Abstract: Trust is an integral part of the Semantic Web architecture. While most prior work focuses on entity-centered issues such as authentication and reputation, it does not model the content, i.e. the nature and use of the information being exchanged. This paper discusses content trust as an aggregate of other trust measures that have been previously studied. The paper introduces several factors that users consider in deciding whether to trust the content provided by a Web resource. Many of these factors are hard to capture in practice, since they would require a large amount of user input. Our goal is to discern which of these factors could be captured in practice with minimal user interaction in order to maximize the system's trust estimates. The paper also describes a simulation environment that we have designed to study alternative models of content trust.

Abstract: We argue that while work to optimize the accessibility of the World Wide Web through the publication and dissemination of a range of guidelines is of great importance, there is also the need for a more holistic approach to maximizing the role of the Web in enabling disabled people to access information, services and experiences. The persistently disappointingly low levels of usability of Web content for disabled people indicates that focusing on the adoption of accessibility guidelines by content authors, tool developers and policy makers is not sufficient for a truly inclusive Web. This approach fails to acknowledge the role of the Web as an enabler in a broader context and may stifle creative use of Web content and experiences to enhance social inclusion.Using e-learning as an example, and describing current metadata developments, we present a framework that will guide Web authors and policy makers in addressing accessibility at a higher level, by defining the context in which a Web resource will be used and considering how best existing or new alternatives may be combined to enhance the accessibility of the information and services provided by the site in question. We demonstrate how guidelines such as those produced by the W3C's Web Accessibility Initiative have a role to play within this wider context, along with metadata and user profiling initiatives.

Abstract: The World Wide Web is a popular and interactive medium used to collect, disseminate, and access an increasingly huge amount of information, which constitutes the mainstay of the so-called information and knowledge society. Because of its spectacular growth, related to both Web resources (pages, sites, and services) and number of users, the Web is nowadays the main information repository and provides some automatic systems for locating, accessing, and retrieving information. However, an open and crucial question remains: how to provide fast and effective retrieval of the information relevant to specific users' needs. This is a very hard and complex task, since it is pervaded with subjectivity, vagueness, and uncertainty. The expression soft computing refers to techniques and methodologies that work synergistically with the aim of providing flexible information processing tolerant of imprecision, vagueness, partial truth, and approximation. So, soft computing represents a good candidate to design effective systems for information access and retrieval on the Web. One of the most representative tools of soft computing is fuzzy set theory. This special topic section collects research articles witnessing some recent advances in improving the processes of information access and retrieval on the Web by using soft computing tools, and in particular, by using fuzzy sets andsor integrating them with other soft computing tools. In this introductory article, we first review the problem of Web retrieval and the concept of soft computing technology. We then briefly introduce the articles in this section and conclude by highlighting some future research directions that could benefit from the use of soft computing technologies. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Abstract: Folksonomy, a free-form tagging, is a user-generated classification system of web contents that allows users to tag their favorite web resources with their chosen words or phrases selected from natural language. These tags (also called concepts, categories, facets or entities) can be used to classify web resources and to express users' preferences. Folksonomy-based systems allow users to classify web resources through tagging bookmarks, photos or other web resources and saving them to a public web site like Del.icio.us. Thus information about web resources and online articles can be shared in an easy way. The purpose of this study is to provide an overview of the folksonomy tagging phenomenon (also called social tagging and social bookmarking) and explore some of the reasons why we need controlled vocabularies, discussing the problems associated with folksonomy.

Abstract: Ontologies, formal specifications of domains, have evolved in recent years as a leading tool in representing and interpreting Web data. The inherent heterogeneity of Web resources, the vast amount of information on the Web, and its non-specific nature requires a semantically rich tool for extracting the essence of Web source content. The OntoBuilder project [5] supports the extraction of ontologies from Web interfaces, ranging from simple Search Engine forms to multiple-pages, complex reservation systems. Ontologies from similar domains are then matched to identify ontology mappings.

