Incremental End-User Query Construction for the Semantic Desktop

This paper describes the design and implementation of a user interface that allows end-users to incrementally construct a query over the information in the Personal Information Management (PIM) domain. It allows semantically enriched keyword queries, implemented in the Semantic Desktop of the NEPOMUK Project. The Semantic Desktop user is able to explicitly articulate machine-processable knowledge, as described by its metadata. Therefore, searching this semantic information space can also benefit from the knowledge articulation within the query. Contrary to keyword queries, where it is not possible to provide semantic information, structured query languages as SPARQL enable exploiting this knowledge explicitly.

Venue:  WEBIST2009

Authors: Ricardo Kawase, Enrico Minack, Wolfgang Nejdl, Samur Araújo and Daniel Schwabe

PDF: kawase-webist2009b

A Straightforward Approach for Online Annotations: SpreadCrumbs – Enhancing and Simplifying Online Collaboration.

Countless user studies and everyday observations have shown that individuals make annotations while reading – highlighting, circling and underlining important parts of the text, moreover adding written comments. Since the Web became the biggest accessible source of information, many of the reading activities happens online in the browser. In this sense, it is expected that the individuals would keep their annotation behaviors, provided that the appropriate tools are available. Although several Web annotation projects currently exist, it is difficult to identify the most prominent in the field. With SpreadCrumbs, we simplify the annotations actions and the social navigation support. SpreadCrumbs users can add in-context annotations to any webpage with minimum cognition load, as they would do when reading a paper; in addition SpreadCrumbs enhances online collaboration and provides mechanisms to support social navigation by means of existing social networks. It allows the users to freely express themselves and to add any desirable substance to the resources. Technically, annotations carry valuable information about the content, more than bookmarks or tags, having a greater impact on collaboration and search for re-finding. SpreadCrumbs exploits all these advantages with an intuitive and easy-to-use user interface.

Venue:  WEBIST2009

Authors: Ricardo Kawase and Wolfgang Nejdl

PDF: kawase-webist2009a