User Tagging Effective Aid for Online Searching

Due to an ever-growing abundance of online information, there is increasing difficulty in finding useful information. Currently, most web data is coded to instruct browsers to display data, without regard for meaning. By adding metadata to denote what data means, search engines can offer more useful results. While there are limitations with metadata approaches, user tagging appears to offer the greatest potential for improving online searching.

Metadata can be split into two main types: 1) tagging – the act of appending keywords to web resources (e.g. del.icio.us, Flickr, StumbleUpon), and 2) semantic web data – coding conventions to describe the data (e.g. RDF and microformats). Metadata can be added by, or in conjunction with, four groups: 1) creators, 2) programmers, 3) information specialists, 4) users. Metadata is useful for retrieving resources already found, (e.g. del.icio.us’ use of tagging), or for filtering of content to read pertinent areas. Yet, it is the use of metadata, specifically tagging by users, to aid searching that offers the most potential.

The leading hurdle for semantic web data is its highly technical nature, which limits use primarily to advanced web developers. Two XML/XHMTL solutions, RDF or microformats, are too advanced for many web developers, let alone lay web users. As a veteran web developer, I found the syntax of both to be intimidating. Until web-authoring software simplifies adding semantic data, it will remain a good idea left largely unimplemented.

There are essentially two limitations with the use of metadata by information specialists. For one, there is far too much web content to address. Yahoo, for example, abandoned a manual process as too time-consuming and costly. Secondly, while information specialists are good at classifying resources based on official schema or taxonomies, which work well in smaller environments such as an intranet, their work may not necessarily address the needs and lexicon of users in a wider community.

Tagging by content creators also faces the limitation that the creators do not fully know users’ needs and lexicon, even though they know the content well. In addition, tagging by content creators offers the opportunity for abuse – both intentional and unintentional. Unintentional abuse can derive from ignorance of standards, lack of accurate self-appraisal, or cultural or language differences. Abuse can also be intentional, as typified by spammers and phishers who use false metadata to lure people to their sites.

Tagging by content users offers the most potential for web searchers. Group tagging draws on the theory of the wisdom of crowds, wherein collective action by a diverse group results in better information than even specialists could provide. When a resource is tagged by a sufficient array of users, it overcomes minor discrepancies and represents what the resource actually means to most users. Users know the terms they associate with a resource and can use their own words to identify it; they are not apt to misidentify for selfish gain. Also, most tagging services are free, and they are quick and easy to use, compared to semantic web data.

Tagging services are not yet standard offerings in browsers and require time to learn, which may be why these services lack widespread adoption. However, as more and more users tag web resources, this situation will improve and will offer even more aid to web searchers.

Sign o' The Times

I've been term paper oblivion for the last few days. I have a big, weighty term paper due for all of my three classes, while I don't dislike my classes, I certainly don't find two of the three final assignments at all helpful.

The one assignment I am excited about is using semiotics to help understand folksonomies and/or social bookmarking. I chose semiotics as I previously hated it (as mentioned in an earlier post) and thought this would be a cool way to grow as a person and researcher. How foolish I was!

I don't know if I'll have anything earth-shattering to say about it, but once it's complete - and if I don't fail - I'll post it (or highlights) here.

In the meantime, for those asking me what semiotics or folksonomies are, here are some good short primers I found on YouTube.

Intro to Semiotics


Intro to Social Bookmarking and Folksonomies

Online Pix Sites Are Something to See

Even before I had a digital camera I posted my photos online. This was back in 1999 and I had to scan each picture (and each scan took at least 3 minutes), optimizing them and then uploading through a dial-up connection (painful) to Excite's photo service. Excite went under and I moved my pictures to Yahoo Photos.

Yahoo Photos allowed good album organization, privacy controls, and simple photo editting. But there wasn't a good way to share pictures. Yes, I could make my photos public and, more recently, you could add friends to your photo network, but there were, and still are it seems, few people that were using Yahoo as a social network. I could email my photos, but over the last three years most of my pix have been of my baby and while I think every little thing she does is photo-worthy (at one point I worried all the flash photography I was doing of her would give her cataracts) I didn't want to inflict endless (and I mean A LOT) pix of her on everyone I knew.

So when Facebook came along, I thought it was a great way to post photos, because if my friends wanted to look at kid pix they could but they weren't forced too. I could also send photos out for people not on Facebook to view - great for grandparents. And commenting is cool too. But otherwise Facebook's photo service is pretty vanilla.

Last month, I got a notice that Yahoo Photos was finally shutting down. They encouraged me to move instead to Flickr, which Yahoo has owned for awhile but ran in parallel to their own service. I was dubious, even though Flickr is one of the biggest Canadian online success stories. So I moved my pix over but didn't bother to check out Flickr at all.

Recently, I had to write an article on Toronto's outdoor art and I needed a way to easily transfer my photos from home to work, so I uploaded them to Flickr. This was the beginning of me falling in love with Flickr.

