Keynote on Day 3: Relating Content through Web Usage by Ricardo Baeza-Yates

Ricardo is VP of Yahoo! Research in Barcelona, Santiago, and Haifa, Israel. He was a PhD student at the University of Waterloo. He also maintains ties with universities in Spain. His talk is on Web Content through Web Usage. He has a book which is the standard in information retrieval. According to Ricardo, web search is no longer about document retrieval, there is now a new breed of search experiences which involve the Wisdom of Crowds behind Web 2.0. Search is evolving more than just documents towards identifying a user's task and task completion. However the challenges are on-line and scalability.

We now have more complete information available in one search such as shortcuts, deep links and enhanced results. But for search, it is content vs. intent, the premise for the user is that they don't want to search, they just want to get tasks done and straight to their answers. We do searching when we don't know what to ask or who to ask. We are now moving from a web of pages to a web of objects. Objects have attributes, they will be missing, noisy, incomplete, but that is ok. Attributes define faceted search. However, the question is how do we get structured objects/attributes? This will come from metadata/semantic web/ontologies, web usage, and building out an open ecosystem.

From the AOL experience, obtaining queries and clicks is private. Crawling the web is expensive. From James Surowiecki, a New Yorker columnist in his 2004 book: Under the right circumstances, groups are remarkably intelligent. So what do you get from the wisdom of crowds? Popularity, diversity, quality and coverage are what we get out. The wisdom of crowds is crucial for search ranking, we use text (web writers and editors), links (web publishers), now tags (web taggers), and what Yates is mentioning next is taking all the queries.

20 years later, the basic ideas of cross references and dynamic links from Frank Tompa in 1988 is still relevant today. Yahoo Research has some demos of their research, one is TagExplorer which is based on tag similarity. How this is done? First, tag mining needs to be classified and tag semantics are done using WordNet. Yates showed a demo in TagExplorer where you can find tags related to locations, subjects and activities based on a query, he gave the example of Torino. Based on this and finding similar pictures, we can tag pictures automatically. We could also suggest tags to people based on a picture, however if you do that in Flickr, this is not folksonomy any more. This would be biased towards the algorithm and that is what we don't want.

We can also do visual annotations by associating text with a visual area which is done in Flickr as well as tagging people in Facebook. Content-based image retrieval is based on first extracting visual features and describing them, and then building a visual vocabulary using k-means clustering. This is an example of combining tagging and visual image retrieval. Besides WordNet, you can also use Wikipedia search and use that to drive the algorithm. By using this, Yahoo Research has created Correlator to find relations in the Wikipedia. Correlator works by retrieving related sentences and ranking them.

The next part of Yates' talk is Web Usage. We can use clicks by following hyperlinks, queries that express user interest. For example, if q4 is related to q3 because the words in the pages are similar and because the user clicked it. We can see what people are looking for, mapping queries to ODP. You can do hierarchical clustering on the graph (Francisco, Baeza-Yates and Oliveira).

So what are some of the open issues? Data volume versus better algorithms, explicit versus implicit social networks (are there any fundamental similarities), how to evaluate with (small) partial knowledge, and user aggregation vs. personalization. We have a virtuous cycle and improve the web.

So now it's questions. First question was about how Yahoo Research's work on tagging and search compares with Wolfram Alpha. Yates answered that the two come from different ends of the spectrum. Yahoo Research is making some of their datasets like Yahoo Answers available to researchers to use.

ht09, Yahoo Research

Lada Adamic's Keynote Address

Markus Strohm has written a great blog entry liveblogging about Lada Adamic's keynote today on The Social Hyperlink, thanks Markus!

ht09, social hyperlink

Workshop on Tagging in Dynamic Communities

This is the first workshop of Hypertext 2009, right now the speaker is talking about tagging recommendations using BibSonomy. BibSonomy is a citing bibliography system for citing links and attaching tags to them (like delicious), however this is more similar to CiteULike. In BibSonomy, they have implemented clicklogging to analyze every click that users go to while in BibSonomy to look at their navigation patterns. Clicklogging is used to measure user acceptance of various features such as what recommended tags the user used and to flag users as spammers. They have collected 0.5 million records in 7 months.

