
Thus, via these semantic relationships, other relations such as
herein will be posted shortly after the presentation.
parent concepts, domains, various entity types, and similar
relationships can be obtained once a given SC is identified.
6. REFERENCES
3. APPLICATION [1] T. Berners-Lee. Design Issues–Linked Data. Published
online, May 2007. http://www.w3.org/
This semantic framework is applied on the server-side once a
DesignIssues/LinkedData.html
given standard link is processed. The client-side zLinks plug-in
provides the user interface, initial link extraction and results [2] S. Auer, C. Bizer, J. Lehmann, G. Kobilarov, R. Cyganiak,
reporting to the user. and Z. Ives. DBpedia: A nucleus for a web of open data. In
Proceedings of the 6th International Semantic Web
3.1 Plug-in Design Conference and 2nd Asian Semantic Web Conference
The demo is provided as a standard WordPress7 PHP plug-in, with (ISWC/ASWC2007), Busan, South Korea, volume 4825 of
many options parameterized. LNCS, pages 715–728, November 2007.
[3] R. Cyganiak. The Linking Open Data dataset cloud. Figure
3.2 Snippet Evaluation published and maintained online; version December 2007.
A “snippet” of text based on a word window or sentence http://richard.cyganiak.de/2007/10/lod/
surrounding the target link is extracted, parsed, filtered and then
submitted to the server for sense evaluation. We use a variant of [4] F. Suchanek, G. Kasneci, and G. Weikum. Yago: a core of
a graph-based disambiguation algorithm suited for use with large semantic knowledge. In WWW ’07: Proceedings of the 16th
knowledge lexicons [6]. international conference on World Wide Web, pages 697–
706, New York, NY, USA, 2007.
This extraction process can also result in issued queries to
standard Web search services. [5] D. B. Lenat. Cyc: A large-scale investment in knowledge
infrastructure. Communications of the ACM 38, no. 11,
3.3 User Cues November 1995.
The semantic result of this link evaluation – the individual zLink [6] R. Mihalcea and A. Csomai. Wikify! Linking documents to
– is presented to the user via a subtle, small icon. The results are encyclopedic knowledge. In Proceedings of the Sixteenth
only presented to the user after a mouseover with set delay, to ACM conference on Conference on Information and
ensure the popup is purposefully desired and unobtrusive. Knowledge Management (CIKM '07) , pp. 233-241,
November 6-8, 2007.
3.4 Popup
A popup presents the contextual zLinks results (see Figure 1),
with toggle views presented as substitution overlays to preserve
screen real estate. Because of the multiple relations possible,
5
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Named_entity_recognition
6 8
http://www.umbel.org http://dataviewer.zitgist.com
7 9
http://www.wordpress.org http://www.wikifyer.com/