I love Flickr's organization methods, specifically their albums and tagging (they also have collections which I don't know what they are yet). I love how you can download alternative sizes of the image and reference the photo's URL (as I've done below). I love how it shows all my camera details that I've never seen before.

Flickr also has a way-cool interactive map feature. You can "geotag" your photos to an exact location in the city and view it on a map, satellite image or hybrid. The one problem is that you can't identify the locations as the numbers refer to the number of pix at that spot. Also, it appears there is only one map per account and they can't be divided into sets.

I wish there was a way to automatically post my Flickr pix to Facebook! (If there is let me know.)

Since I spent so long on the outdoor art article and it was this article that started my Flickr affair, I have included it below. All thumbnails are hosted on Flickr and they link to the larger version on Flickr.

Exercise and edification
Downtown Toronto has many works of outdoor art (by outdoor art, I don’t mean that guy outside the Eaton Centre posing as a golden Elvis statue). Here are some sculptures & murals that are fun, famous or freaky.

For locations see the numbers below and view this map Or, I also have a Flickr map of these and other works of outdoor art.

1) Deconstruction Workers
"Monument to Construction Workers" by Margaret Priest and the Building Trade Unions
Each panel in this work represents a facet of buildings. It is located in Cloud Garden Park along with a large waterfall, a conservatory and rowdy skateboarders.


11) Upwardly Mobile
"City People" by Catherine Widgery
A series of mobiles and murals of average people lead up to a raised parkette over part of the Royal York hotel, where one will probably not encounter average people.


2) He Will Rock You
A golden idol of rock god Freddie Mercury to promote the Queen musical "We Will Rock You" at the Pantages theatre.



12) Splitting Headache
"Pi" by Evan Penny
The title could refer to the mind-bending effects of solving Pi. I like to use this as a funky bench.



3) Toronto’s Most Controversial Artwork
"The Archer" by Henry Moore
One of Toronto’s first public artworks and the public wasn't happy to fork for it, ultimately losing an election for the then-mayor. But after this tumultuous beginning arose a beautiful relationship with the City and Moore, resulting in the AGO having the best Moore collection.

13) Moove Over
"The Pasture" by Joe Fafard
This beloved herd of cattle, a reminder of our agrarian roots, is a humourous counterpoint to TD Centre's bleak minimalism.


4) Gumby Goes to Heaven
"Per Ardua Ad Astra" by Oscar Nemon
Toronto’s most criticized outdoor artwork. Meant as an air force memorial (the actual title is the motto of the RCAF), it looks like Gumby in one of his trademark elastic stretches.


14) (Dis)Honouring Capitalism
Toronto Stock Exchange frieze by Charles Comfort
Built during the Depression to praise capitalism, it subtly critiques it, however, with such images as a stockbroker with his hand in a worker's pocket.



5) You Support Justice
"Pillars of Justice" by Edwina Sandys
Built by Winston Churchill's granddaughter, it symbolizes citizens' role in the justice system with a missing pillar for you to assume your role in helping uphold justice.



15)Rampaging Elephant
"Tembo, Mother of Elephants" by Derrick Hudson
Lifelike elephant with two babies in tow. I have no idea what this is meant to represent.



6) Shadow of Himself
"Lineal Order" by George Boileau
This pathetic man and his spindly shadow serve to scare one to attendance at the church next door.



16) Market Crash
"Encounter" by William McElcheran
Two fat cat businessman so absorbed in their affairs they only connect when they crash into one another.



7) Fountain of Useless Information
"The Poet, The Fever Hospital" by Bernie Miller
Neat fountain, cool location and intriguing name though as one art historian puts it "interpretation is open to all" or in my words "it defies explanation".



17) Shrine to Hockey
"Our Game" by Edie Parker
Two sculptures by the Hockey Hall of Fame commemorate hockey's hallowed status, including the legendary 1972 Canada-Russia series.



8) Killer Freaky Bunnies
"Remembered Sustenance" by Cynthia Hurley
These strange creatures are for the site's daycare and a reminder of childhood imagination - however nightmarish and traumatizing that may be.



18) Happy Face Icon Is Now Art
"Immigrant Family" by Tom Otterness
The happy face icon has a body, a wife and child, though his current circumstance are nothing to smile about.



9) Another Crazy Glenn
"Glenn" by Ruth Abernethy
Famous pianist Glenn Gould's infamous eccentricities are reflected in this statue in front of the CBC.




19) Whaling Wall
"Heavenly Waters" by Wyland
This huge mural located on a Redpath Sugar building on the shores of Lake Ontario, show whales swimming about, which I've yet to see in said lake.



10) Simcoe Monument
"Campsite Founding" by Brad Golden & Lynne Eichenberg
One of the only monuments to our history, it documents our City and Province’s founder John Graves Simcoe and his wife, Elizabeth Posthuma.



20) Beer O'Clock
The wall of P.J. O'Briens displays a frothy beer and a clock with the wrong time, as if to say time doesn’t matter, it's always beer o'clock.