web to semantic web : an automated approach

Hello Friends,


I have been following semantic web for some time now and have seen quite a
lot of projects being run (dbpedia, FOAF, LOD etc) trying to
generate/organize some semantic content. While these approaches might have
been successful in their goals, one major problem plaguing semantic web as a
whole is the lack of semantic content. Unfortunately there is nothing in
sight that we can rely on to generate semantic content for the truckloads of
information being put on web everyday. I strongly feel that one of the
_wrong_ assumption in semantic web community is that content creators will
be creating a semantic data. This I think is too much for the asking from
even more technically sound part of web community let along whole of the web
community. It hasn't happened over last so many years and I don't see it
happening in the near future.


To really move the semantic web forward is a mechanism to device a mechanism
to _automatcially_ convert the information over the web to semantic
information. There are many softwares/services that can be used for this
purpose. I am currently developing one prototype for this purpose. This
prototype uses services from OpenCalais(http://www.opencalais.com/) to
convert ordinary text to semantic form. This service is very limited in what
entities supports at the moment but its a very good start. I am pretty sure
there will be many other good options available that might be unknown to me.
The currently very primitive prototype can be seen at
http://arcse.appspot.com. This currently implements very few of the ideas I
have for this. This is hosted on Google's AppEngine so sometime gives
timeout messages internally so please bear with this :).


This automatic conversion however is not a simple task and needs work in lot
in domains ranging form NLP to artificial intelligence to semantic web to
logic etc. So that's why this mail. I will be more than happy if we can join
together to form a like minded team that can work on solving this most
important problem plaguing semantic web currently.


Waiting for your suggestions/criticisms. And Happy
Diwali<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diwali>too :)
Ravinder Thakur


PS : I posted similar query here
<http://www.nabble.com/web-to-semantic-web-%3A-an-automated-approach-td20064203.html>as
well. That generated some good debate.