Honghan Wu | 8 Jul 17:27
Picon

[ANN] Falcon-S - A Semantic Image Search Engine

(*** We apologize if you receive multiple copies of this announcement ***)

                              Falcon-S
                  http://www.falcons.com.cn/

Falcon-S is a semantic image search engine. The current version of Falcon-S
focuses on the soccer domain. Falcon-S crawls the World Wide Web for
images on soccer, including players, teams, coaches, competitions (involving
the latest FIFA World Cup 2006), etc. At present, Falcon-S provides the
following services:

- Key words based search. When searching related images, Falcon-S identifies
  objects (e.g., players, teams) in the soccer domain from user input  keywords and 
  gives a full list of semantic associated objects for each identified object.

- Semantic search. Falcon-S provides a graph-based user interface to let the
   user define interesting semantic queries to search related images.

- Explore.  In Falcon-S, the user can browse crawled images navigated by
  domain konwledge base and semantic associations.

Falcon-S crawls the World Wide Web for images on soccer, analyses their
context and indexes them on the individuals (e.g., players, teams) in a
knowledge base described by a background soccer ontology. The knowledge
base integrates the information from the official web site of FIFA, UEFA and etc.
Keyword-based searches are mapped to one or more such individuals, and the
related images are returned. Besides, users can further explore associated
individuals and their related images. Falcon-S provides a GUI to custom
semantic associations, query the individuals subject to them, and search
related images. In addtion, Falcon-S facilitates the low-level features of crawled
images such as color histogram to improve the performance.

Try and enjoy Falcon-S!
http://www.falcons.com.cn/


Falcon-S is a member of the Falcon family developed by the XObjects Group,
Southeast University, China.
Contact us: hhwu <at> seu.edu.cn

 
Honghan Wu
XObject Group
School of Computer Science and Engineering
Southeast University
 
--
Honghan Wu | 9 Jul 09:30
Picon

[ANN] Falcon-S: An ontology-driven approach to searching domain-spe cific objects and images (broken links fixed)

 
(*** We apologize if you receive multiple copies of this announcement ***)

                              Falcon-S
                  http://www.falcons.com.cn/

Falcon-S is a semantic web application focusing on soccer domain.
At present, Falcon-S provides the following services:

- Basic search. Falcon-S provides basic service for searching objects (e.g., players, teams), semantic associations among objects (e.g. soccerPlayer playFor Team) and images about identified objects in the soccer domain. 
- Semantic search. Falcon-S provides an advanced service for searching objects by semantic query driven by domain-specific ontology. It provides a list of semantic queries in common use, and more importantly,  a graph-based user interface to let users customize their semantic queries based on existing ones or define new semantic queries from scratch. 
- Semantic exploring. Falcon-S provides a service for exploring objects in domain-specific ontology and knowledge base. Using Falcon-S, users can explore objects semantically associated by domain konwledge, and browse crawled images related with  identified objects.

Falcon-S is based on ontology and related technologies. An ontology and a knowledge base for the soccer domain are built by integrating the information from the official web site of FIFA, UEFA , existing work like [1], etc. It crawls the World Wide Web for images on soccer domain, analyses their context and indexes them on the individuals (e.g., players, teams) in the knowledge base. Keyword-based  queries are mapped to one or more such individuals, semantic associations among objects are extracted with an ontology-driven approach, and the related images are returned. Objects can be semantically explored through an ontological view. Most importantly, Falcon-S provides an ontology-driven approach to let users define their own semantic queries for searching domain-specific objects. This novel feature is implemented by using some advanced technologies, such as Ajax, SVGetc. In addition, Falcon-S facilitates the low-level features of crawled images such as color histogram to improve the performance.

Try and enjoy Falcon-S!
http://www.falcons.com.cn/


Falcon-S is a member of the Falcon family developed by the XObjects Group,
Southeast University, China. 


Contact us: hhwu <at> seu.edu.cn

Honghan Wu
XObject Group
School of Computer Science and Engineering
Southeast University

--

[1] C. Tsinaraki, P. Polydoros, F. Kazasis and S. Christodoulakis, Ontology-Based Semantic Indexing for MPEG-7 and TV-Anytime Audiovisual Content, Multimedia Tools and Applications, 26 (2005), pp. 299-325.

handschuh | 19 Jul 21:27
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2nd CFP - SAAW2006 Semantic Authoring and Annotation Workshop at ISWC-2006


                      SECOND CALL FOR PAPERS

        SAAW2006 - Semantic Authoring and Annotation Workshop
                http://saaw2006.semanticweb.org/

workshop to be held at the 5th International Semantic Web Conference,
               Athens, GA, U.S.A. November 5-9 2006
                 http://iswc2006.semanticweb.org/

*** THE ONLINE SUBMISSION SYSTEM IS OPEN !!!

Register as a new Author at:
http://deri.confmaster.net/pages/login.php?Conf=SAAW2006

SUMMARY

The workshop aims to combine the "traditional" paradigm of Semantic Web (SW)
annotation with SW technologies in the authoring domain (e.g. Blogs and
Wikis, Semantic Word, etc). Together with the popular collaborative tagging
paradigm, these three application domains make up what can collectively be
called Semantic Authoring and Annotation.

IMPORTANT DATES:

   July 24, 2006  	-   Abstract submissions due
   August 1, 2006 	-   Paper submissions due
   September 5, 2006 	-   Acceptance Notification
   September 18, 2006 	-   Camera-ready papers due
   November 6, 2006 	-   Workshop date

MOTIVATION, AIM AND SCOPE

The "traditional" paradigm of Semantic Web (SW) annotation - annotating
existing web sites with the help of external tools - has been established
for a number of years now, e.g. in the form of tools such as OntoMat or
tools based on Annotea, and is continuously being developed and improved.