The BibSonomy system also has community and personalized ranking to see similar users with similar interests. People can store the links of those users that are similar to them. A question that was arised is whether tag recommendations are good or not.

ht09

Call for demos and posters

The Twentieth ACM Conference on Hypertext and Hypermedia


Torino, Italy, June 29 - July 1, 2009


Call for demo/poster session
----------------------------
The ACM Hypertext Conference is the main venue for high quality peer-reviewed research on "linking." Hypertext 2009 will be held from June 29th to July 1st 2009 at the Villa Gualino Convention Center, on the hills overlooking Torino, Italy.

Besides the traditional talks, Hypertext 2009 also provides the opportunity for technical demonstrations of novel tools and innovative applications related to one of the conference tracks (http://www.ht2009.org/tracks.php). Interested authors have two options for submitting their proposals. The first involves an early submission deadline, such that the abstract can be included in the proceedings. The second option has a later submission deadline, with the consequence that these cannot be included in the proceedings. For each demonstration, a table, electricity plugs and a display board for a poster, will be provided. Additional supporting equipment may be requested and will be provided where possible. Authors of accepted demos are also required to print, before their departure, an A2-size poster panel, that will be displayed in the demonstration site during the three days of the conference.

Submission option A
-------------------
(WITH inclusion in the proceedings)

Interested authors are asked to submit a 2-page abstract describing their work, and where needed a list of required supporting equipment. All submissions should be formatted according to the official ACM SIG proceedings template (http://www.acm.org/sigs/publications/proceedings-templates) and submitted via EasyChair (https://www.easychair.org/login.cgi?conf=ht2009).

Dates:
March 23, 2009 Submission
March 30, 2009 Notification
April 6, 2009 Camera-ready due
June 29, 2009 Demos/Posters day


Submission option B
-------------------
(WITHOUT inclusion in the proceedings)

Interested authors are asked to submit a 2-page demo description, and where needed a list of required supporting equipment.

Dates:
April 20, 2009 Submission
May 4, 2009 Notification
June 29, 2009 Demos/Posters day

The review process will not be blind, therefore it is not necessary for submissions to be anonymized. Please be sure to submit keywords via EasyChair.

Please note that the timing of Hypertext 2009 provides an excellent opportunity to visit Italy in conjunction with the International Conference on User Modeling, Adaptation, and Personalization in Trento (UMAP 2009 - http://umap09.fbk.eu/), and the International Workshop and Conference on Network Science in Venice (NetSci 2009 - http://www.netsci09.net/).

ORGANIZATION
------------

DEMO SESSION CHAIRS:
Giancarlo Ruffo (University of Torino) and Wouter Van den Broeck (ISI Foundation, Torino)

GENERAL CO-CHAIRS:
Ciro Cattuto (ISI Foundation, Torino) and Giancarlo Ruffo (University of Torino)

PROGRAM CHAIR:
Filippo Menczer (Indiana University)

WORKSHOPS CO-CHAIRS:
Santo Fortunato (ISI Foundation, Torino) and Rossano Schifanella (University of Torino)

TREASURER:
Roberto Palermo (ISI Foundation, Torino)

On Technorati: ht09, hypertext2009

Student Research Competition - due April 30

STUDENT RESEARCH COMPETITION - CALL FOR PAPERS
http://www.ht2009.org/src.php

----------------------------------------------------------
Hypertext 2009
The Twentieth ACM Conference on Hypertext and Hypermedia
http://www.ht2009.org
June 29th - July 1st, 2009, Torino, Italy
----------------------------------------------------------

Scope

Hypertext 2009 will be participating in the <http://www.acm.org/src/index.html>ACM Student Research Competition sponsored by research.microsoft.com>Microsoft Research. The SRC, which is held at select ACM conferences, will provide an opportunity for graduate and undergraduate students attending Hypertext 2009 to receive a $500 travel grant from Microsoft Research to present their research at Hypertext 2009. All invited students will compete in a conference competition for the best presentations, with the winners eligible for a spot in the SRC Grand Finals. The SRC is a valuable opportunity for students to participate in Hypertext 2009 and to receive recognition from ACM for the quality of their research.