Abstract: Collaborative tagging on the web has been quickly gaining ground as a new paradigm for web information retrieval, discovering and filtering. There are a number of successful deployments of collaborative tagging systems that effectively recruits the activity of human users into collecting and annotating vast amounts of web resources. They lead to an emergent categorization of web resources in terms of tags, and create a different kind of web directory. However, the current ways of exploration in the tagging space are limited, which cannot get the most out of the real value of it. This paper presents our methodology, observations, and experimental results in the way we propose how to improve the user experience in exploring information captured by collaborative tagging systems.

Abstract: Semantic Web Mining aims at combining the two fast-developing research areas Semantic Web and Web Mining. This survey analyzes the convergence of trends from both areas: an increasing number of researchers is working on improving the results of Web Mining by exploiting semantic structures in the Web, and they make use o Web Mining techniques for building the Semantic Web. Last but not least, these techniques can be used for mining the Semantic Web itself. The Semantic Web is the second-generation WWW, enriched by machine-processable information which supports the user in his tasks. Given the enormous size even of today's Web, it is impossible to manually enrich all of these resources. Therefore, automated schemes for learning the relevant information are increasingly being used. Web Mining aims at discovering insights about the meaning of Web resources and their usage. Given the primarily syntactical nature of the data being mined, the discovery of meaning is impossible based on these data only. Therefore, formalizations of the semantics of Web sites and navigation behavior are becoming more and more common. Furthermore, mining the Semantic Web itself is another upcoming application. We argue that the two areas Web Mining and Semantic Web need each other to fulfill their goals, but that the full potential of this convergence is not yet realized. This paper gives an overview of where the two areas meet today, and sketches ways of how a closer integration could be profitable.

Abstract: Purpose – The essential purpose of this paper is to measure the amount of web resources used for scholarly contributions in the area of library and information science (LIS) in India. It further aims to make an analysis of the nature and type of web resources and studies the various standards for web citations.Design/methodology/approach – In this study, the result of analysis of 292 web citations spread over 95 scholarly papers published in the proceedings of the National Conference of the Society for Information Science, India (SIS‐2005) has been reported. All the 292 web citations were scanned and data relating to types of web domains, file formats, styles of citations, etc., were collected through a structured check list. The data thus obtained were systematically analyzed, figurative representations were made and appropriate interpretations were drawn.Findings – The study revealed that 292 (34.88 per cent) out of 837 were web citations, proving a significant correlation between the use of Internet re...

Abstract: Our Challenge-Based Learning (CBL) method can be described as a special form of problem-based learning, in which the problems are of realistic, open-ended nature. Additionally, CBL contains features of experiential and project-based learning approaches. CBL is supported by the provision of Digital Experimentation Toolkits (DExTs) which comprise materials, initial instructions, references to web resources and specific software tools. Technological challenges lie in the ease of use in accessing these data and in communicating the learners’ requests and specifications to the remote sites. Within this article we describe several classroom scenarios for the usage of DexTs in schools. Examples are the calculation of the epicenter of an earthquake, the calculation of lunar heights and the definition of strategies for navigation in a maze. The activities described in this paper were conducted within the framework of our COLDEX project (Collaborative Learning and Distributed Experimentation, http://www.coldex.info).

Abstract: A method and system for identifying a network resource such as a phishing website. In an embodiment, a web browser receives a web page that includes a resource identifier, such as a URL, to enable a user to access the network resource. An anti-phishing module accesses the network resource and receives a network address, such as an IP address and a port number. The anti-phishing module accesses a database, such as an assigned name database, to obtain ownership information, such as an owner name and country code, associated with the network address. The ownership information is checked to determine whether the network address is associated with a valid owner that is related to the resource identifier. If the network addresses ownership is not trusted, a warning is optionally provided, indicating that the resource identifier may be directed to a phishing.