At the same time, core technologies of the SW - the common, open data-model
of the Resource Description Framework and the use of shared vocabularies -
are now gradually being introduced into mainstream publishing and authoring
channels such traditional online publications or office software, as well as
in new and "hip" technologies such as Blogs and Wikis. Regardless of the
medium, SW technologies in the authoring domain aim at aiding human content
producers to author, structure, annotate and publish text and other media
right from the start, rather than enriching them with metadata at a later
stage.

The collaborative tagging paradigm, which has its roots in social
bookmarking and folksonomies, is now becoming popular. Unfortunately, it is
often very centralized and does not take users needs for different levels of
sharing into account. Many services would benefit their users by offering
them SW based bookmarks and topics such as in Annotea bookmarking and topic
framework.

Together these three application domains make up what can collectively be
called Semantic Authoring and Annotation, the result of which are documents
with formal, machine-understandable semantics, partly created by authors and
partly by collaborators examining the work in different angles and in
different contexts. An important aspect in all these technologies is that
they are human-centric, target non-computer experts and aim at making
various kinds of content more visible, better accessible, easier to find,
reuse, share, organize, and examine from different viewpoints. Furthermore,
Semantic Annotation and the introduction of SW technologies into mainstream
authoring domains will result in an increased amount of relevant SW data,
and help to achieve a broader success of the SW.

Finally, various technologies to implement semantic annotation and the
authoring of semantic documents (e.g. GRDDL for deriving formal metadata or
RDFa and Microformats for embedding it) have entered the scene recently, and
are being endorsed by standards bodies such as the W3C.

The SAAW workshop will be organized as a half-day workshop and will
investigate technical and methodological, as well as social issues
surrounding all aspects of Semantic Web Authoring and Annotation.

TOPICS OF INTEREST

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

     * Semantic Authoring and Annotation tools - Semantic Blogs,
       Semantic Wikis, etc. - that allows human users to produce
       content and publish it on the web:
          * Usability - As SW techonologies enter the mainstream,
            the end-users (authors) of authoring tools will often
            not have formal computing background, which is why
            simple and intuitive user interfaces are becoming
            increasingly important.
          * Context - Knowing the context of the authoring and
            publishing process - where and when is an author
            producing content, for which audience, etc. - can be
            exploited in aiding and guiding human users.
          * Integration and Aggregation - Many tasks require
            authors to draw on various often not integrated
            sources. An important goal must therefore be to find
            ways to enable this integration and aggregation
            process.
     * Formats and standards for embedding formal metadata in
       documents (e.g. RDFa or Microformats), or for deriving such
       metadata from documents (e.g. GRDDL):
          * Assessment of such standards - are they sufficient,
            what is still missing?
          * Examples of the use of such technologies (e.g.
            Microformats in Structured Blogging)
     * Semantic Authoring and Annotation for scientific
       publications:
          * What would users (readers) need from and gain by
            semantically authored and annotated documents?
          * What would authors be willing to submit?
          * To what extent can scientific papers be structured?
          * Are current authoring/browsing tools able to handle
            these needs, if not what is the next step?
          * Enabling Semantic Conference Proceedings: Conceptual
            Structures for Publication
          * Cost and benefit of "going semantics" for a large
            (publishing) organization
     * The impact of the Social Semantic Desktop on Semantic
       Authoring and Annotation - the Next generation collaboration
       infrastructure:
          * Means to author and annotate Semantic Documents on the
            Desktop
     * General descriptions of semantic annotation
     * (Common) semantic annotation strategies for upgrading the
       web to the Semantic Web (including multimedia content):
          * Semantic annotation of static vs. dynamic web documents
          * Manual and/or automated semantic annotation of the
            current Web
          * Multimedia semantic annotation (e.g. with adoptions of
            MPEG-7)
     * Collaborative tagging and annotation
          * Relations between tagging systems and full-fledged
            semantic annotation
          * Deriving formal semantics from flat tagging systems
            (tag clustering, etc.)
     * All topics related to the evaluation of authoring and
       annotation for Semantic Web applications
     * Vocabularies and Ontologies for Semantic Authoring and
       Annotation

SUBMISSIONS

   Format requirements for the submission of papers are:

     * Maximum 10 pages, including title page and bibliography for
       technical papers.
     * Maximum 4 pages, including title page and bibliography for
       short position papers.

Although not required for the initial submission, we recommend following the
ACM format guidelines <http://www.acm.org/sigs/pubs/proceed/template.html>,
as this will be the required format for accepted papers. Also please note
that papers in ACM format tend to have fewer pages, compared to the same
paper in other styles.

To submit a paper, please log on to Confmaster
<http://deri.confmaster.net/pages/login.php?Conf=SAAW2006> and create an
account, following the instructions given there. Please note that an
abstract must be submitted by July 24!

ORGANISING COMMITTEE

    * Knud Möller, DERI/NUI Galway (Ireland)
    * Anita de Waard, Elsevier Publishing (Netherlands)
    * Steve Cayzer, HP Labs, Bristol (United Kingdom)
    * Marja-Riitta Koivunen, Annotea.org (USA)
    * Michael Sintek, DFKI (Germany)
    * Siegfried Handschuh, DERI/NUI Galway (Ireland)

Siegfried Handschuh | 20 Jul 21:21
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2nd CFP - Semantic Desktop and Social Semantic Collaboration Workshop at ISWC-2006


                         SECOND CALL FOR PAPERS

       Semantic Desktop and Social Semantic Collaboration Workshop
                        November 5 2006
     http://www.semanticdesktop.org/xwiki/bin/SemanticDesktopWS2006/   

     workshop to be held at the 5th International Semantic Web Conference,
                  Athens, GA, U.S.A. November 5-9 2006
                    http://iswc2006.semanticweb.org/

*** THE ONLINE SUBMISSION SYSTEM IS OPEN !!!

Register as a new Author at:
http://deri.confmaster.net/pages/login.php?Conf=semdesk2006

MOTIVATION, AIM AND SCOPE

The Semantic Web holds promises for information organization and selective
access, providing standard means for formulating and distributing metadata
and Ontologies.