The Hypertext 2009 SRC consists of two rounds: a poster session and a presentation session. A panel of judges will select a number of finalists from the poster session, who will be invited to the presentation session. Winners are selected from the presentation session. The top three graduate and undergraduate winners will receive cash awards.

The Hypertext 2009 SRC winners will be invited to participate in the SRC Grand Finals, an online round of competitions among the winners of individual conference-hosted SRCs. The winners of the Grand Finals are invited to the ACM awards banquet together with their advisors, for an all-expenses-paid trip.

Eligibility Requirements

Current ACM student membership
Current "student" status as of April 30, 2009, either graduate or undergraduate
Submission Details

Students who wish to participate must submit the following information:

An abstract of up to 800 words explaining the content of the poster.
Presenter's email address, phone number and surface mail address.
Indicate whether you are an undergraduate or graduate student.
Name of department and school.
Name of academic advisor.
The abstract must describe the student's individual research and must be first-authored by the student. If the work is collaborative with others and/or part of a larger group project, the abstract should make clear what the student's role was and should focus on that portion of the work.
Submissions of short or full technical papers are not eligible for consideration of the SRC.

Important Dates

April 30, 2009 Deadline for submission
May 11, 2009 Notification of acceptance

All submissions should be formatted according to the official ACM SIG proceedings <http://www.acm.org/sigs/publications/proceedings-templates> template and submitted via <http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=ht2009>EasyChair.

Up to ten undergraduate and twenty graduate abstracts will be selected for competition at the conference.


Further Information

Any queries regarding the Hypertext 2009 SRC should be sent to <http://www.di.unito.it/%7Ecgena/>Dr. Cristina Gena, cristina.gena at di dot unito dot it.

On Technorati: ht09, hypertext2009

2nd CFP for Hypertext 2009

Second CALL FOR PAPERS

Hypertext 2009
The Twenty-First ACM Conference on Hypertext and Hypermedia

http://www.ht2009.org/

June 29th - July 1st, 2009, Torino, Italy


SCOPE
-----

The ACM Hypertext Conference is the main venue for high quality
peer-reviewed research on "linking." The Web, the Semantic Web, the
Web 2.0, and Social Networks are all manifestations of the success of
the link. The Hypertext Conference provides the forum for all research
concerning links: their semantics, their presentation, the
applications, as well as the knowledge that can be derived from their
analysis and their effects on society.

Hypertext 2008, held in Pittsburgh, was a real success. The number of
submissions and attendees was up, a successful Student Research
Competition took place, and a rejuvenated social linking track added
new ideas and connections to the traditional core of the conference.

IMPORTANT DATES
---------------

* Technical tracks paper submission deadline: February 2nd, 2009
* Notification to authors: March 16th, 2009
* Camera-ready (final papers to ACM): April 6th, 2009

LOCATION AND DATES
------------------

Hypertext 2009 will be held from June 29th to July 1st at the Villa
Gualino Convention Center, on the hills overlooking Torino.

The capital of the Piedmont region, Torino lies at the foot of the
Alps, the majestic mountains that hosted the 2006 Winter Olympics.
First the capital of the Kingdom of Italy, then one of the European
centers of baroque, today Torino is a dynamic city known for its
industry, art and culture, sports, research and education, and
cuisine.

The timing of Hypertext 2009 provides an excellent opportunity to
visit Italy in conjunction with the International Conference on User
Modeling, Adaptation, and Personalization in Trento (UMAP 2009 -
http://umap09.fbk.eu/), and the International Workshop and Conference
on Network Science in Venice (NetSci 2009 - http://www.netsci09.net/).