Abstract: The importance of accessibility to digital e-learning resources is widely acknowledged. The World Wide Web Consortium Web Accessibility Initiative has played a leading role in promoting the importance of accessibility and developing guidelines that can help when developing accessible web resources. The accessibility of e-learning resources provides additional challenges. While it is important to consider the technical and resource related aspects of e-learning when designing and developing resources for students with disabilities, there is a need to consider pedagogic and contextual issues as well. A holistic framework is therefore proposed and described, which in addition to accessibility issues takes into account learner needs, learning outcomes, local factors, infrastructure, usability and quality assurance. The practical application and implementation of this framework is discussed and illustrated through the use of examples and case studies. DOI: 10.1080/09687760500479860

Abstract: Accessing up-to-date information in a fast and easy way implies the necessity of information management tools to explore and analyse the huge number of available electronic resources. The Web offers a large amount of valuable information for every possible domain, but its human-oriented representation and its size makes difficult and extremely time consuming any kind of centralised computer-based processing. In this paper, a combination of distributed AI and knowledge acquisition techniques is proposed to tackle this problem. In particular, we have designed an incremental and domain independent learning methodology modelled over a multi-agent system that crawls the Web composing knowledge structures (ontologies) from the interrelation of several automatically obtained taxonomies of terms according to the user’s interests. Moreover, the obtained ontologies are used to represent, in a structured way, the currently available web resources for the corresponding domain. The paper also presents examples of the potential results over medical and technological domains and compares the results, whenever it is possible, against publicly available taxonomic web search engines obtaining, in all cases, a considerable improvement.

Abstract: There are two problems associated with conventional web crawling techniques: a crawler cannot know if all resources at a non-trivial web site have been discovered and crawled ("the counting problem") and the human-readable format of the resources are not always suitable for machine processing ("the representation problem") We introduce an approach that solves these two problems by implementing support for both the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH) and MPEG-21 Digital Item Declaration Language (DIDL) into the web server itself We present the Apache module "mod_oai", which can be used to address the counting problem by listing all valid URIs at a web server and efficiently discovering updates and additions on subsequent crawls Our experiments indicated comparable performance for initial crawls, and dramatic increases in update speed mod_oaican also be used to address the representation problem by providing "preservation ready" versions of web resources aggregated with their respective forensic metadata in MPEG-21 DIDL format

Abstract: A system and method of navigating linked web resources is disclosed. The method includes the steps of displaying a current page including links to linked resources, zooming to a selected link, displaying a portion of a content of the linked resource in the same space as the link when a first predetermined zoom threshold is reached, and displaying the content of the linked resource when a second predetermined zoom threshold is reached. The system includes a navigation tool, a means for detecting movement of the navigation tool relative to a link in a web resource, and a rendering utility coupled to the means for detecting movement for providing a content of the linked web resource.

Abstract: As educators’ awareness of their responsibilities towards ensuring the accessibility of the learning environment to disabled students increases, significant debate surrounds the implications of accessibility requirements on educational multimedia. There would appear to be widespread concern that the fundamental principles of creating accessible web-based materials seem at odds with the creative and innovative use of multimedia to support learning and teaching, as well as concerns over the time and cost of providing accessibility features that can hold back resource development and application. Yet, effective use of multimedia offers a way of enhancing the accessibility of the learning environment for many groups of disabled students. Using the development of ‘Skills for Access’, a web resource supporting the dual aims of creating optimally accessible multimedia for learning, as an example, the attitudinal, practical and technical challenges facing the effective use of multimedia as an accessibility aid in a learning environment will be explored. Reasons why a holistic approach to accessibility may be the most effective in ensuring that multimedia reaches its full potential in enabling and supporting students in learning, regardless of any disability they may have, will be outlined and discussed. DOI: 10.1080/09687760500479936