However, we miss a wide use of Semantic Web technologies on personal
computers. The use of ontologies, metadata annotations, and semantic web
protocols on desktop computers will allow the integration of desktop
applications and the web, enabling a much more focused and integrated
personal information management as well as focused information distribution
and collaboration on the Web beyond sending emails. The goal is an open
personal information management system and collaborative infrastructure
based on Semantic Web technology build into the operating system of current
machines.

Collaboration, acquisition and dissemination infrastructures like Wikis and
Blogs are providing the foundation for joint collaborative knowledge
creation and are essentially simplified knowledge acquisition tools. Social
Software maps the social connections between different people into the
technical infrastructure. Online Social Networking enables collaboration
relationships as first class citizens, and allows exploiting these
relationships for automated information distribution and classification.

P2P and Grid computing develops technology to interconnect large communities
without centralized infrastructures for data and computation sharing, which
is necessary to build heterogeneous, multi-organizational collaboration
networks. The application of the mentioned technologies, especially in
combination with the Semantic Web, to the desktop computer in order to
improve personal information management and collaboration is the main topic
of this workshop. 

TOPICS OF INTEREST

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

    * Architectures and frameworks for integrating the Semantic Web into a
Desktop environment
    * Personal Information Management tools (calendar, address books, email,
documents, ideas) that interoperate with the Semantic Web
    * Enhance searching and information retrieval on desktop computers using
ontologies and metadata.
    * Means to extract metadata from desktop applications (e.g., OpenOffice
etc.)
    * Knowledge Acquisition and Visualization tools for desktop applications
    * Integration and exploitation of semantic social networks into a
semantic desktop environment
    * P2P models for distributed architecture enabling collaboration with
Semantic Desktop nodes
    * Applications of the Semantic Desktop, e.g, eScience and eGovernment.
    * Methods employing the community factor for knowledge engineering,
    * Policies, authentication and trust within agile collaborative
knowledge engineering scenarios,
    * Querying, aggregation and presentation for adaptive scenarios,
    * Joining Web 2.0 and Semantic Web strategies and technologies,
    * Applications enabling massively distributed knowledge elicitation

IMPORTANT DATES:

   July      24, 2006  	-   Abstract submissions due
   August     1, 2006 	-   Paper submissions due
   September  5, 2006 	-   Acceptance Notification
   September 18, 2006 	-   Camera-redady papers due
   November   5, 2006 	-   Workshop date

SUBMISSIONS

Please follow the style guides according the Springer LNCS format outlined
at:
http://www.springeronline.com/sgw/cda/frontpage/0,11855,5-164-2-72376-0,00.h
tml Technical papers should have max. 15 pages including references,
position papers should not exceed 5 pages. Papers can be associated with a
demo. Please submit documents as HTML, PDF, or Word to
semdesk2006 <at> semanticdesktop.org.

ORGANISING COMMITTEE

    * Stefan Decker, DERI/NUI Galway (Ireland)
    * Jack Park, SRI, (USA)
    * Leo Sauermann, DFKI (Germany)
    * Sören Auer, University of Pennsylvenia (USA)
    * Siegfried Handschuh, DERI/NUI Galway (Ireland)

Siegfried Handschuh | 20 Jul 21:29
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2nd CFP - Semantic Desktop and Social Semantic Collaboration Workshop at ISWC-2006


                         SECOND CALL FOR PAPERS

       Semantic Desktop and Social Semantic Collaboration Workshop
                        November 5 2006
     http://www.semanticdesktop.org/xwiki/bin/SemanticDesktopWS2006/   

     workshop to be held at the 5th International Semantic Web Conference,
                  Athens, GA, U.S.A. November 5-9 2006
                    http://iswc2006.semanticweb.org/

*** THE ONLINE SUBMISSION SYSTEM IS OPEN !!!

Register as a new Author at:
http://deri.confmaster.net/pages/login.php?Conf=semdesk2006

MOTIVATION, AIM AND SCOPE

The Semantic Web holds promises for information organization and selective
access, providing standard means for formulating and distributing metadata
and Ontologies.

However, we miss a wide use of Semantic Web technologies on personal
computers. The use of ontologies, metadata annotations, and semantic web
protocols on desktop computers will allow the integration of desktop
applications and the web, enabling a much more focused and integrated
personal information management as well as focused information distribution
and collaboration on the Web beyond sending emails. The goal is an open
personal information management system and collaborative infrastructure
based on Semantic Web technology build into the operating system of current
machines.

Collaboration, acquisition and dissemination infrastructures like Wikis and
Blogs are providing the foundation for joint collaborative knowledge
creation and are essentially simplified knowledge acquisition tools. Social
Software maps the social connections between different people into the
technical infrastructure. Online Social Networking enables collaboration
relationships as first class citizens, and allows exploiting these
relationships for automated information distribution and classification.

P2P and Grid computing develops technology to interconnect large communities
without centralized infrastructures for data and computation sharing, which
is necessary to build heterogeneous, multi-organizational collaboration
networks. The application of the mentioned technologies, especially in
combination with the Semantic Web, to the desktop computer in order to
improve personal information management and collaboration is the main topic
of this workshop. 

