Posts Tagged ‘initiative’

The LOV dataset contains the description of RDFS vocabularies or OWL ontologies defined for and used by datasets in the Linked Data Cloud. Whenever available each vocabulary includes references to the datasets using it, in particular those listed in CKAN. The descriptions use in particular the VOAF vocabulary to state different ways such vocabularies can rely on, extend, specify, annotate or otherwise link to each other, and reuse a lot of vocabularies it describes, such asDublin Core, voiD, BIBO, and many more.

Clicking on the vocabulary’s namespaces (including the balloons), the user can navigate the vocabularies and get further information about them.

You can find all the information at http://labs.mondeca.com/dataset/lov/index.html

Images are everywhere. With the large development and spreading of mobile devices embedding image sensors, this fact becomes even more important. EPFL never had such an easy access to picture than nowadays. Since a few years, EPFL is actively developing algorithms, in collaboration with the CVLab, as well as systems and demonstrators to do automatic image annotation. The latter consists in overlaying related information on picture. These information can take various forms including text, pictures or videos. The interesting potential of automatic image annotation is to be able to add information at certain places on the images.

You can find all the information at http://lcav.epfl.ch/research/automatic_image_annotation

The aim of this challenge is to create an incentive for linking information in novel and ingenious ways to foster the knowledge discovery process and deliver end-user benefits.

The challenge will also demonstrate to delegates the potential value in linking datasets. The Institute of Metadata Management (IMM) is now inviting submissions of web applications that perform mash-ups on raw and / or linked data, via novel mechanisms or technologies, and that showcase the benefits of Linked Data to end-users.

You can find all the information about the challenge at http://www.metalounge.org/linked_data_mashup_challenge2011

Probase is an ongoing project that focuses on knowledge acquisition and knowledge serving. Their primary goal is to enable machines to understand human behavior and human communication. They do this by injecting certain general knowledge or certain common sense into computing.

Knowledge in Probase is harnessed from digitized footprints of human behavior and communications.

But Probase is much more than a traditional ontology/taxonomy, which can be seen in three dimensions: the concept dimension, the data dimension, and the relationship dimension.

Compared with other knowledgebases, Probase is unique in two aspects. First, Probase has an extremely large concept/category space (2.7 million categories). As these concepts are automatically acquired from Web pages authored by millions of users, it is probably true that they cover most concepts in our mental world (about worldly facts). Second, data in Probase, as knowledge in our mind, is not black or white. Probase quantifies the uncertainty. These serve as the priors and likelihoods that become the foundations of probabilistic reasoning in Probase. With this probabilistic Probase, we build several interesting applications, such as topic search, Web table search and document understanding.

You can find all the information about the project at http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/projects/probase/

Goalfinch is a goal setting tool built on a principle that economists have known for centuries: incentives matter. If there’s a goal you want to accomplish, you have the best chance of succeeding when there are incentives in place to reward you for getting it done. Goalfinch helps you create incentives to accomplish your goals.

You start by defining a goal, picking a deadline (all good, measurable goals have deadlines), and inviting some of your Facebook friends to verify whether or not you accomplish your goal. Then you make a financial contribution to Goalfinch. This money is “on the line” until you either reach or fail to reach the goal. It’s an additional incentive to motivate you to go out and get it done.

When you reach your goal, your friends should sign in to Goalfinch and confirm that you have succeeded. By default, Goalfinch won’t count your goal as successful until all the friends you invited come to the site and do this. If you succeed before the deadline, congratulations! Goalfinch will send your contribution back to you. If you fail, however, Goalfinch will donate the money to a charitable or non-profit organization (you can select one while defining your goal).

You also have the option to distribute your contribution proportionally: For each friend that confirms you’ve completed your goal, we’ll return a portion of your money to you, up to the full amount. For example, if you invite three friends to verify your goal but only two of them confirm that you complete it, you’ll get two thirds of your money back. The rest will be donated.

You can find all the information at http://goalfinch.com