Quietly, Quiggly s
FTL is not possibl
Release me. Now. O
Stop dancing like
Chapter 1. Once
Quitetly, Quiggly
Once considered th
Concrete may have
We've recently dis
Chapter 1. Our st

FTL is not possibl
Stop dancing like
Chapter 1. Once
Chapter 1. Our st
Release me. Now. O
We've recently dis
Stop dancing like
Chapter 1. Our st
Quietly, Quiggly s
But first, you and
<<      >>
Once considered the most complex solution, we are now driven by an ever increasing need for more automation. Now anyone with a browser can easily navigate and find information on a given product. How then can you take advantage of that fact? Ensuring the quality of a site is still of the utmost importance. Through semantic e-commerce you can ensure that the right items are being presented to the right audience. Semantic e-commerce is very flexible and can easily be integrated into your web solution. In our next installment, we'll address the last of the five layers that combine to form the semantic web. * In this issue: Introducing Semantic Web Languages and Standards Top 10 Solutions for Semantic e-Commerce Avoid the Semantic Web Trap What's in a Name? * Site News: 2001 Forefront Announcing the Release of Version 1.2 of the MetaCarta Site Map Extractor and the Site Map of the Web Consortium MetaCarta Names Tim Slagle to Head North American Commerce and Mktg * New from MetaCarta: Web3 - Making the Semantic Web Available to Everyone Semantic Web Development Toolkit (SWDTK) Metacartabridge.org to Host Developers Forum New eMall.com Site Builds Merchandise MetaCarta Acquires eMall.com New eMall.com Site Builds Merchandise Metacartabridge.org to Host Developers Forum Semantic Web Development Toolkit (SWDTK) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------- * Semantic Web Languages and Standards * by Michael Eisen, President of Mktg&mktg Inc * * If you care about your sites, and in particular the quality * of that quality, then what's being talked about here is the * most significant technology you've never heard of. When you * get a sense of the power of this technology, it will be an * easy jump to conclude that it is of little consequence * until it becomes available to you. In 1999, RDF and OWL were used for the Semantic Web. Now we're beginning to see a more integrated approach involving RDF, OWL, OWL Lite and the latest in Web vocabulary - SKOS, OWL or OWL Lite. All of these tools will be essential to the success of your Semantic e-commerce solution. Most of us think of XML as a Web technology. It certainly provides the power to structure and manage information, but it's the application of that technology that really makes things work. These languages and standards are the underlying tools for developing a semantic web site. It doesn't take a great leap of logic to see that to create a consistent, powerful and compelling site, you must first structure your information within a common vocabulary. The first step is to understand what the standards and languages are that will help build a site, and what their primary functions are. The next is to select the right tools and find out how to integrate them into a successful solution. If you do a little work in this area now, you will be well on your way to achieving a very efficient Semantic Web site. You will be able to build any e-commerce site you can imagine and still have the flexibility to alter it over time. In our next installment, we'll discuss the basics of Semantic e-commerce languages and standards. * Site News: Introducing Microsoft's Site Standards WebFaction Makes a Splash in Japan with SuperSite, the "World's First" E-Commerce Website New Web 3.0.org Launched; Leveraging Information Introducing Semantic Web Languages and Standards New eMall.com Site Builds Merchandise * New from MetaCarta: Web3 - Making the Semantic Web Available to Everyone Semantic Web Development Toolkit (SWDTK) Metacartabridge.org to Host Developers Forum New eMall.com Site Builds Merchandise MetaCarta Acquires eMall.com New eMall.com Site Builds Merchandise Metacartabridge.org to Host Developers Forum Semantic Web Development Toolkit (SWDTK) * New from MetaCarta: W3C Workshop for Semantic e-Commerce: http://www.w3.org/2001/sw Semantic Commerce Conference Held this Week: http://www.web3.org/SemanticWeb/Commerce SemanticWeb.org Launches: http://www.web3.org/SemanticWeb/Commerce * Booom! There goes the cat! * Next Update: Introduction to Semantic Web Languages and Standards Next Edition of The Dummies' Guide to E-Commerce New eMall.com Site Builds Merchandise MetaCarta Acquires eMall.com New eMall.com Site Builds Merchandise Semantic Web Development Toolkit (SWDTK) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------- * Semantic Web e-Commerce Languages and Standards * by Michael Eisen, President of Mktg&mktg Inc * * The Semantic Web works in two ways. One way is the * eXtensible Markup Language (XML) technology * that brings Web data together in a uniform fashion. The * other is the use of standard vocabulary (both * specific and general) to store, manage, and retrieve * information. You want your site to be about something * and not about everything all at once. That's where * ontologies come in. An ontology is simply a * network of interrelated concepts and information. You will need an ontology if you expect to create and manage data about anything that is not the whole world. This includes semantically rich site content. The ability to understand a site means understanding more than just what the pages say. It also includes the way they connect and relate. Knowing the semantic Web languages and standards is imperative. They are the underlying tools for developing a Semantic e-commerce solution. The best way to build a Semantic e-commerce solution is to first understand the basics of Semantic Web technology, and then select the right tools. By implementing an integrated system of standardization and ontologies you can deliver powerful and compelling e-commerce solutions to your users. At its heart, the Semantic Web is a repository of knowledge that defines terms and categories of objects such as people, places, products, events, and relationships among them. These objects contain other associated objects and, at their most granular level, each can be linked to other documents on the Web, with varying degrees of semantic significance. Semantic Web technologies support the ability to infer relationships and interconnections between documents. In this way, a more complete, yet abstract, representation of documents and their properties can be developed. Some languages can store concepts that are of a broad or general nature. Others contain specialized vocabularies that represent details about a particular subject area. A good example of a general vocabulary is the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative, which attempts to define terms that can be applied to a wide range of different types of documents. Another example of a specialized vocabulary is that for Semantic e-commerce. This language is used to define generic terms that are used by e-commerce sites, such as "shoes" or "cars". This vocabulary is very broad, but only in terms of describing the types of goods and services that are offered. While these general and specialized vocabularies exist, there is no standard format for them. There are several different efforts underway to define standards for these general and specialized vocabularies. Standards exist for some of the individual languages, but not for the combined systems. You need these standards to form a consistent combination of these languages to make a Semantic e-commerce solution. When you want to add semantics to your web site, there are two basic tasks to be accomplished. First, a consistent vocabulary needs to be developed that includes terms in both general and specialized categories. Second, the terms need to be represented as documents