We’re happy to announce that ViewChange.org is among the first to utilize the latest version of the Social Actions API. The updated API includes several enhancements, such as semantic content analysis, term boosting, and the ability to query by and return Linked Data entities.
From yesterday’s announcement:
The updates introduce Semantic Analysis and Natural Language Processing (NLP) capabilities to the Social Actions API and begin to connect Social Actions to the wider Linked Open Data community.
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Link TV, in prototyping their ViewChange platform, noticed that the Social Actions API wasn’t producing the best possible results. They invited us to explore with them what would be involved in updating our platform so that ViewChange could feature more relevant results.
Link TV, along with Doug Puchalski and Rob DiCiuccio of Definition, helped us articulate the changes that would need to occur and then connected us with a funder who could underwrite what amounted to a very significant enhancement to our code base. In one month, we had approximately as large an investment in the technology as we’d had in total up until that point.
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The Social Actions API now cross-references issues and locations with universal identifiers that have been assigned to them. Just like you might cross-reference the subject of a book with a Dewey Decimal number, we are now cross-referencing each action with a universal identifier that helps to link it to related data. Using Zemanta, we are able to provide URIs (Uniform Resource Identifier) from Freebase and DBPedia that make the connection between actions in our system and other material on the web that relates to the same topic.
The ability to query using Linked Data URIs (e.g. http://dbpedia.org/resource/John_Adams) removes the ambiguity inherent with a traditional keyword query (“John Adams”), which could be interpreted as any number of persons, such as the former U.S. President or the composer.
We hope that, through this enhanced integration between Social Actions and ViewChange.org, we are able to help you get involved by bringing you relevant, timely actions, so you can make a difference.
Read the entire interview with Peter Dietz from Social Actions.