TOPICS OF INTEREST

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

    * Architectures and frameworks for integrating the Semantic Web into a
Desktop environment
    * Personal Information Management tools (calendar, address books, email,
documents, ideas) that interoperate with the Semantic Web
    * Enhance searching and information retrieval on desktop computers using
ontologies and metadata.
    * Means to extract metadata from desktop applications (e.g., OpenOffice
etc.)
    * Knowledge Acquisition and Visualization tools for desktop applications
    * Integration and exploitation of semantic social networks into a
semantic desktop environment
    * P2P models for distributed architecture enabling collaboration with
Semantic Desktop nodes
    * Applications of the Semantic Desktop, e.g, eScience and eGovernment.
    * Methods employing the community factor for knowledge engineering,
    * Policies, authentication and trust within agile collaborative
knowledge engineering scenarios,
    * Querying, aggregation and presentation for adaptive scenarios,
    * Joining Web 2.0 and Semantic Web strategies and technologies,
    * Applications enabling massively distributed knowledge elicitation

IMPORTANT DATES:

   July      24, 2006  	-   Abstract submissions due
   August     1, 2006 	-   Paper submissions due
   September  5, 2006 	-   Acceptance Notification
   September 18, 2006 	-   Camera-redady papers due
   November   5, 2006 	-   Workshop date

SUBMISSIONS

Please follow the style guides according the Springer LNCS format outlined
at:
http://www.springeronline.com/sgw/cda/frontpage/0,11855,5-164-2-72376-0,00.h
tml Technical papers should have max. 15 pages including references,
position papers should not exceed 5 pages. Papers can be associated with a
demo. 

To submit a paper, please log on to Confmaster
<http://deri.confmaster.net/pages/login.php?Conf=semdesk2006> and create an
account, following the instructions given there. Please note that an
abstract must be submitted by July 24!

ORGANISING COMMITTEE

    * Stefan Decker, DERI/NUI Galway (Ireland)
    * Jack Park, SRI, (USA)
    * Leo Sauermann, DFKI (Germany)
    * Sören Auer, University of Pennsylvenia (USA)
    * Siegfried Handschuh, DERI/NUI Galway (Ireland)

Max Völkel | 25 Jul 19:42
Picon

[CFP] Call for Posters/Demos - Intl. Workshop on WIKI-BASED KNOWLEDGE ENGINEERING


Apologies for cross-posting                #####################
---                                              ###############
#         International Workshop on                   #########
#                                                        ######
#            WIKI-BASED KNOWLEDGE ENGINEERING              ####
#                    (WIBKE2006)                            ###
##                                                           ##
##             http://wibke2006.semwiki.org                  ##
###                August 21-23, 2006,                        #
###                   Odense, Denmark                         #
######                                                        #
###########           -> CALL FOR POSTERS / DEMOS  <-
#################

IMPORTANT DATES

* Poster/Demo submission deadline:       10th August 2006

* Workshop date:                         23th August 2006

* Second  Int.  Symposium  on Wikis   21-23th August 2006
  (www.wikisym.org)
** TALKS FROM: Ward Cunningham,
   Doug Engelbart, Angela Beesley,
   and many more!

* The ACM Hypertext Conference        23-25th August 2006
  (http://www.ht06.org/)

* Camera ready due:                    4th September 2006
  (yes, after the workshop)

TOPCIS OF INTEREST
* Methods employing the Wiki Way in knowledge engineering,
* Concepts and strategies for integrating domain experts
  and end users into the knowledge engineering process,
* Methods for automatic, Wiki-based knowledge elicitation
  from collaborative environments,
* Methods for supporting the creation of structured and
  (partially) formalised personal knowledge bases
* Policies, authentication and trust within agile collaborative
  knowledge engineering scenarios,
* Strategies and methods joining Web 2.0, Wiki and Semantic
   Web technologies for knowledge management purposes
* Semantic Wiki tools supporting semantic collaboration
* Semantic Wiki tools supporting personal knowledge management
* Wiki-driven applications enabling massively distributed
  knowledge elicitation,
* Requirements and use-cases for Web-scaled collaborative
  knowledge engineering in relation to Wiki technologies
* Applications of Semantic Wikis, e.g. in Bio-Medicine,
  Business, Software-Engineering
* Experience reports, best practices and guidelines in the
  aforementioned areas

WORKSHOP FORMAT
* 1) Introduction to Semantic Wikis by organisers
* 2) Poster/Demo session
* 3) Moderated, focused discussion
** Interoperability
** The Future
** ... further topics
* Workshop proceedings will appear at CEUR Workshop Proceedings,
  ISSN 1613-0073

TOPICS TO DISCUSS
*  If  you  have  a  particular topic you would like to discuss in the
   third session, please contact the workshop chairs.

Kind regards,

  Max Völkel,
  Elena Paslaru,
  Sebastian Schaffert,
  Sören Auer

  wibke2006 <at> semwiki.org

Siegfried Handschuh | 27 Jul 20:35
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Favicon

DEADLINE EXTENDED - SAAW2006 Semantic Authoring and Annotation Workshop at ISWC-2006


                          DEADLINE EXTENDED

        SAAW2006 - Semantic Authoring and Annotation Workshop
                http://saaw2006.semanticweb.org/

workshop to be held at the 5th International Semantic Web Conference,
               Athens, GA, U.S.A. November 5-9 2006
                 http://iswc2006.semanticweb.org/

IMPORTANT DATES:

Due to numerous requests, the deadline for contributions to SAWW 2006
has been extended to August 2 (for the abstract) and August 10 (for the
final submission), 2006.

   August 2, 2006  	-   Abstract submissions due
   August 10, 2006 	-   Paper submissions due
   September 5, 2006 	-   Acceptance Notification
   September 18, 2006 	-   Camera-ready papers due
   November 6, 2006 	-   Workshop date

*** THE ONLINE SUBMISSION SYSTEM IS OPEN !!!

Register as a new Author at:
http://deri.confmaster.net/pages/login.php?Conf=SAAW2006
Abstract submissions by August 2!

