archive.Joe Lamantia.com

mSpace is a new framework – including user interface – for interacting with semantically structured information that appeared on Slashdot this morning.
According to the supporting literature, mSpace handles both ontologically structured data, and RDF based information that is not modelled with ontologies.
What is potentially most valuable about the mSpace framework is a useful, usable interface for both navigating / exploring RDF-based information spaces, and editing them.
From the mSpace sourceforge site:
“mSpace is an interaction model designed to allow a user to navigate in a meaningful manner the multi-dimensional space that an ontology can provide. mSpace offers potentially useful slices through this space by selection of ontological categories.
mSpace is fully generalised and as such, with a little definition, can be used to explore any knowledge base (without the requirement of ontologies!).
Please see mspace.ecs.soton.ac.uk for more information.”
From the abstract of the Technical report, titled mSpace: exploring the Semantic Web“
“Information on the web is traditionally accessed through keyword searching. This method is powerful in the hands of a user that is experienced in the domain they wish to acquire knowledge within. Domain exploration is a more difficult task in the current environment for a user who does not precisely understand the information they are seeking. Semantic Web technologies can be used to represent a complex information space, allowing the exploration of data through more powerful methods than text search. Ontologies and RDF data can be used to represent rich domains, but can have a high barrier to entry in terms of application or data creation cost.
The mSpace interaction model describes a method of easily representing meaningful slices through these multidimensional spaces. This paper describes the design and creation of a system that implements the mSpace interaction model in a fashion that allows it to be applied across almost any set of RDF data with minimal reconfiguration. The system has no requirement for ontological support, but can make use of it if available. This allows the visualisation of existing non-semantic data with minimal cost, without sacrificing the ability to utilise the power that semantically-enabled data can provide.”

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