Abstract: For the Semantic Grid vision [13] to become a reality, high quality of service must be offered to users and applications at all levels of the Grid fabric. In this position paper, we concentrate on high quality of service in the provision of resource discovery services in Semantic Grids. Resource discovery is an important problem in Grids in general, and Semantic Grids in particular. We discuss how to achieve high-performance, scalability, resilience to failures, robustness and adaptivity in the provision of resource discovery services in Semantic Grids, and especially in OntoKit, the Semantic Grid toolkit currently under development in project OntoGrid [22]. OntoGrid (http://www.ontogrid.net) is a Semantic Grid project funded by the Grid Technologies unit of the European Commission under the strategic objective “Grid-based systems for Complex Problem Solving” of the Information Society Technologies programme of FP6. Our basic assumption in this paper is that Semantic Grid resources (e.g., machines, services or ontologies) will be annotated by RDF(S) metadata. Metadata pervades the Semantic Grid and is used to describe Grid resources, the environment, provenance and trust information etc. [13]. The Resource Description Framework (RDF) and RDF Schema (RDFS) are frameworks for representing information about Web resources. RDF(S) consists of W3C recommendations that enable the encoding, exchange and reuse of structured metadata, providing the means for publishing both human-readable and machine-processable information and vocabularies for semantically describing things on the Web. Although RDF(S) was originally proposed in the context of the Semantic Web, it is also a very natural framework for representing information about Grid resources. As a result, it is used heavily in various Semantic Grid projects e.g., Grid (http://www.mygrid.org.uk) or OntoGrid.

Abstract: A web bookmark manager processes a collection of web bookmarks to produce a richly structured presentation of the bookmark collection. The bookmark collection includes representations of resources, topics, and notice events. A notice event includes a reference to a web resource and a natural language description provided by a user. The notice description is processed by a classifier to determine topics to which the referenced web resource shall be associated. The processing of the notice description includes parsing to obtain sequences of content words, to which topics are associated. Generalizations of a topic are determined by subsequences of the associated word sequence. The presentation of a collection of bookmarks includes a chronology of notices, a ranking of topics, a taxonomy of topics, and an index of content words from topics. The presentation further includes per-topic and per-resource presentations.

Abstract: Reusing existing web resources for e-learning is a very promising and highly promoted idea in the research field of web-based education, especially for intelligent or adaptive systems where the cost of authoring is tremendous. However methodologies and tools are still lacking and feasibility at reasonable cost is a pending issue. In this paper we propose an original approach to reuse learning resources based on knowledge engineering and Semantic Web technologies. The QBLS platform reuses learning resources available on the web and pedagogical ontologies to create a convenient learning system for assignment sessions. QBLS is being used on actual curricula at the EPU engineering school of Sophia Antipolis.

Abstract: As the necessity of flexible Web security becomes more apparent and as the notion of using policies for access control gains popularity, the number of policy languages being proposed for controlling access to Web resources increases. Instead of defining a single standard policy language, we believe that there should be a way of embracing different policy languages and of allowing interoperability between systems that use different policy languages. We propose Rein - a policy and delegation framework that is grounded in semantic Web technologies - to help the Web preserve maximum expressiveness for local policy communities by enabling global interoperability of policy reasoning. Rein provides ontologies for describing policy and delegation networks, and provides mechanisms for reasoning over them, both of which can be used to develop domain and policy language specific access control frameworks for Web resources. The focus of this paper is the delegation mechanisms of the Rein policy framework that support both delegation of authorization and trust. In this paper we give a brief overview of the Rein framework, describe its delegation mechanisms, and illustrate their usefulness through some examples.