SUMMARY

The workshop aims to combine the "traditional" paradigm of Semantic Web
(SW) annotation with SW technologies in the authoring domain (e.g. Blogs
and Wikis, Semantic Word, etc). Together with the popular collaborative
tagging paradigm, these three application domains make up what can
collectively be called Semantic Authoring and Annotation.

MOTIVATION, AIM AND SCOPE

The "traditional" paradigm of Semantic Web (SW) annotation - annotating
existing web sites with the help of external tools - has been
established for a number of years now, e.g. in the form of tools such as
OntoMat or tools based on Annotea, and is continuously being developed
and improved.

At the same time, core technologies of the SW - the common, open
data-model of the Resource Description Framework and the use of shared
vocabularies - are now gradually being introduced into mainstream
publishing and authoring channels such traditional online publications
or office software, as well as in new and "hip" technologies such as
Blogs and Wikis. Regardless of the medium, SW technologies in the
authoring domain aim at aiding human content producers to author,
structure, annotate and publish text and other media right from the
start, rather than enriching them with metadata at a later stage.

The collaborative tagging paradigm, which has its roots in social
bookmarking and folksonomies, is now becoming popular. Unfortunately, it
is often very centralized and does not take users needs for different
levels of sharing into account. Many services would benefit their users
by offering them SW based bookmarks and topics such as in Annotea
bookmarking and topic framework.

Together these three application domains make up what can collectively
be called Semantic Authoring and Annotation, the result of which are
documents with formal, machine-understandable semantics, partly created
by authors and partly by collaborators examining the work in different
angles and in different contexts. An important aspect in all these
technologies is that they are human-centric, target non-computer experts
and aim at making various kinds of content more visible, better
accessible, easier to find, reuse, share, organize, and examine from
different viewpoints. Furthermore, Semantic Annotation and the
introduction of SW technologies into mainstream authoring domains will
result in an increased amount of relevant SW data, and help to achieve a
broader success of the SW.

Finally, various technologies to implement semantic annotation and the
authoring of semantic documents (e.g. GRDDL for deriving formal metadata
or RDFa and Microformats for embedding it) have entered the scene
recently, and are being endorsed by standards bodies such as the W3C.

The SAAW workshop will be organized as a half-day workshop and will
investigate technical and methodological, as well as social issues
surrounding all aspects of Semantic Web Authoring and Annotation.

TOPICS OF INTEREST

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

     * Semantic Authoring and Annotation tools - Semantic Blogs,
       Semantic Wikis, etc. - that allows human users to produce
       content and publish it on the web:
          * Usability - As SW techonologies enter the mainstream,
            the end-users (authors) of authoring tools will often
            not have formal computing background, which is why
            simple and intuitive user interfaces are becoming
            increasingly important.
          * Context - Knowing the context of the authoring and
            publishing process - where and when is an author
            producing content, for which audience, etc. - can be
            exploited in aiding and guiding human users.
          * Integration and Aggregation - Many tasks require
            authors to draw on various often not integrated
            sources. An important goal must therefore be to find
            ways to enable this integration and aggregation
            process.
     * Formats and standards for embedding formal metadata in
       documents (e.g. RDFa or Microformats), or for deriving such
       metadata from documents (e.g. GRDDL):
          * Assessment of such standards - are they sufficient,
            what is still missing?
          * Examples of the use of such technologies (e.g.
            Microformats in Structured Blogging)
     * Semantic Authoring and Annotation for scientific
       publications:
          * What would users (readers) need from and gain by
            semantically authored and annotated documents?
          * What would authors be willing to submit?
          * To what extent can scientific papers be structured?
          * Are current authoring/browsing tools able to handle
            these needs, if not what is the next step?
          * Enabling Semantic Conference Proceedings: Conceptual
            Structures for Publication
          * Cost and benefit of "going semantics" for a large
            (publishing) organization
     * The impact of the Social Semantic Desktop on Semantic
       Authoring and Annotation - the Next generation collaboration
       infrastructure:
          * Means to author and annotate Semantic Documents on the
            Desktop
     * General descriptions of semantic annotation
     * (Common) semantic annotation strategies for upgrading the
       web to the Semantic Web (including multimedia content):
          * Semantic annotation of static vs. dynamic web documents
          * Manual and/or automated semantic annotation of the
            current Web
          * Multimedia semantic annotation (e.g. with adoptions of
            MPEG-7)
     * Collaborative tagging and annotation
          * Relations between tagging systems and full-fledged
            semantic annotation
          * Deriving formal semantics from flat tagging systems
            (tag clustering, etc.)
     * All topics related to the evaluation of authoring and
       annotation for Semantic Web applications
     * Vocabularies and Ontologies for Semantic Authoring and
       Annotation

SUBMISSIONS

   Format requirements for the submission of papers are:

     * Maximum 10 pages, including title page and bibliography for
       technical papers.
     * Maximum 4 pages, including title page and bibliography for
       short position papers.

Although not required for the initial submission, we recommend following
the ACM format guidelines
<http://www.acm.org/sigs/pubs/proceed/template.html>, as this will be
the required format for accepted papers. Also please note that papers in
ACM format tend to have fewer pages, compared to the same paper in other
styles.

To submit a paper, please log on to Confmaster
<http://deri.confmaster.net/pages/login.php?Conf=SAAW2006> and create an
account, following the instructions given there. Please note that an
abstract must be submitted by July 24!