PROGRAM
-------

Hypertext 2009 will feature two stellar keynote speakers: Lada Adamic
(University of Michigan) is a noted scholar of social networking and
the winner of the 2008 Engelbart Award; Ricardo Baeza-Yates is
Vice-President of Yahoo! Research for Europe and Latin America,
leading the labs in Spain, Chile, and Israel.

In the conference technical program, professionals from academia,
industry, and the media will present innovative ideas and tools
exploiting the broad range of links increasingly connecting people,
information, communities, and structures. Research topics will be
organized into three tracks:

track 1. Information Structure and Presentation (Chairs: Peter
Brusilovsky and Cristina Gena)
track 2. People, Resources, and Annotations (Chairs: Andreas Hotho and
Vittorio Loreto)
track 3. Hypertext and Community (Chairs: Mark Bernstein and Antonio Pizzo)


TRACK 1: INFORMATION STRUCTURE AND PRESENTATION
------------------------------

-----------------

Chairs:
* Peter Brusilovsky, University of Pittsburgh (USA)
* Cristina Gena, University of Torino (Italy)

The information structure and presentation track represents a
multitude of topics, which were traditionally represented at ACM
Hypertext Conferences. The track program targets formal study of
scholarly, structural, sculptural, spatial, open, dynamic and adaptive
or any other type of hypertext (or Web-based Information System). This
track also focuses on how hypertext approaches and technologies can be
applied to structure and present information in diverse domains, and
how hypertext techniques can be exploited in classical and advanced
applications. The aim of this track is to bring researchers together
to discuss models, architecture, applications, properties, or theory
in general, about hypertext and hypermedia. Topics for consideration
include:

* Hypertext models
* Spatial hypertext
* Information structuring
* Hypertext and knowledge management
* Self-organized hypertext
* Personal information organization
* Intelligent hypertext and link generation
* Navigation support
* Open hypertext
* Web and hypertext link analysis
* Dynamic and adaptive hypertext
* Hypertext and web engineering
* Interfaces and interaction with hypertexts
* Faceted browsing
* Social navigation
* Hypertexts supporting Web-based collaboration
* Hypertext and recommender systems: the role of link in recommendations
* Hypertext applications in everyday devices (TV, mobile phone, on
board car service, etc.)
* Educational hypertext and hypermedia
* User evaluations of hypertext application
* Hypertext and cultural heritage
* E-books, kiosks, e-commerce, e-tourism
* Hypertext application in medical and health systems

For additional information on the track and the Program Committee,
please visit http://www.ht2009.org/track1.php


TRACK 2: PEOPLE, RESOURCES, AND ANNOTATIONS
-------------------------------------------

Chairs:
* Andreas Hotho, University of Kassel (Germany)
* Vittorio Loreto, Sapienza University of Rome (Italy)

One of the most exciting recent developments in Web science is the
rise of social annotation, by which users can easily markup other
authors' resources via collaborative mechanisms such as tagging,
filtering, voting, editing, classification, and rating. These social
processes lead to the emergence of many types of links between texts,
users, concepts, pages, articles, media, and so on. We welcome
submissions on design, analysis, and modeling of information systems
driven by social linking. Topics of interest include but are not
limited to:

* Applications to search, retrieval, recommendation, and navigation
* Explicit vs. inferred social links (e.g. mining query logs)
* Integration of different social networks (e.g. links between blogs
and bookmarking systems)
* Socially induced measures of similarity, relatedness, or distance
* Co-evolution of social, information, and semantic networks
* Analysis of the structure and the dynamics of social information
networks
* Behavioral patterns of social linking
* Linguistic analysis of social annotation spaces
* Formal and generative models of social annotation
* Unstructured vs. structured social knowledge representations
* Implementation and scalability of social link representations
* Automatic and user-based evaluation
* Emergent semantics in social networks
* Robustness against spam and other forms of social abuse
* Design of collaborative annotation mechanisms
* Critical mass and incentives of social participation (e.g. games)
* User interfaces for collaborative annotation

