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Semantic Web in action: Reuters OpenCalais service
April, 2009
Last winter Reuters, a news aggregator, launched a free service that identifies names in Web pages and links them to Internet data sources, such as Google and Wikipedia. The service, called OpenCalais, is significant not only because it illustrates semantic technology in action but also because it encourages independent publishers to become part of a global, interconnected web of information. Now, a year later, we can begin to see how this might benefit users and get a glimpse of the technical, political, metadata management, and usability issues involved.
In this article, we tell how it works, describe add-on features, tell why it makes sense for a publisher like Reuters, and discuss the pros and cons for users.
Example An example is the Powerhouse Museum of science and technology in Sydney, Australia, which is using it to enhance name searches of its artifacts (see below). OpenCalais identifies names of people, products, events, and organizations within documents and "tags" the documents in a semantic web format. This makes it possible to link the name to additional information located in another semantic resource on the Web.
Entry detail for an artifact in the Powerhouse Museum. Listed at the lower left under the heading "Auto-generated tags" are the names identified by the OpenCalais service. There are two kinds of links in this section:
1. Clicking the name link will perform a search of the Powerhouse collection and return a list of search results matching the name.
2. Clicking the [View on WorldCat] link (extreme lower right in a red box) will retrieve an entry for that name in the OCLC WorldCat online catalog (see screen shot below). WorldCat is one of several data sources that the OpenCalais service can link to for more information about a name.
How does it work?
More ... (members only) How to become a member
Created on April 27, 2009 l Updated on June 12, 2009