ORGANISING COMMITTEE

    * Knud Möller, DERI/NUI Galway (Ireland)
    * Anita de Waard, Elsevier Publishing (Netherlands)
    * Steve Cayzer, HP Labs, Bristol (United Kingdom)
    * Marja-Riitta Koivunen, Annotea.org (USA)
    * Michael Sintek, DFKI (Germany)
    * Siegfried Handschuh, DERI/NUI Galway (Ireland)

Siegfried Handschuh | 28 Jul 11:01
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DEADLINE EXTENDED - Semantic Desktop and Social Semantic Collaboration Workshop at ISWC-2006


Due to numerous requests we decided to extend the submission deadline
for SemDesk 2006. The new deadline will however be hard.

----
                           DEADLINE EXTENDED

       Semantic Desktop and Social Semantic Collaboration Workshop
                        November 5 2006
     http://www.semanticdesktop.org/xwiki/bin/SemanticDesktopWS2006/

     workshop to be held at the 5th International Semantic Web Conference,
                  Athens, GA, U.S.A. November 5-9 2006
                    http://iswc2006.semanticweb.org/

*** THE ONLINE SUBMISSION SYSTEM IS OPEN !!!

Register as a new Author at:
http://deri.confmaster.net/pages/login.php?Conf=semdesk2006
Deadline Abstract Submission by August 2!

MOTIVATION, AIM AND SCOPE

The Semantic Web holds promises for information organization and
selective access, providing standard means for formulating and
distributing metadata and Ontologies.

However, we miss a wide use of Semantic Web technologies on personal
computers. The use of ontologies, metadata annotations, and semantic web
protocols on desktop computers will allow the integration of desktop
applications and the web, enabling a much more focused and integrated
personal information management as well as focused information
distribution and collaboration on the Web beyond sending emails. The
goal is an open personal information management system and collaborative
infrastructure based on Semantic Web technology build into the operating
system of current machines.

Collaboration, acquisition and dissemination infrastructures like Wikis
and Blogs are providing the foundation for joint collaborative knowledge
creation and are essentially simplified knowledge acquisition tools.
Social Software maps the social connections between different people
into the technical infrastructure. Online Social Networking enables
collaboration relationships as first class citizens, and allows
exploiting these relationships for automated information distribution
and classification.

P2P and Grid computing develops technology to interconnect large
communities without centralized infrastructures for data and computation
sharing, which is necessary to build heterogeneous, multi-organizational
collaboration networks. The application of the mentioned technologies,
especially in combination with the Semantic Web, to the desktop computer
in order to improve personal information management and collaboration is
the main topic of this workshop.

TOPICS OF INTEREST

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

    * Architectures and frameworks for integrating the Semantic Web into
a Desktop environment
    * Personal Information Management tools (calendar, address books,
email, documents, ideas) that interoperate with the Semantic Web
    * Enhance searching and information retrieval on desktop computers
using ontologies and metadata.
    * Means to extract metadata from desktop applications (e.g.,
OpenOffice etc.)
    * Knowledge Acquisition and Visualization tools for desktop applications
    * Integration and exploitation of semantic social networks into a
semantic desktop environment
    * P2P models for distributed architecture enabling collaboration
with Semantic Desktop nodes
    * Applications of the Semantic Desktop, e.g, eScience and eGovernment.
    * Methods employing the community factor for knowledge engineering,
    * Policies, authentication and trust within agile collaborative
knowledge engineering scenarios,
    * Querying, aggregation and presentation for adaptive scenarios,
    * Joining Web 2.0 and Semantic Web strategies and technologies,
    * Applications enabling massively distributed knowledge elicitation

IMPORTANT DATES:

   August     2, 2006  	-   Abstract submissions due
   August    10, 2006 	-   Paper submissions due
   September  5, 2006 	-   Acceptance Notification
   September 18, 2006 	-   Camera-redady papers due
   November   5, 2006 	-   Workshop date

SUBMISSIONS

Please follow the style guides according the Springer LNCS format
outlined at:
http://www.springeronline.com/sgw/cda/frontpage/0,11855,5-164-2-72376-0,00.html 

Technical papers should have max. 15 pages including references,
position papers should not exceed 5 pages. Papers can be associated with
a demo.
To submit a paper, please log on to Confmaster
<http://deri.confmaster.net/pages/login.php?Conf=semdesk2006> and create
an account, following the instructions given there. Please note that an
abstract must be submitted by August 2!

ORGANISING COMMITTEE

    * Stefan Decker, DERI/NUI Galway (Ireland)
    * Jack Park, SRI, (USA)
    * Leo Sauermann, DFKI (Germany)
    * Sören Auer, University of Pennsylvenia (USA)
    * Siegfried Handschuh, DERI/NUI Galway (Ireland)

Jeff Z. Pan | 28 Jul 12:40
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2nd CFP: The ISWC Workshop on Semantic Web Enabled Software Engineering (SWESE06)


Apologies for cross-posting!

************************************************************************
*
* CALL FOR PAPERS
* submission deadline is approaching: 14 days left 
*
* 2nd Workshop on Semantic Web Enabled Software Engineering - SWESE06
*
* http://km.aifb.uni-karlsruhe.de/ws/swese2006
*
* located at the 5th International Semantic Web Conference ISWC2006
* 6th November 2006
* Athens, GA, USA
*
************************************************************************

Workshop Description

The advent of the World Wide Web has led many corporations to web-enable their business applications and to
the adoption of web service  standards in middleware platforms. Marking a turning point in the 
development of the Web, the Semantic Web is expected to provide more  benefits to software engineering.
Over the past five years there have been a number of attempts to bring together languages and tools, such  as
the UML, developed for Software Engineering with Semantic Web languages such as RDF and OWL. The Semantic
Web Best Practice and Deployment Working Group (SWBPD) in W3C has started a Software Engineering Task
Force (SETF) to investigate potential benefits. Another recent related international
standardisation activity is OMG's Ontology Definition Metamodel (ODM).

