Bootstrapping Domain Ontologies for Rapid Semantic Annotation of User-Friendly Semantic Web Content

In attempting to develop tools, mechanisms and content for the Semantic Web we have to keep in mind that the requirement for machine understandability [2] is not a constraint and should not preclude usability requirements by end users. In essence, the Semantic Web should remain as distributed, self-evolving, ad-hoc, and easy to build, navigate and maintain as the World Wide Web (Web) is today. However, Semantic Web ontology languages such as XML, RDF, RDF-S, DAML+OIL, OWL, OWL-S and others require specialized expertise to understand and use. This raises three interesting problems: 1) How to bootstrap enough domain ontologies that are capable of representing the intricacies of Web information in the form of knowledge in the Semantic Web, 2) how to bootstrap enough Semantic Web content by using those ontologies to annotate Web content in a resilient manner, and 3) how to provide easy to use Semantic Web applications that are easy to use and understand by the average Web user. Ontolligence Corp., attempts to address these problems head-on. We create tools, techniques and processes that make it possible to quickly create Semantic Web ontologies from sample ontologies and from domain specific sample Web pages. At the same time, we create automated and semi-automated tools that quickly annotate Web pages with Semantic Web ontologies in a manner that makes the pages understandable by computational mechanisms. Furthermore, we implement applications that enable both users and computational mechanisms to interactively collaborate in performing problem solving tasks that reap the benefits of Semantic Web content.