Mike’s Digital Laboratory

A good read: Paul W writes on automating CMS metadata

In a previous post I asked the question, “What if a web service could automatically provide the CMS metadata when you go to check-in a new topic?” In this post I’ll discuss why you would want to do that, some of the candidate technologies, and what is necessary to make it real.

The interesting back story to Paul’s new blog is this;  while Paul writes about CMS metadata I was on the phone with him yesterday brainstorming about how the heck we are going to get more metadata into his blog?  Being a new blog we have to pump up the Google juice as much as we can. While the best way of course is to keep writing and connecting with people it doesn’t hurt to add metadata to your blog.  Here’s the rub; If you run your own server, like I do, you have much more  control of your blogging software. I run Wordpress so I can experiment with the latest tools like Tagaroo or whatever comes along next that provides the Natural Language processing needed to suggest new tags that I can feed ito the semantic web. With Paul’s blog and others that use a hosted blogging service like Wordpress.com, Typepad or Blogger, you get only what the service provides you.  It’s not your car so you can’t add those hot rod components. So in this case something like Tagaroo won’t work.

So the conversation starts to diverge at this point. But I ask which CMS systems are open and extensible extensible enough to allow for the  next generation “beefed up” semantic gizmos to be bolted on as needed.  For example simple tagging out of the box is good but rich RDF metadata is even better. So as better NLP services come along I’d like to be able to swap out the old parts and put in better ones.  In my case I’ve already bolted on a plugin to generate SIOC metadata which gives me real RDF and FOAF on my site,  and every post is processed with NLP from Calais (Tagaroo) Not to mention a new version of Calias is now out that I can be immediately plugged into.  But I should be clear my point is that It’s not that these are better or worse than any other semantic solutions for my blog, it’s that I have the choice.

This leads to a broader and possibly more improtant conversation around open archtiectures and how they often come along with open source software. This why back a few years ago I switched from Movabale Type to Wordpress. The Wordpress plug in archtiecture is open and anyone with a good idea can get in on the game and we can all play.

My good Friend and Colleague Paul Wlodarczyk has started a new blog in his first post Paul wastes no time getting the semantic conversation going when he states; “Semantic markup makes your content more likely to be found and more relevant to the searcher.” for this I have to agree. So what are the answers to Paul’s questions?

* What if we start combining semantic web technologies and semantic document technologies?
* What if we combine technologies that auto-tag named entities with granular authoring approaches like DITA?
* What if you could automatically tag named entities within the DITA topic you are creating, tagging as you type?
* What if a web service could automatically provide the CMS metadata when you go to check-in a new topic?
* What if the publishing tools that transform your DITA to HTML could automatically add the semantic markup to your HTML pages that are published from your DITA content?
* How would that change how you publish business documents like policies and procedures to your employees?
* How would it change how you create marketing content for your web site?
*How would it change the way you create and manage your product technical content?

This will not be one of the those armchair quarterback blogs. Paul is well versed in both the technology and the business of online content. If online content is your interest then add this feed to your favorite RSS feed reader. you don’t want to miss an article.