ZDNet has a good article, Yahoo’s new search master , on Yahoo’s plans to expand its research efforts that is based on an interview with Prabhakar Raghavan, the new head of Yahoo’s research group. Here’s an interesting quote from the article:

That future technology, according to Raghavan, is diving into the “deep Web” and semi-structured queries. “I hesitate to use the buzzword of ‘Semantic Web’ — but it is about entity extraction, XML queries, unstructured queries, semantic ambiguity. We have to build a view of the world. When you issue a query, it has richer view than a text index. We’ll start to see manifestations of this in five years.”

and another

Yahoo wants to turn its fragmented set of services, content and marketplaces into a cohesive whole and to aggregate, distribute and monetize the creative output of its users. “We have a plethora of opportunities looking at different social networks, such as blogs, instant messaging, My Web, Yahoo 360, and other services, across Yahoo properties,” Raghavan said. Yahoo’s social search engine My Web 2.0, for example, allows Yahoo users to archive, tag and annotate search results and share them with other people using the service. Users can also search their contacts’ My Web and browse content that others on Yahoo’s network have shared.

On a related note, DARPA IPTO Director Ron Brachman announced at AAAI last month that he will join Yahoo to direct world-wide research strategy.

We’ve played around some with integrating foaf and foaf-like data and it’s obvious that the hard problem is smushing. While inverse functional properties are an important resource than helps, maybe we can develop some ideas to support heuristic smushing. Perhaps we could develop an ontology that allows one to say something like

If two instances of a foaf:Person share the samefoaf: givenname, foaf:family_name and a pim:PhoneNumber or pim:Address then they are the sname individual with 95% certainty.

Maybe this is a good use for an RDF rule language like SWRL. But, I think it important to be able to express the degree of certainty.

It would also be helpful if individuals can offer their own rules. For example, I’m pretty sure that I am the only person in the world named “Tim Finin”. If I had the right vocabulary, I could assert this and others could use the information as they saw fit.

Link, link.

David Sifry posts on the state of the blogosphere and reports that the data reveals, among other things, that

• The blogosphere continues to double about every 5.5 months
• A new blog is created about every second, there are over 80,000 created daily
• About 55% of all blogs are active, and that has remained a consistent statistic for at least a year
• About 13% of all blogs are updated at least weekly

Microsoft tracks WiFi for new mapping system
Move is part of a plan to create alternative to GPS satellite system
…
In a new initiative, Microsoft has dispatched cars to trawl many city and suburban streets across the U.S. to locate the signals sent out by millions of short-range home and office wireless (or WiFi) networks. The unusual move, now being repeated in the U.K. and some other countries, is part of a plan to create a ground-based location system as an alternative to the GPS satellite system.
…
Microsoft said it had collected only the unique identifier, known as a MAC address which each WiFi network broadcasts. This could not be traced to an address or an individual user. Microsoft said that, by recording the position of every MAC address on a giant map, it had created a positioning system that would make it possible for anyone with a WiFi-enabled laptop computer to identify their location to within 30.5 meters.

Flickr delivers a new ranking mechanism. Results at Flickr Explore. A very good example of what social+technology can do — building on PageRank.

There are lots of things that make a photo ‘interesting’ (or not) in the Flickr. Where the clickthroughs are coming from; who comments on it and when; who marks it as a favorite; its tags and many more things which are constantly changing. Interestingness changes over time, as more and more fantastic photos and stories are added to Flickr.

More ..

A listing of top uploads in the last 24 hours is impressive. Explore / Interestingness / Last 24 Hours is surely worth a bookmark (del.icio.us count).

(Via John Battelle)

Here’s an interesting (and free) story from the WSJ on what parking meters can do with a little awareness and a few brain cells. Some of the ideas are quite chilling. It’s nature, red in tooth and claw and it’s clear who is the predator and who is the prey. There’s a nice graphical overview, too.

Parking Meters Get Smarter
Wireless Technology Turns Old-Fashioned Coin-Operated Device Into a Sophisticated Tool for Catching Scofflaws and Raising Cash
By Christopher Conkey, Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal, June 30, 2005; Page B1

Technology is taking much of the fun out of finding a place to park the car.

In Pacific Grove, Calif., parking meters know when a car pulls out of the spot and quickly reset to zero — eliminating drivers’ little joy of parking for free on someone else’s quarters.

In Montreal, when cars stay past their time limit, meters send real-time alerts to an enforcement officer’s hand-held device, reducing the number of people needed to monitor parking spaces — not to mention drivers’ chances of getting away with violations. Meanwhile, in Aspen, Colo., wireless “in-car” meters may eliminate the need for curbside parking meters altogether: They dangle from the rear-view mirror inside the car, ticking off prepaid time.
…
Coral Gables, Fla., recently became one of the first U.S. cities where drivers can buy parking time using their cellphones. After registering a phone number, credit card and license-plate number online with Mint Technology Corp., of Toronto, motorists park, dial 1-888-PAY-MINT and then enter the lot number to start their “parking session.” In addition to the parking fee, Mint charges drivers a 25-cent surcharge for the service, or $7 a month for unlimited sessions.
…
Pacific Grove, Calif., took a different tack. The city got so fed up with tourists leaving cars in its zoned spaces all day while visiting the aquarium in neighboring Monterey that in December it installed meters with a progressive-rate schedule, leased from InnovaPark LLC of Westport, Conn. Some meters on short-term spaces can be programmed to reject quarters after 20 minutes. Others charge $1 for the first hour and then increase to as much as $4 for the third hour. Meters reset to zero as soon as a car pulls out. …