About me

• Not in the image business, but a computer science researcher at CWI in Amsterdam
  • The Dutch national research center on computer science and mathematics
• Research question:
  • How to automatically generate coherent presentations from multimedia content found on the Web
  • Focus on images in cultural heritage domain
  • My research prototypes need to know what the media content is about
• So I have a personal interest in high quality multimedia metadata!
• But this talk is not about my research ...
  • I'm also active in metadata related standardization activities of W3C

My view on standards

• Formal, de jura standards
  • National standard bodies (DIN, ANSI, ...)
  • International standardization organisation: ISO (ISO 9000, MPEG, JPEG, ...)
• But on the internet, the more informal, de facto, standards or sometimes more important
  • Basic internet level: IETF (RFCs like IP/TCP, URL, HTTP, ...)
  • Basic Web level: W3C (Recommendations like HTML, XML, RDF, PNG, SVG ...)
  • Industry standards: IPTC (NewsML ...), CEPIC?
• Company controlled standards
  • Some are more or less open, like XMP, Java, ...
  • Some others are complete closed

Why should you care

• Standards are important
  • Interoperablity is key in a networked society
  • Redoing stuff because your content doesn't fit into another system is boring, slow, error prone, and just very expensive
• Standards are not laws of nature that you cannot do anything about
  • They are made by people that have an interest in them - like you
  • Don't complain about stupid standards, help making better ones!

About the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)

"To lead the World Wide Web to its full potential by developing protocols and guidelines that ensure long-term growth for the Web"

• Founded by Tim Berners-Lee in 1994
• Develops open Recommendations (Web Standards)
  • over eighty so far…
• Engages in education, outreach, develops guidelines…
• A neutral forum for building consensus around Web standards

Some guiding principles at W3C

• Web Technologies should be interoperable
  • the Web is based on a large palette of technologies
  • no technology can pretend to cover all needs on the Web
  • hence the interoperability of technologies necessary
• Web Standards should be open, i.e., non-proprietary (and no lock-ins!)
• The Web should be accessible to all

W3C's long term goals

• Web for Everyone
  • regardless of language, user capabilities, geographical location, device used for access,…
• Web on Everything
  • not only PC-s, but Phones, PDA-s, Television,…
• Knowledge Base, Advanced data searching and sharing
  • information for both human and machine processing
• Trust and Confidence
  • technologies for collaborative environment
  • a Web with accountability, security, confidence, and confidentiality

Example: The Mobile Web (A World of Varieties)

Example: international text

Leading the Web to its Full Potential…
Duent la Web al seu ple potencial…
Het Web tot zijn volle potentieel ontwikkelen…
Amener le Web vers son plein potentiel…
Alle Möglichkeiten des Web erschließen…
Οδηγώντας τον παγκόμιο ιστό στο μέγιστο των δυνατοτήτων του…
Hogy kihasználhassuk a Web nyújtotta összes lehetőséget…
वेब की सम्पूर्ण क्षमता के उपयोग की दिशा में अग्रणी…
Sviluppare al massimo il potenziale del Web…
引发网络的全部潜能…
웹의 모든 잠재력을 이끌어 내기 위하여…
Levando a Web em direcção ao seu potencial màximo…
Pаскрывая весь потенциал Сети…
Guiando la web hacia su máximo potencial…
Se till att Webben når sin fulla potential…
Ohjaamassa Webin kehittymistä täyteen mittaansa…
Webの可能性を最大限に導き出すために⋮
لإيصال الشبكة المعلوماتية إلىأقصى إمكانياتها…
להוביל את הרשת למיצוי הפוטנציאל שלה…
引發網絡的全部潛能⋮

Results: Over 60 Different Technologies!

The W3C technology stack…

New: W3C Multimedia Semantics Incubator Group

New: W3C Multimedia Semantics Incubator Group

• Light-weight, one year (May 2007) group looking at image and other multimedia metadata on the Web
• Focus on interoperability with existing standards
• You can help and shape the future of image metadata on the Web!
• We need your input:
  • Provide use cases & examples
  • Tell us which standards are most important to you (we'll have to prioritize)
  • Review the notes we write

How can you help?