It has been argued that the advantages of Semantic Web Technologies in software engineering include
reusability and extensibility of data models, improvements in data quality, and discovery and
automated execution of workflows. According to SETF's recent note "A Semantic Web Primer for
Object-Oriented Software Developers" (http://www.w3.org/TR/sw-oosd-primer/), the Semantic Web
can serve as a platform on which domain models can be created, shared and reused. However, are there any
other potential benefits related to the reversal of this approach and the use of Semantic Web concepts in
the field of Software Engineering? Could the Web-based, semantically rich formality of OWL be combined
with emerging model driven envelopment tools such as the Eclipse Modelling Framework to provide some
badly needed improvements in both the process and product of software development activities? What is it
about the amalgamation of OWL, UML and the Model Driven Architecture (MDA) that could make a difference?
Certainly, there appear to be a number of strong arguments in favour of this approach but consensus on the
best way forward, or if there is indeed a way forward at all has not yet formed. This workshop seeks to
explore and evaluate this area. The popularity and power of the MDA approach has made many software
development practitioners familiar with modelling and appreciative of additional levels of
abstraction in their models. In parallel, Semantic Web language standards have arrived at substantial
tool support that also provide a means of describing models, but providing different capabilities than
the UML and MOF models typical of MDA tools. The advantages of bridging these approaches has been
compelling enough for tool vendors to build products which do this and to spend considerable effort
defining an OMG standard for these products (ODM). While the primary purpose of these efforts is to enable
SW development with MDA tools, the bridge could also be exploited in the other direction. We think with the
standards for this bridge close to completion, the time IS right to explore the potential created by the
flow of capabilities of the Semantic Web into the software development environment.

The workshop organizers believe that the informal nature of the workshop, located at the major event on the
Semantic Web, will aid to further exchange between practitioners and researchers working on these and
other issues related to Semantic Web enabled software engineering by providing a forum for discussing
the major challenges of the area and the different approach being taken to resolve them. In fact, the 1st
SWESE workshop at ISWC2005 turned out to be a huge success with more than 50 participants in the full day workshop.

Intended Audience

While the intended audience for this workshop includes those with experience or interest in Semantic Web
languages and tools, it is also crucial to have participation by those with expertise in other areas such
as Automatic Software Engineering, Software Engineering, OO/UML/MDA, Semantic Web, and 
Software/legacy Modernization.

Topics of interest include but are not limited to:

- Visions for Semantic Web driven software engineering 
- Tools developed or being developed for software engineering using SW languages 
- Integration or application development projects combining Software Engineering techniques and
Semantic Web tools or languages 
- Lessons learned in Automatic Software Engineering or KBSE applicable to SW   based SE 
- Shortcomings with the Semantic Web with respect to Software Engineering 
- Uses, extensions and/or issues with ODM 
- Visions for SW driven software modernization 
- Integration of UML, OO programming languages and Semantic Web languages 
- Integration of formal methods and Semantic Web languages 
- Software specification and Semantic Web languages 
- Ontologies for software engineering
- Component discovery and ontologies 
- Feature modelling and ontologies
- Ontology reasoning for software engineering
- Semantic annotations in software engineering
- Ontology-Driven Architecture: How to introduce Semantic Web technology   into mainstream development processes

Workshop Format and Attendance

This will be an all day workshop a poster session and technical talks discussing competing visions for
Semantic Web enabled software engineering (final format will be dependent on submissions; keynotes and
panel are pending).

This workshop is open to all members of the ISWC community, as well as other communities identified in the
Intended Audience discussion above.

Submission of a paper is not required for attendance at the workshop.However, in the event that the
workshop cannot accommodate all who would like to participate, those who have submitted a paper will be
given priority for registration. All workshop attendees must pay the
ISWC2006 workshop registration fee, as well as the conference registration fee. We encourage those who
plan to attend this workshop, to register early in order to help conference organizers with their
planning as well as insure that the workshop is not cancelled do to projected poor
attendance.

Organizing Committee

Elisa F. Kendall, Sandpiper Software
Daniel Oberle, SAP Research
Jeff Z. Pan, University of Aberdeen (contact)
Phil Tetlow, IBM
Marwan Sabbouh, MITRE Corporation
Holger Knublauch, Top Quadrant Software

Program Committee

Colin Atkinson (DE), University of Mannheim
Ken Baclawski (US), Northeastern University
Roberta Cuel (IT), University of Trento
Jin Song Dong (SG), National University of Singapore
Dragan Gasevic, (CA) Simon Fraser University Surrey
Michael Goedicke (DE), University of Essen
Mitch Kokar (US), Northeastern University
Alex Kozlenkov (UK), Betfair
Alain Leger (FR), France Telecon
Bob Lojek (UK), IBM
David Martin (US), SRI International
Jishnu Mukerji (US), Hewlett-Packard Company
Steffen Staab (DE), University of Koblenz
Michael K. Smith (US), Electronic Data System
Evan Wallace (US), NIST
Hai Wang (UK), University of Manchester

Submissions and Publication

We invite three forms of submission to this workshop:
  Full papers
  Short position papers
  Posters

Format required for submissions:

  Full technical papers should not exceed fifteen pages in length,
  while the body of short position papers should not exceed two pages.
  Papers can be submitted at the website
  http://km.aifb.uni-karlsruhe.de/ws/swese2006.   Please use the 
Springer's LNCS format for accepted papers. Complete details   on this 
format are available at Springeronline

http://www.springeronline.com/sgw/cda/frontpage/0,11855,5-164-2-72376-0,
00.html].