For additional information on the track and the Program Committee,
please visit http://www.ht2009.org/track2.php


TRACK 3: HYPERTEXT AND COMMUNITY
--------------------------------

Chairs:
* Mark Bernstein, Eastgate Systems, Inc. (UK)
* Antonio Pizzo, University of Torino (Italy)

The Hypertext and Community track will explore, examine, and reflect
upon social cyberculture in electronic media, ranging from literary
fiction and creative scholarship to blog and microblog networks,
social sites, games, auctions, and markets. Topics will include:

* Hypertext literature
* Theory and practice of expression in wikis, weblogs, and social spaces
* Personal journals, weblogs, and social media
* Net art, literary hypertext, interactive fiction, and games
* Behavioral patterns of social linking

For additional information on the track and the Program Committee,
please visit http://www.ht2009.org/track3.php


SUBMISSIONS
-----------

Papers must report new results substantiated by experimentation,
simulation, analysis, or application. Authors are invited to submit
papers presenting original, not previously published works. Submission
categories may include regular research papers (max 10 pages)
discussing mature work, and short papers (max 5 pages) describing
preliminary results of on-going work or novel thought-provoking ideas.

All submissions should be formatted according to the official ACM SIG
proceedings template
(http://www.acm.org/sigs/publications/proceedings-templates) and
submitted via EasyChair
(http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=ht2009). Accepted papers
will appear in the Hypertext 2009 Conference Proceedings and also be
available through the ACM Digital Library.

DEMOS AND INDUSTRIAL SESSION
----------------------------

Technical demonstration of new tools and innovative applications of
hypertext are solicited. One-page demo descriptions, including a list
of any required supporting equipment, should be sent to by e-mail to
Giancarlo Ruffo, Demo Chair (ruffo@di.unito.it).

Important Demos Dates:

* March 30th, 2009: Submission of proposals
* April 15th, 2009: Notification to proposers
* June 29th, 2009: Demos day


ORGANIZATION
------------

GENERAL CO-CHAIRS:
Ciro Cattuto (ISI Foundation, Torino) and Giancarlo Ruffo (University of
Torino)

PROGRAM CHAIR:
Filippo Menczer (Indiana University)

WORKSHOPS CO-CHAIRS:
Santo Fortunato (ISI Foundation, Torino) and Rossano Schifanella
(University of Torino)

TREASURER:
Roberto Palermo (ISI Foundation, Torino)


*sociopatterns blurb*

The attendees of Hypertext 2009 will also have a chance to experiment
with applications mixing real-world data and on-line data. We will
deploy active RFID tags in the badges of volunteers and we will run a
data collection platform that provides the real-time relations of
physical proximity between the attendees. The data collection and
visualization systems will be provided by the SocioPatterns project
(http://www.sociopatterns.org), and will expose API methods that allow
developers to mash up real-world links between the attendees with other
types of linking information from the Web.

On Technorati: hypertext2009, ht09

Social tools now available

All the social tools are now available with instructions at the Hypertext 2009 social tools page. Be sure to try out Nokia Friend View which allows you to see where your friends are and what they are up to, courtesy of Nokia Research Center.

If you have any questions concerning about these tools, please do not hesitate to contact the social tools committee organizer Alvin Chin or leave a comment on this blog.

Hope you have fun using these tools and engage in inspiring conversations!

On Technorati: hypertext2009, ht09

Welcome to the Hypertext 2009 blog

A great welcome to you to the Hypertext 2009 blog where this blog will be about the Hypertext 2009 conference. We will try to blog about all the things happening around Hypertext 2009 before and during the conference. So keep subscribed to this blog using your favorite RSS reader by subscribing to the FeedBurner feed.

On Technorati: hypertext09, ht09