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EntityDescriber

The Entity Describer (E.D.) is a mechanism for intersecting the Semantic Web with the normal Web. It lets Connotea users tag resources on the Web with terms from structured knowledge representation and organization systems. In the first version, E.D. drew its vocabularies from the ontologies of the semantic web. In the present version, E.D. uses Freebase as its terminology source. This change was made for two primary reasons:

Freebase already contains more than three million topics
Freebase provides a very fast, intelligent type-ahead java-script component that makes it enjoyable to tap into the Freebase database.

These features solved the two main problems with the DeprecatedEntityDescriber, the lack of sufficient terms for tagging and speed and memory problems associated with accessing large terminologies. As Freebase and the semantic web progress, we expect to be able to move seamlessly back and forth between these two representations, taking advantage of the Freebase platform or the semantic web standards when appropriate. In fact, there are already a number of semantic web ontologies represented in Freebase and we are working to incorporate many more.

The other key advantage that Freebase integration offers us is that it is now much easier for anyone to add their own knowledge into the terminologies that ED processes. Before, the only way to get concepts into E.D. was to create an ontology using the rather arcane Web Ontology Language. This was and is not a trivial task and certainly not something the casual user would bother to do. With Freebase however, the addition of new topics is streamlined to the point that nearly anyone can create them very rapidly. So, if you want some terms or some Types in E.D., just add them to Freebase and start using them!

For installation and use instructions see the new project home page (which is currently under construction).

For more thoughts on and progress with ED, see blog posts about ED.

ED is a product of Kawas and Good of the Wilkinson Laboratory

See the DeprecatedEntityDescriber page or the Nature Precedings manuscript for information on the previous, GreaseMonkey? based Entity Describer.

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Version 17 Changes (Current or 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 9 8 7) | Last updated: Wed Apr 23 2008 23:02 UTC by User:bgood (deprecation of old page, beginning of announcement of new version)