Re: Paper: URI Identity Management for Semantic Web Data Integration and Linkage

I recently came across a web service that attempts to solve a similar
problem: associating one or more email addresses with the person who owns
the email addresses, represented by an avatar:

http://site.gravatar.com/

Gravatar enabled sites like Google's gmail will automatically pick up the
avatar associated with an email that is registered in the gravatar system,
so for example, you can see the avatar in your gmail address book entry for
the person. 

Seems like this model would also work with URIs instead of email addresses
and some "thing" representing what all these URIs refer to (possibly an
image -- say a rendering of the 3D structure of a protein -- but not
necessarily an image).

Btw, the free gravatar account lets you associate one email address with an
avatar. For $10 a year, you can add multiple addresses. (I actually signed
up, but haven't associated an image with it yet. I'm not sure which to pick
as the best representation of "me" ;).

Steve 

> From: Mark Montgomery <markm@kyield.com>
> Organization: Kyield
> Reply-To: Mark Montgomery <markm@kyield.com>
> Date: Wed, 1 Aug 2007 13:25:37 -0700
> To: Andreas Harth <andreas.harth@deri.org>, Eric Neumann
> <eneumann@teranode.com>
> Cc: <public-semweb-lifesci@w3.org>
> Subject: Re: Paper: URI Identity Management for Semantic Web Data  Integration
> and Linkage
> Resent-From: <public-semweb-lifesci@w3.org>
> Resent-Date: Wed, 01 Aug 2007 20:26:21 +0000
> 
> 
> Unfortunately, none of these or any other I recall seeing to date favors
> innovation, but rather reinforces group think. The least empowering to group
> think and automatic replication of either outdated or false information is
> random ordering, perhaps, but the combination of all of these won't get us
> to a semantic web. I think it's essential to always consider the weaknesses
> of a medium in working towards improving its strengths, and error in that
> direction if we must.
> 
> .02 - MM
> 
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Andreas Harth" <andreas.harth@deri.org>
> To: "Eric Neumann" <eneumann@teranode.com>
> Cc: <public-semweb-lifesci@w3.org>
> Sent: Wednesday, August 01, 2007 11:28 AM
> Subject: Re: Paper: URI Identity Management for Semantic Web Data
> Integration and Linkage
> 
> 
>> 
>> Hi Eric,
>> 
>> you might find [1] interesting in relation to the one thing/multiple URI
>> problem you're mentioning.
>> 
>> We distinguish four approaches to chosing a URI over multiple
>> alternatives in a Web data aggregation scenario:
>> 
>> - random or lexical ordering
>> - most agreed upon across data sources
>> - count of occurrence
>> - links analysis
>> 
>> Regards,
>> Andreas.
>> 
>> [1] http://sw.deri.org/2007/02/objcon/paper.pdf
>> 
>> Eric Neumann wrote:
>>> 
>>> A recent paper has been published that addresses some of the same URI
>>> issues we've been discussing:
>>> 
>>> "URI Identity Management for Semantic Web Data Integration and Linkage"
>>> http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/14361/
>>> 
>>> They focus on Coreference aka Record Linkages, which deals with the
>>> problem of having more than one URI for the "same thing". There's a
>>> probabilistic theory behind it, but it offers an approach different
>>> from using "owl:sameAs' between possible similar things.
>>> 
>>> My take-- coming from a life sciences perspective-- is that we still
>>> need to standardize URI's to specific datarecords (e.g., uniprot,
>>> entrez, ensemble, etc) as well as concepts, but when we need to
>>> "cross-bundle" different records that are supposedly referring to the
>>> same bio-entity (uniprot/p12345 ~ entrez/g6422 ~ ensmeble/s47721),
>>> then this approach may be worth considering.
>>> 
>>> I leave it to the group to discuss the possible value of this paper to
>>> our ongoing URI activity...
>>> 
>>> Eric
>>> 
>> 
> 
>

Received on Thursday, 2 August 2007 00:05:21 UTC