• Keep an eye on our web page
  • http://www.w3.org/2005/Incubator/mmsem/
• Become active on our mailing list (everything we do is public!)
  • http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-xg-mmsem/
  • Send us your comments, use cases, examples, priorities, etc. Don't be shy!
• Join us and get the right to vote on all our decisions
  • Free for all W3C member organisations
  • On invitation for non-members

What More Can You Do to Help W3C?

• Provide your technical comments on all W3C drafts; don’t be shy!
• Be the first to implement a new standard
• Become a supporter of W3C, even a small sum is valuable, or…
• …if you can influence your institution: get it to join W3C as a member!
  • contact the regional office in your country or W3C itself

We'll be back after the break!

• Live PixelFactory demo by Windh Technologies
• Jeff Sedlik on P.L.U.S. Picture Licensing
• Panel discussion on metadata

The foundations

• Two major data models, used for different purposes:
  1. XML Infosets, the basis for XML and its applications:
     • models strongly hierarchical (tree) structures
     • abstracts out from the syntax what XML is (it is a bit like numbers and numerals…)
     • all newer XML based recommendations rely on Infosets, separating the abstract concept from the syntax
  2. RDF(S) Graphs, the basis for Semantic Web:
     • models loose connections among Web resources
     • connections among URI-s are labelled (referred to as “properties” or ”predicates”)
• Both are keys for interoperability
• Most of W3C’s recommendations are based on these foundations

Role of the Semantic Web for Image Metadata

• "Oh no! Not yet another metadata standard!"
  Like we don't have enough of them already:
  • EXIF, Dublin Core, VRA Core, IPTC Core, XMP, MPEG-7, DIG35, ISAD, EAD, Creative Commons, ... ?
• But again: No single standard can cover all metadata needs
• SW is a framework that could make existing metadata standards and tools interoperable
• ... and make them interoperable with the rest of the Web!

About the Semantic Web

Problems leading to the Semantic Web…

• Tasks often require to combine data on the Web:
  • hotel and travel info may come from different sites
  • searches in different digital libraries
  • various databases within an organization (eg, after company mergers)
  • various metadata sources
  • etc.
• Humans combine these sources of information easily, even if different terminologies, terms, languages, etc, are used…
• Machines have real problems with this!

What do we want

• the ability to make metadata available on the Web for further processing by other machines and programs
• the ability to exchange, merge, combine metadata on a Web scale
• the ability to have machines to reason about that metadata
• The “Semantic Web” is an infrastructure extending the current Web for the interchange and the integration of data on the Web,

Myths about the Semantic Web *)

1. "Semantic Web people try to enforce meaning from the top"
   • They only recommend languages that you can use to define your concepts according to your definitions
2. "Semantic Web people will require everybody to subscribe to a single predefined 'meaning' for the terms we use"
   • you can use these languages to relate existing concepts (bridging communities)
3. The Semantic Web will require users to understand the complicated details of formalised knowledge representation
   • All of this 'under the hood'
4. "Semantic Web people will require us to manually annotate all the existing web-pages"
   • SW languages can be used to exchange manually and automatically produced metadata

*) adapted from Frank van Harmelen, WWW2006 panel "Meaning on the Web: Evolution or Intelligent Design?"

Example: NewsML 2 and the Semantic Web

• Example based on research done at CWI in the context of the European NoE K-Space
• Common basis
  • Distributed resources (news items) globally and uniquely identified by URIs
  • Use of shared and controlled vocabularies
• Natural switch and numerous benefits
  • Better control of NewsML2 descriptions (logical consistency check)
  • Enhanced search of News topic (logical inferences)
  • Intelligent presentation - Semantic interfaces
  • Unified news management - Semantic CMS

