E-Commerce the Wikipedia Way: Research project "myOntology"
Searching for a product on the World Wide Web has not been very satisfactory up to the present: When looking for offers or products Google does not find all relevant suppliers, but suggests sites that have nothing to do with the product you are actually looking for. In order to alleviate this defect, Smart Information Systems has now started the "myOntology" research project together with SIEMENS Austria AG, SystemOne, AUSTRIAPRO and the university of Innsbruck.
What makes the trick is the Wiki technology and culture that is used to generate the necessary vocabulary for types of goods and their characterstics, which means that users take part in the development. This innovative idea of developing standards was awarded with the second place for best FIT-IT projects.
The Web has, without a doubt, become the most important channel for finding business contacts and professional networking. Searching for suitable offers and suppliers has therfore become a crucial point. But traditional search engines like Google are not very suitable for finding the right products and services.
The magic potion: "Ontologies"
"Ontologies" are said to be a promising solution for online search problems. Ontologies are structured dictionaries containing all relevant categories and charactersics of products. What makes these dictionaries so promising is the meaning and the linkage between the seperate elements of description, which results in a computer-understandable language. This enables computers to make deductions by exploitng implicit knowledge. The computer can now understand that a skiing resort in Stubaital is located in Tyrol and that it is a relevant element when searching for a winter sport location in Tyrol, although the words "Tyrol" and "winter sport location" do not appear on the Stubaital website.
„Semantic Web“ - The combination of Ontologies with websites is said to determine the future of the WWW
A central problem for "semantic" e-commerce solutions is the lack of current ontologies for products and services. Quantitative analysis have shown that the technical construction of such ontologies can be slowed down by constant product innovation. The current way of developing ontologies within small groups shows significant weaknesses. This holds up a further development of ontologies and makes direct and valuable feedback of users impossible, which results in a great loss of knowledge. Moreover, it is difficult for users who want to link their websites to such ontologies to actually understand their concepts. To sum up, their is a tremendous lack of communication between the developers of ontologies and the biggest user-community.
Learning from Wikipedia: Wikis as a tool for the design of a standardised technical jargon
The online-encyclopedia "Wikipedia" is one of the most surprising successes in the web: Without any access restrictions and official editor it has been possible to create the greatest encyclopedia ever. The German version alone contains more than 500 000 entries of surprisingly high quality. The project "myOntology" tries to adapt the technology and culture of Wikis to enable consumers to create and further develop a standardised vocaublary for product categories and characteristics. The working environment is supplemented by a standardised framework for ontology-based description of products and services.
Further Information and contact webite: http://www.myontology.org