The Map Room: A Weblog about Maps.
Improve your knowledge of maps.
Knowledge of maps will improve topic maps you create.
There are cultures without writing systems.
There are no cultures without maps.
Your mission: No cultures without topic maps.
May 13, 2010
the wheel and the hub
I stumbled today upon Bernard Vatant’s blog the wheel and the hub
His recent post, societas hominum et societas rerum merits special mention.
I wont’ try to summarize it but simply observe that it is rare to see orthodox Marxists, the semantic web and Latin combined in a single posting. Well worth your time.
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May 12, 2010
Time, Tide and Identifiers Wait for No One
The earliest record of time and tide wait for no man dates from 1225 and reads in modern English:
the tide abides for, tarrieth for no man, stays no man, tide nor time tarrieth no man
Meaning no one can command time. The same is true for identifiers.
What do you think “tide” means in the title? Ocean tide perhaps?
In the original phrase, “tide” meant a period of time. The identifier persisted, but its meaning changed.
Identifiers for subjects and their meanings change.
Topic maps can follow those changes. Can you?
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Gonorrhea and Weapons of Mass Destruction
The Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) ontology at the Suggested Upper Merged Ontology (SUMO) website includes Gonorrhea.
Imagine a WMD debate over a Gonorrhea test for all airline passengers, blue ink for their thumbs (positive), along with penicillin shots.
The transmission mechanisms of Gonorrhea make it an unlikely weapon of mass destruction.
The monological nature of WMD ontology prevents contrary views from being registered. It must have, after all, a determinate result.
Topic map authors can make equally foolish statements. The difference is that contrary views can be registered as well.
May 11, 2010
Topic Maps Are…
….the results of searching..
The Watching the Watchers topic map is the result of searching. Information I gained by searching is recorded in the topic map.
Does that seem trivial?
Can you name one major search engine that preserves your analysis of search results?
Or that makes it possible to reliably merge your analysis with that of a co-worker?
Maybe being the result of searching isn’t a trivial thing.
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Subject World
Subject World (Japanese only)
Subject World is a project to visualize heterogeneous terminology, including catalogs, for use with library catalogs. Uses BSH4 subject headings (Basic Subject Headings) and NDC9 index terms (Nippon Decimal Classification) to visualize and retrieve information from the Osaka City University OPAC.
English language resources:
Subject World: A System for Visualizing OPAC (paper)
Slides with the same title (but different publication from the paper):
Subject World: A System for Visualizing OPAC (slides)
See also: Murakami Harumi Laboratory, in particular its research and publication pages.
MapReduce Explained
Non-technical explanation of MapReduce.
Need an equally non-technical explanation of topic maps.
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May 10, 2010
Topic Map Opportunity!
The GPO’s Federal Digital System (FDsys) project is a high profile opportunity for topic maps.
Documents from all branches of the U.S. government are being made available at this site.
New technology is of continuing interest to the project.
Industry Information specifies how to make the project aware of your topic map software.
Wouldn’t you like to name drop the GPO’s FDsys project during a sales presentation for your software?
PS: I am reviewing the project requirements. Interested in consulting work on an application to the project.
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Subject Headings and Topic Maps
Leveraging on prior work should be part of any topic map project.
Building topic maps with subject headings? See: Making topic maps from Subject Headings, a slide pack from Motomu Naito, a regular contributor in the topic maps community.
Project is using NDLSH 2008 (National Diet Library Subject Headings, subject headings 17,953), BSH4 (Basic Subject Headings, Japanese Library Association, subject headings, 7847), LCSH (Library of Congress Subject Headings, subject headings, 372,399).
Slides describe organizing Wikipedia using subject headings, merging subjects with subject headings, and, using LSCH subjects as a bridges to map between subject headings in different languages.
Forward to your local library researcher.