NewsML 2 example

Q: news images about the leader of the country of Nepal

NewsML 2 Example

<newsItem schema="0.7" version="2">
  ... 
  <itemMeta>
    <contentClass code="ccls:photo" /> 
    ...
  </itemMeta>
  <contentMeta>
    <infoSource literal="AFP" /> 
    <locCreated code="city:Kathmandu"> 
       <broader code="ctry:NEP" /> 
    </locCreated>
    <subject code="cat:01001000" type="ctyp:politics">
      <title>King</title> 
    </subject>
    <description>
        King Gyanendra attended a Hindu festival in Kathmandu,
        his first public appearance since being stripped of most of 
        his powers by parliament last month.
    </description> 
  </contentMeta>
  ...
</newsItem>

Making a Semantic NewsML 2

• On the SW, the concept of "king" could be defined as special type of "leader"
• and Kathmandu as the capital of Nepal
• This requires a creation of a News domain "ontology" in OWL
  • Based on the UML model specifications of NewsML2
• Mapping of the IPTC NewsCodes into various RDF thesauri (SKOS)
• Transforming NewsML2 descriptions dynamically
  • Conversion tool from XML to RDF (XSLT, JavaScript, AJAX)

Semantic NewsML Applications

• Enhance search of news items
  • Logical inferences
  • Interoperable with other SW tools
• Enhance presentation of news items
  • Semantic media interfaces
  • Discover relations between Items / Topics / Packages
• Semantic Content Management System
  • Keep track of provenance information

SW technology: What we have right now

• A simple but Web-scalable data model (with a Web-based exchange syntax) for metadata: RDF
• The languages to define the terminology used in a specific domain or application: RDF Schema and OWL
• The language to query Semantic Web data: SPARQL (well, almost)
• Many (open source & commercial) tools supporting the above

What we do not (yet) have: General issues

• Support for application-specific logic and rules (RIF, work just started)
• Support for provenance and trust on the (Semantic) Web (future work)

What we do not (yet) have: Multimedia-specific issues

• Guidelines & best practices explaining:
  • how to use existing SW technology to represent multimedia metadata
    • use cases, examples, tutorials
  • how to use existing SW technology for interoperability of existing multimedia metadata
• Common conversions from existing metadata formats & vice versa (+tools)
• Support for interoperable metadata across the entire (image) production chain
  • So this includes you!
  • But will also require vendor support

New: W3C Multimedia Semantics Incubator Group

New: W3C Multimedia Semantics Incubator Group

• Light-weight, one year (May 2007) group looking at image and other multimedia metadata on the Web
• Focus on interoperability with existing standards
• You can help and shape the future of image metadata on the Web!
• We need your input:
  • Provide use cases & examples
  • Tell us which standards are most important to you (we'll have to prioritize)
  • Review the notes we write

How can you help?

• Keep an eye on our web page
  • http://www.w3.org/2005/Incubator/mmsem/
• Become active on our mailing list (everything we do is public!)
  • http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-xg-mmsem/
  • Send us your comments, use cases, examples, priorities, etc. Don't be shy!
• Join us and get the right to vote on all our decisions
  • Free for all W3C member organisations
  • On invitation for non-members

What More Can You Do to Help W3C?

• Provide your technical comments on all W3C drafts; don’t be shy!
• Be the first to implement a new standard
• Become a supporter of W3C, even a small sum is valuable, or…
• …if you can influence your institution: get it to join W3C as a member!
  • contact the regional office in your country or W3C itself

Take-home Message

• Metadata is much more than just a bunch of keywords added and the end of the chain so the customer can find your image
• Metadata covers all information about an image machines should know to do smart things with your assets
• Too important to leave it to technicians like me!
  • Metadata plays (or will play) a key role in every step in your chain
  • These are your images, so you should have a say in the standards that you will need to encode them
• Think on a Web scale

Further Information

These slides are at:
(many have been adapted from Ivan Herman's slides - thanks Ivan!)

http://homepages.cwi.nl/~jrvosse/talks/2006/cepic/

More information about W3C:

http://www.w3.org/Consortium/

The Multimedia Semantics Incubator Group:

http://www.w3.org/2005/Incubator/mmsem/

or mail me:

Jacco.van.Ossenbruggen@cwi.nl