Javier Ferreiros López

The FAST Platform: An Open and Semantically-Enriched Platform for Designing Multi-channel and Enterprise-Class Gadgets

The transfer of the mashup paradigm in corporate environments needs additional capabilities beyond those typically associated with consumer mashups. In this paper, we present the architecture of the FAST platform which allows creating enterprise-class and multi-channel visual building blocks (so called gadgets) in an ad-hoc manner. The design of complex enterprise-class gadgets is supported by an integrated semantic concept which hides the complexity from the actual users. The architectural components of the platform, a technical life cycle model for enterprise mashups, and the FAST gadget ontology are presented. By means of a cross-organizational real-world scenario from the marketing/ promotion event area, we demonstrate the value and potential of the FAST platform.

Enabling semantics-aware collaborative tagging and social search in an open interoperable tagosphere

To make the most of a global network effect and to search and filter the Long Tail, a collaborative tagging approach to social search should be based on the global activity of tagging, rating and filtering. We take a further step towards this objective by proposing a shared conceptualization of both the activity of tagging and the organization of the tagosphere in which tagging takes place. We also put forward the necessary data standards to interoperate at both data format and semantic levels. We highlight how this conceptualization makes provision for attaching identity and meaning to tags and tag categorization through a Wikipedia-based collaborative framework. Used together, these concepts are a useful and agile means of unambiguously defining terms used during tagging, and of clarifying any vague search terms. This improves search results in terms of recall and precision, and represents an innovative means of semantics-aware collaborative filtering and content ranking.