Metalogue: Search Results I'm at the VALA2010 conference in Melbourne, a library technology conference comparable in some ways to the LITA national conferences in the U.S. VALA opened yesterday and will continue through Thursday (Melbourne's Thursday that is). Lots of interesting stuff being discussed here. I was the first of several keynote speakers. Late yesterday a VALA conference participant, speaking at the end of the keynote on OpenCalais by Tom Tague of Thomson Reuters, suggested that WorldCat be uploaded in OpenCalais. It's an interesting notion to consider in the context of the OCLC cooperative. My colleagues Roy Tennant and Don Hamparian already started a conversation with Tom, and I hope to join in that conversation later in the conference. OCLC has done a great deal of work on identifying individuals that can be seen at and mentioned both in my plenary session.
The Factory OPAC2.0 – OpenCalais meets our museum collection / auto-tagging and semantic parsing of collection data Today we went live with another one of the new experimental features of our collection database – auto-generation of tags based on semantic parsing. Throughout the Museum’s collection database you will now find, in the right hand column of the more recently acquired objects (see a quick sample list ), a new cluster of content titled “Auto-generated tags”. We have been experimenting with Reuters’ OpenCalais web service since it launched in January. Here’s a brief description of what OpenCalais is in a nutshell from their FAQ - From a user perspective it’s pretty simple: You hand the web service unstructured text (like news articles, blog postings, your term paper, etc) and it returns semantic metadata in RDF format. Whilst we store the RDF triples and unique hash, we are not making use of these beyond display right now. Obviously the type of content that we are asking OpenCalais to parse is complex. The OpenCalais tags generated are as follows –
10086-1 Botanical model, deadly nightshade (Atropa belladonna), Object statement Botanical model, deadly nightshade (Atropa belladonna), made by Auzoux, Paris, France, 1865-1885 In the second half of the nineteenth century interest in the anatomical structure of the animal and vegetable world increased markedly. Traditionally wax had been used to make models but wax models were delicate and susceptible to changes in temperature which could cause them to melt or lose their shape. A pioneer of this form of modelling was Louis Thomas Jérome Auzoux (1797-1880) a French medical graduate. A common feature of many of Auzoux's models is the use of paint on a thin plaster layer which covered the papier-mâché. In 1865 Auzoux, introduced a new line of large scale botanical models for educational use. Although Auzoux used moulds to make multiple copies of his models they were still extremely labour intensive and as a result were never produced in large numbers. Geoff Barker, March, 2007
Content Manager Submitted by Anonymous on Mon, 04/14/2008 - 15:49. For a general overview of Calais please take a moment to read the About section. If you’d just like to jump in and learn how Calais is relevant to developers, read on. Content and Collection Management This is a big area that covers everything from corporate knowledge management to librarians to collections at museums. Given the range of needs for this group as a whole, we’re simply going to try and point you in some useful directions. What Calais Does Different areas of this site can provide you with much deeper detail, so let’s keep it simple for the time being. Calais enhances your content with rich semantic metadata. Metadata in and of itself is not too interesting. Tag Your Complete Historical Archives in Hours Perhaps you’re a complete convert to the value of tagging your content and are doing a great job with new material – but what about the tens of thousands to millions of pieces of historical content you have already produced?
Calais 4.0 Released: Linked Data Meets the Commercial Web Thomson Reuters is today launching the latest version of its Calais web service and open API, Calais 4.0. Calais is a toolkit of products that enables publishers to incorporate semantic functionality within their properties - enabling them to categorize content as people, places, companies, facts, events, and more. Calais 4.0 is perhaps the most significant version since the launch of Calais one year ago, because it enables publishers to connect to the Linked Data web standard that Sir Tim-Berners Lee and others in the Semantic Web community have been promoting over the past few years. Up till now, we have yet to see much commercial activity in Linked Data - developments have been largely confined to the academic and scientific communities. So we think Calais 4.0 represents an important move forward in the commercial Semantic Web - and we expect to see some big media companies using it before long. What's New in 4.0 1. Calais 4.0, explained Tague, fills in the final 2 of those pillers.
Downstream Developer Submitted by Anonymous on Mon, 04/14/2008 - 15:50. For a general overview of Calais please take a moment to read the About section. If you’d just like to jump in and learn how Calais is relevant to developers, read on. Developers want… Just the facts, please. What it is Calais is a big initiative with a lot of components. Entities are things like people, places, companies, geographies. What you do with it is up to you. Get a key The Calais API needs a key. Read the documentation The API is extensively documented. Get some tools The Calais team and members of the Calais community have produced everything from Java code samples to working applications to libraries for PHP, Ruby and others. Communicate, ask questions, brag This site has a Showcase to share your creations and Forums to ask questions, answer questions and generally talk.
Richter Launches Ruckus Media, a Kids' Digital Publishing Venture Rick Richter, former president and publisher of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing, is returning as the head of a new media company, Ruckus Media Group, a global family entertainment company that will specialize in creating high-definition animation apps for children aimed at the mobile computing market. Ruckus Media has more than 80 original and licensed animated titles under contract with plans to price titles at $3.99, and the company will begin releasing an app each week starting September 28. Ruckus has licensed titles from the Rabbit Ears Library, a list of classic animation and audiobook titles read by Hollywood stars, and will begin releasing remastered editions of the list digitally optimized for the iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch and Android Mobile devices. Although he declined to give specific figures, Richter said Ruckus Media contracts offered authors “a very good deal,” on digital rights and he claimed “we’ve won over the major agencies.”
Software Provider Submitted by Anonymous on Mon, 04/14/2008 - 15:44. For a general overview of Calais please take a moment to read the About section. If you’d just like to jump in and learn how Calais is relevant to software providers, read on. Do you build content-driven software? If you do - the Calais team wants to work with you to incorporate Calais functionality in your tools. Why is it relevant? Calais can add rich semantic metadata to the content managed or processed by your tools. Software Providers is a big category - and we can't suggest specific applications for the software world as a whole. Start the Experiment Calais is open for commercial and non-commercial use. PHP MSCRM
REST Submitted by Anonymous on Wed, 02/25/2009 - 13:19. Calais’s latest release of an improved REST interface is the simplest and fastest way to submit your documents. Here’s how you can invoke request with this API. Web service URL for improved REST API is located at should create an HTTP POST request.Document content should be passed as the body of the HTTP request.Submitted content should be UTF-8 encoded.Your Calais license, different processing and user options are specified as HTTP headers (key-value pairs) of the request. Sample Java code is here. Welcome to SparkDog Nation! When you read that Kelly Boos and Dan Calabrese are teaming up – and you may just be hearing about it now – you probably thought to yourself, “There’s an unlikely combination.” (Or conceivably, “Who are Kelly Boos and Dan Calabrese?”) Either way, we are an unlikely combination. And that’s what makes us a good one. Kelly is an expert strategist who knows her clients and understands their strategic needs. Dan is without equal when it comes to the use of words to craft messages and convey ideas. Complimenting our two co-pilots is a wide array of talent, from which we draw to build customized teams for each project. We’re not an agency. We’re not shy. That’s SparkDog. So let’s go get some.