Abstract: The publication and reuse of intellectual resources using the Web technologies provide no support for us to clip out any portion of Web pages, to combine them together for their local reuse, nor to publish the newly composed object as a new Web page for its reuse by other people. This paper shows how the meme-media architecture is applied to the Web to provide such support for us. This makes the Web work as a shared repository not only for publishing intellectual resources, but also for their collaborative reediting. We will propose a general framework for clipping arbitrary Web contents as live objects, for defining IO ports on such a clip, and for the recombination and linkage of such clips based on both the original and some user-defined relationships among them. In our previous works, we proposed two separate frameworks for these three purposes; one works for the first two, and the other for the last. Here we will propose a unified framework for these three purposes, as well as its detailed internal mechanisms. Then we show how it can be easily applied to various legacy Web applications to develop innovative services.

Abstract: The overwhelming popularity of Internet and the technology advancements have determined the diffusion of many different Web-enabled devices. In such an heterogeneous client environment, efficient content adaptation and delivery services are becoming a major requirement for the new Internet service infrastructure. In this paper we describe intermediary-based architectures that provide adaptation and delivery of Web content to different user terminals. We present the design of a Squid-based prototype that carries out the adaptation of Web images and combines such a functionality with the caching of multiple versions of the same resource. We also investigate how to provide some form of cooperation among the nodes of the intermediary infrastructure, with the goal to evaluate to what extent the cooperation in discovering, adapting, and delivering Web resources can improve the user-perceived performance.

Abstract: The World Wide Web is a popular and interactive medium used to collect, disseminate, and access an increasingly huge amount of information, which constitutes the mainstay of the so-called information and knowledge society. Because of its spectacular growth, related to both Web resources (pages, sites, and services) and number of users, the Web is nowadays the main information repository and provides some automatic systems for locating, accessing, and retrieving information. However, an open and crucial question remains: how to provide fast and effective retrieval of the information relevant to specific users' needs. This is a very hard and complex task, since it is pervaded with subjectivity, vagueness, and uncertainty. The expression soft computing refers to techniques and methodologies that work synergistically with the aim of providing flexible information processing tolerant of imprecision, vagueness, partial truth, and approximation. So, soft computing represents a good candidate to design effective systems for information access and retrieval on the Web. One of the most representative tools of soft computing is fuzzy set theory. This special topic section collects research articles witnessing some recent advances in improving the processes of information access and retrieval on the Web by using soft computing tools, and in particular, by using fuzzy sets and/or integrating them with other soft computing tools. In this introductory article, we first review the problem of Web retrieval and the concept of soft computing technology. We then briefly introduce the articles in this section and conclude by highlighting some future research directions that could benefit from the use of soft computing technologies.

Abstract: Existing tools for automatically detecting Web site defacement compare monitored Web resources with uncorrupted copies of the content kept in a safe place. This can be an expensive and difficult task, especially when working with dynamic resources. In contrast, the Goldrake tool uses sensors and alarms to automatically monitor remote Web resources' integrity. Such a framework could help designers build services to inexpensively monitor multiple Web sites, which could be very attractive for small, budget-limited organizations that depend on the Web for their operation

Abstract: A system and method for simplifying resource management is provided. Resources are represented by resource objects in a resource object model. Each resource object represents a single resource and contains one or more resource attributes to describe the resource. At least one of the resource attributes for each resource object is a string identifier formed within the constraints of a query grammar. The string identifier is a text-based identifier that is based upon a unique property of the represented resource. A characteristic of the resources is selected as the basis for the relationship between resource objects in the resource object model. In one embodiment, an application identifies resources by generating a search query using the same query grammar used to create the string identifier. In another embodiment, a user manually enters the search query into a command line interpreter.

Abstract: A location-based search engine must be able to find and assign proper locations to Web resources. Host, content and metadata location information are not sufficient to describe the location of resources as they are ambiguous or unavailable for many documents. We introduce target location as the location of users of Web resources. Target location is content-independent and can be applied to all types of Web resources. A novel method is introduced which uses log files and IPs to track the visitors of websites. The experiments show that target location can be calculated for almost all documents on the Web at country level and to the majority of them in state and city levels. It can be assigned to Web resources as a new definition and dimension of location. It can be used separately or with other relevant locations to define the geography of Web resources. This compensates insufficient geographical information on Web resources and would facilitate the design and development of location-based search engines.