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May 9, 2010
Marketing by Example
Marketing means effectively reaching the largest number of people, so:
Pick A Subject Of Interest To Numerous Others
Has the subject(s) of your topic map have been in the news for a week or more over the last year? Or within a particular domain of business or technical activity?
Pick A Widely Used Language
Internet World Users by Language: Top Ten Languages.
Top 30 Languages Spoken in the World by Native Speakers
Consider technology access plus number of speakers.
Use Imaginative Interfaces
Topic map interfaces should not scream I am a topic map!
Does your interface meet a user’s needs?
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Marketing a Technology or a Solution?
Inge Henriksen’s comment that topic maps need a “primary value or primary target” reminded me of the difference in marketing a technology versus a solution.
Marketing a technology involves creating a technology and telling customers: “Think what you could do!”
Marketing a solution involves meeting a need and telling customers: “Look what you can do!”
Compare the number of people using graph software versus using Facebook (rumored to be 400 million).
Both involve graphs, one as a technology, the other as a solution to a need.
Can you guess which one I would like to see as the future of topic maps?
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May 8, 2010
Watching the Watchers Update – .02
Watching the Watchers, .02 is now available.
In .02:
- Created subject identifiers for positions and added topics for the positions to the map.
- Reformed the subject identifiers on persons so I could use the prefix mechanism (deleted the final “/”).
- Created a prefix for the person subject identifiers (details below)
For Janet Napolitano I had:
http://projects.washingtonpost.com/2009/federal-appointments/person/janet-napolitano - "Janet Napolitano".
I want to re-use the string “http://projects.washingtonpost.com/2009/federal-appointments/person/”.
Solution: Use the “%prefix” directive as follows:
%prefix headcnt http://projects.washingtonpost.com/2009/federal-appointments/person/
Now I can say:
headct:janet-napolitano - "janet-napolitano".
I will leave it to the reader to create a prefix for the DHS position subject identifiers. (I will add it myself in the next release.)
Next version, I will add the “isa person” that Lars Marius asked about on all the person topics. And create item identifiers to make it easy to make references for the purpose of writing associations.
Still working on the subject identifiers. They resolve but aren’t stable in terms of content.
The map will get messier before it gets better. Will use versions of this map to illustrate organizational principles for smallish maps.
May 7, 2010
Promoting Topic Maps
Thinking of the different audiences for promoting topic maps.
Here is my rough cut.
- Experimenters People who like to explore new technologies. Hand authoring to experiment may appeal to them.
- Hackers Computer types looking for serious data sets in topic maps.
- Managers Meeting requirements is the only criteria. Cuddly world benefit, etc., see the marketing department.
I am sure I have overlooked distinctions within each group and entire groups.
I am equally certain that one approach will not work for all groups.
Suggestions welcome!
Cumulative Data Mining?
My impression is that data mining isn’t cumulative.
That is when I read about a new data mining technique, even over a known data set, like the ones used at TREC, they all make a fresh start on the data.
It is like having read a book and to find a particular passage, you start over at page one. That seems like a poor use of resources.
Another approach would be to record previously discovered relevant documents. Subsequent users can then benefit from what has been found. (Note the use of past tense.)
Can anyone suggest examples of cumulative data mining?
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May 6, 2010
How Customers Think
Gerald Zaltman’s How Customers Think is a non-technical summary of psychological and neurological research on consumer behavior and how that can influence marketing.
Quality of the product is not what determines product success (or failure).
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Programs! Get Your DHS Programs Right Here!
A program is going to be essential for keeping the players straight in the Watching the Watchers topic map.
An organization chart (program) for the Department of Homeland Security http://www.dhs.gov/xlibrary/assets/DHS_OrgChart.pdf
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May 5, 2010
Political Topic Map – First Steps
Name: Watching the Watchers
Domain: Department of Homeland Security (United States).
Identifiers: Using the Head Count project web pages as subject identifiers for the individuals.
I will create and register identifiers for the positions as necessary.
Subjects: The appointees, positions, subjects from the reported associations.