Technical papers will be peer reviewed by a group of experts
representing a cross-section of fields relevant to Semantic Web
enabled software engineering.

Publication:

All accepted papers will be published online as part of the workshop
proceedings.

A publication of extended versions of the best technical papers of the
workshop in a journal is pending.

Important Dates

   10 August 2006           - Paper submission deadline
   31 August 2006           - Notification of acceptance to authors
   16 September 2006        - Camera-ready version of accepted papers
   Sunday, 6 November 2006  - Workshop

Holger Wache | 29 Jul 00:27
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[CFP] DEADLINE EXTENSION Scalable Semantic Web Knowledge Base Systems (SSWS 2006)


Due to many last minute requests the deadline will be postponed to

                        *August 4th, 2006*

-------------------------------------------------------------------

                         CALL FOR PAPERS
                 Second International Workshop on
        *Scalable Semantic Web Knowledge Base Systems (SSWS 2006)*

               http://www.cs.vu.nl/~holger/ssws2006/

                      November 5 or 6, 2006

		           during
	5th International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC 2006)

  This workshop aims at creating a forum for discussing a critical
  issue for the Semantic Web, that is, scalability. As the Semantic
  Web evolves, scalability becomes increasingly important. This
  workshop will focus on addressing of the scalability issue
  with respect to the development and deployment of knowledge
  base systems on the Semantic Web. Typically, such systems deal
  with information described in Semantic Web languages like OWL
  and RDF(S), and provide services such as storing, reasoning,
  querying and debugging. There are two basic requirements for
  these systems. First, they have to satisfy the applicationÚs
  semantic requirements by providing sufficient reasoning support.
  Second, they must scale well in order to be of practical use.
  Given the sheer size and distributed nature of the Semantic
  Web, these requirements impose additional challenges beyond
  those addressed by earlier knowledge base systems. This has
  been well recognized by the community. We expect that the above
  issue is going to challenge the Semantic Web for a long time
  of period and significant effort is needed in order to tackle
  the problem.

  This workshop seeks to bring together researchers and practitioners
  to share their recent ideas and progresses towards building
  scalable knowledge base systems for the Semantic Web. The workshop
  will be centered on the discussion of three major aspects:

  *  foundations, methods and technologies for pushing forward the
     state-of-the-art;
  *  performance evaluation and related principles, methodologies
     and tools;
  *  identification of important issues and future research directions.

  This workshop is a follow-on event of the SSWS2005 workshop.

  Workshop Topics
----------------

  Topics of interests for the workshop include, but are not limited
  to:
  *  Reasoning mechanisms, techniques and systems
  *  Query evaluation and optimization
  *  Performance evaluation and benchmarks
  *  Large Semantic Web repositories
  *  Distributed and concurrent knowledge base systems and P2P systems

  *  Large scale knowledge base management
  *  Semantic Web-based information integration

  In addition, the workshop will include a working session on
  benchmarking. In order to be able to evaluate scalability,
  the existence of agreed benchmarking datasets is of crucial
  importance. In many related domains such as databases and theorem
  proving, standard benchmarks exist and are ready to guide research
  on optimization techniques. In the Semantic Web area, such
  benchmarking shave only just started to emerge and there is
  no commonly agreed benchmark dataset for RDF and OWL reasoning
  and querying. The workshop will address this issue in a special
  working session on benchmarking. In this session, existing
  benchmarking initiatives will be presented and discussed by
  organizers and participants of the workshop. The aim is to
  come up with a set of requirements and a list of candidate
  datasets.

  Paper Submissions
------------------

  We invite papers that report on completed or work in progress
  on relevant topic areas including use-cases and descriptions
  of demonstrations. All papers will be peer-reviewed by members
  of the program committee. The contributions should be prepared
  in PDF format according to the formatting guidelines for Springer-Verlag
  (LNCS). Submissions should be limited to a maximum of 14 pages
  for full papers Submissions in PDF form should be emailed to
  ssws06-list <at> few.vu.nl, no later than August 4th, 2006.

  Important Dates
----------------

  Submissions Due:            August 4, 2006
  Notification of Acceptance: August 25, 2006
  Camera-ready versions due:  September 15, 2006
  Workshop:                   November 5 or 6, 2006

  Organizers
-----------

  Holger Wache, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands
  Heiner Stuckenschmidt, University of Mannheim, Germany
  Bijan Parsia, University of Manchester, UK
  Yuanbo Guo, Lehigh University, USA
  Tim Finin, University of Maryland, USA
  Dave Beckett, Yahoo, USA

  Program committee
------------------

Karl Aberer (EPFL, Switzerland)
Grigoris Antoniou (University of Crete &ICS FORTH, Greece)
Pierre-Antoine Champin (Lyon 1 University, France)
Jeen Broekstra (Aduna, The Netherlands)
Raul Garcia Castro (Universidad Politecnica de Madrid, Spain)
Oscar Corcho (University of Manchester, UK)
Ying Ding (University of Innsbruck, Austria)
Volker Haarslev (Concordia University, Canada)
Steve Harris (Garlik, UK)
Andreas Harth (Deri, Ireland)
Jeff Heflin (Lehigh University, USA)
Pascal Hitzler (University of Karlsruhe, Germany)
Atanas Kiryakov (Ontotext Lab, Sirma Group, Bulgaria)
Boris Motik (University of Manchester, UK)
Paulo Pinheiro da Silva (The University of Texas at El Paso, USA)
Dennis Quan (IBM Watson Research Center, USA)
Andy Seaborne (HP, UK)
York Sure (University of Karlsruhe, Germany)
Danille Turi (University of Manchester, UK)
Jan Wielemaker (University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands)
Takahira Yamaguchi (Keio University, Japan)


Gmane