Abstract: Setting: The University of Washington Health Sciences Libraries and Information Center BioCommons serves the bioinformatics needs of researchers at the university and in the vibrant for-profit and not-for-profit biomedical research sector in the Washington area and region. Program Components: The BioCommons comprises services addressing internal University of Washington, not-for-profit, for-profit, and regional and global clientele. The BioCommons is maintained and administered by the BioResearcher Liaison Team. The BioCommons architecture provides a highly flexible structure for adapting to rapidly changing resources and needs. Evaluation Mechanisms: BioCommons uses Web-based pre- and post-course evaluations and periodic user surveys to assess service effectiveness. Recent surveys indicate substantial usage of BioCommons services and a high level of effectiveness and user satisfaction. Next Steps/Future Directions: BioCommons is developing novel collaborative Web resources to distribute bioinformatics tools and is experimenting with Web-based competency training in bioinformation resource use.

Abstract: This document defines the use of Internationalized Resource Identifiers (IRIs) and Uniform Resource Identifiers (URIs) in identifying or interacting with entities that can communicate via the Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP). This document obsoletes RFC 4622.

Abstract: This chapter presents a review of the ways of georeferencing in Web resources, as opposed to the georeferencing of other information communities, specifically in route directions for wayfinders. The different information needs of the two information communities, reflected by their different semantics of georeferences, are identified. In a case study, we investigate the possibilities of translating the semantics of georeferences in Web resources to landmarks in route directions. We show that interpreting georeferences in Web resources enhances the perceivable properties of described features. Finally, we identify open questions for future research. 1. I NTRODUCTION The Web consists of a large amount of predominantly weakly structured and organized resources, with only a few resources having an explicit and structured description of the content. We can think of the Web as an informal network of diverse heterogeneous data sources, including simple files as well as modern object-relational and semantic databases. Many, if not most of these resources provide some form of reference to geographic space. Georeferences link the features of physical or social reality described in the content of the resources to particular locations in geographic space. The descriptions of features together with their georeferences can be seen as a map inherent in the Web. This map has some properties, particularly heterogeneity. The types of features described, the ways the features are described, and the ways the georeferences are made are diverse, and the links between features and georeferences are implicit and diverse as well. Without a specified semantics of features and their reference to geographic space, the Web-inherent map cannot be translated automatically into an explicit map of general or specific purpose. This is true of the opposite as well. In general, search engines have problems with geographic searches when looking simply for keywords and not considering semantics of natural language structures. In this chapter we will investigate georeferences in Web resources for a very specific purpose: exploiting the wealth of inherent geographic knowledge of Web resources for route directions. Choosing a specific purpose for (re-)constructing the inherent map in the Web allows for the identification of the fundamental challenges for research by a single case-based study. The case-based approach limits the complexity of the reconstruction at least by selecting an appropriate destination domain – the source domain, the Web, remains a heterogeneous domain. Choosing wayfinding as the destination domain does not limit the generality of our findings; other destination domains have to address the same challenges. In wayfinding, people generate travel routes from their mental maps, and communicate these routes by relating movement and orientation actions to landmarks at selected points along the route. In comparison, wayfinding services generate travel routes on metric travel networks. The metric travel networks cannot communicate these routes by referring to landmarks due to a lack of landmark knowledge. There is neither a clear understanding of what constitutes a landmark, nor is there a ready-made directory of landmarks available. In this situation, the

Abstract: Effective ways of instruction in networking technology classes (students' papers with technology overviews, research projects, virtual labs, analytical exercises, and Web resources) are discussed with demonstration of lecture notes, OPNET™ lab assignments, "warm-up" exercises, homework and test problems, and final projects that are available on the instructor's Websites. The project-based approach motivates students in selecting topics for their technology overviews and research projects and provides them with knowledge, instructions, and hands-on experience.