Introducing Doug Puchalski, Semantic Web for Change Guru

[Peter Deitz]

Hi SA Dev,

I've been meaning to introduce Doug Puchalski, who is busy working on a number of truly ground-breaking enhancements to the Social Actions API.

Doug, in his capacity as a programmer with Definition (http://www.definitionstudio.com/), helped lead the development of LinkTV's ViewChange.org platform, funded by the Gates Foundation and launched today. Since shipping off ViewChange.org for launch, Doug has been focusing on adding full Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Entity Extraction (EE) capabilities to the Social Actions API. He brings to this work several years of experience as a senior application developer as well as on the ground lessons learned fresh from building ViewChange.org. There aren't that many developers out there who know the semantic web inside out, let alone who have previous experience building semantic enabled applications for the social sector. We're really fortunate that Doug has chosen to take on this project. Any ordinary person would have probably opted for a sabbatical after building a platform like ViewChange.org.

Here's the briefest possible explanation of why NLP and EE capabilities should be of interest to third parties that make use of the Social Actions API. Whereas in the past, our best effort to return issue- and region-based search results was limited to the uniqueness of keywords, semantic analysis will help us disambiguate actions that use the same terms but are referring to entirely different topics. Think 'political environment' and 'economic climate'. These terms have a track record of spitting out off topic actions. 

But this is just the tip of the iceberg. 

By using third party tools to identify universally identified issue areas, Social Actions will then be able to participate in the Linked Open Data cloud that Tim Berners-Lee and the W3C have been promoting. In non-tech language, this means that Social Actions will become one of many linked databases that help to organize the world's knowledge into clusters of actionable knowledge. By linking our semantically enabled database with others, anyone will be able to build applications that allow users to drill down into the background, geography, and political context that an action references and pull up reports, maps, videos, images, documents, people, news items, etc. By the same token, the Linked Open Data cloud will permit someone browsing news in one location to seamlessly tap into Social Actions' repository of *truly* (not possibly) related actions. 

ViewChange.org (which uses Social Actions to source a portion of its actions) is the first application to demonstrate this model. There will be more to come thanks to LinkTV's leadership and Definition's talented developers (including Doug). And all of this activity will empower social tech innovators to more effortlessly connect people with high impact actions they can take on the issues they care about.

This is the beginning of a very exciting chapter in Social Actions' evolution. I'm happy to share it with all of you here.

And thank you Doug for sharpening the edges of the Social Actions API. Before year's end, we'll be as cutting edge as ever... 

Did I hear someone say Change the Web, Part 2?

Peter :-)

[Christine Egger]

Hi all,

I'm writing to share the tech press release announcing the
ViewChange.org launch that Peter referenced in today's earlier post:

http://my.socialactions.com/profiles/blogs/launch-of-link-tv

There's lots of info there that goes right over this non-techy's head,
but even I can tell this is exciting stuff :)

With huge thanks to Doug Puchalski and heartfelt appreciation for all
of his contributions to ViewChange.org and the work underway on the
Social Actions API,

Christine

[fullware]

Thanks to Peter for the flattering introduction!

As Peter mentioned, I've worked hard on ViewChange.org for some time,
and am quite excited about today's official launch. The opportunity to
advance the Semantic Web by linking SocialActions.com in a much more
powerful way is the icing on the cake.

The early phase of the development of the API enhancements has been
fruitful. The current version has certainly earned its stripes, and
this moment presents an opportunity to upgrade it in many more ways
that merely what the new specs call for.

Here are just some of the enhancements I'll be working on:

* Upgrade to Rails 2.3.8
* Final selection of NLP/EE tools
* Integration with 3rd party API's for classification and similarity
analysis
* Final selection of full-text search library and strategy
* Enhancements to search query syntax
* Introduction of additional data in search results
* Improved resilience and housekeeping on internal database for
accuracy, completeness, and timeliness

When I have spare moments I do my best to update my blog, http://fullware.net.
I'll be looking forward to the launch of the enhanced API, and for
further developments in the Semantic World Wide Web.

-Doug
fullware.net