Associations: Reported ones for appointees (more to follow).
A contributedBy association to identify the person adding information to the map. A sourceOf association for the information source.
The contributedBy and sourceOf associations may distinguish the topic map from the project at the Washington-Post. An editor could see if facts in a story came from a single source. Or multiple sources. As well as how those sources played into other stories.
First rough cut with appointee topics only, Watchers_01.zip (Apologies for the zip file. My ISP doesn’t recognize “.ctm” as a file extension.)
Comments? (To anticipate, yes I will be using the prefix directive but wanted to start without it.)
May 4, 2010
Political Topic Maps?
At the suggestion of Marijane and Lars Marius I started looking for a source of information for a government/political topic map project.
The Washington-Post Head Count project looks like a cool starting point.
It has the potential to be a good compare/contrast with topic maps.
The site shows connections to Obama or other prominent Democrats, having taught at Harvard, or other demographics for political appointees.
Question: How would others contribute information such as the campaign contributions made by the appointee or those within two (2) degrees of separation from them? How would you do that with a topic map?
Take a look at the site and make suggestions on how topic maps could do a better job.
Will be a proof of concept project and not duplicating their project. All contributions will be credited. The Washington-Post could be calling you for help in the next campaign cycle!
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May 3, 2010
Search User Interfaces: Chapter 1 (Part 1)
Chapter 1, The Design of Search User Interfaces of Hearst’s Search User Interfaces, surveys searching and related issues from a user interface perspective.
I needed the reminders about the need for simplicity in search interfaces and the shift in search interface design. (sections 1.1 – 1.2) If you think you have a “simple” interface for your topic map, read those two sections. Then read them again.
Design principles for user interface design (sections 1.3 – 1.4) is a good overview and contrast between user centered design and developers deciding what users need design. (Which one did you use?)
Feedback from search interfaces (section 1.5) ranges from the use of two dimensional representation of items as icons (against) to highlighting query terms, sorting and query term suggestions (generally favorable).
Let’s work towards having interfaces that are as attractive to users as our topic map applications are good at semantic integration.
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May 2, 2010
Topic Maps: A Value-Add Technology
It isn’t always clear that topic maps are a value-add, not a replacement technology.
Topic maps, by virtue of subject identity and mapping rules, can enhance existing information technologies and provide reliable interoperability between them. Without changing the underlying information technologies.
Topic maps are a value-add proposition because the structures of information technologies are subjects themselves. Database schemas and their fields, for instance, are subjects in the view of a topic map. Which means that users can map, seamlessly and reliably, between a relational database and a document archive, that use completely different terminology.
Or a subscriber to several financial reporting services, can create a topic map to filter and organize those reports. That is doable without a topic map, but what happens when another report service is added? What subjects were mapped together before? Topic maps are the value-add that can provide an answer to that question.
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May 1, 2010
Descriptionary
Descriptionary: A Thematic Dictionary, bills itself as “The book for when you know what it is, but not what it’s called.”
Knowing “what it is” apparently means knowing what broad category (type/class?) to browse. Organized into twenty (20) subject categories that are further sub-divided into smaller categories. For example, “Clothing” is a major category, with eight sub-categories for “Clothing of Ancient Greece” to “Clothing of the 20 Century,” with further sub-divisions under 20th Century.
A topic map would do a much better job, particularly since any subject could appear under multiple categories. And subjects could be searched for with multiple properties.
Association, occurrence, proxy, topic, topic map, etc., do not appear in a section titled “1,050 Words and Expressions You Should Know.” I will request correction of that oversight in future editions.
Not as amusing as Liam Quin’s reproduction of Nathan Bailey’s Canting Dictionary [thieving slang], but it does have entries like “crinoline [hoop skirt]:: “…The skirt itself was often hitched up to show a scarlet petticoat beneath.” Perhaps the Balisage markup conference will organize a game to guess the likely source of misinformation in various entries.