StumbleUpon

2009-01-25T10:43:00.000-08:00

StumbleUpon is an Internet community that allows its users to discover and rate Web pages, photos, and videos. It is a personalized recommendation engine which uses peer and social-networking principles.

Web pages are presented when the user clicks the "Stumble!" button on the browser's toolbar. StumbleUpon chooses which Web page to display based on the user's ratings of previous pages, ratings by his/her friends, and by the ratings of users with similar interests. Users can rate or choose not to rate any Web page with a thumbs up or thumbs down, and clicking the Stumble button resembles "channel-surfing" the Web. StumbleUpon also allows their users to indicate their interests from a list of nearly 500 topics to produce relevant content for the user. There is also one-click blogging built in as well.

eBay acquired StumbleUpon in May 2007 for $75,000,000.

A Semantic Web Technology Scenario

Jack woke up with the ringing of alarm bell. First thing that came to his mind was breakfast because he was starving. He got up from his bed and headed straight to kitchen to find some thing to fill his tummy. But wait, some one is at the doors. So he checks who is banging at his doors this early in the morning. He is not surprised to find the grocery service from the main market is there to provide him with food stuff for his breakfast. He knows because of his busy schedule at office he can not visit super market. But thanks to semantic web, he does not have to delay or reschedule his office appointments for such daily activities.

Jack’s personal agent from semantic web coordinated with jack’s refrigerator agent and collected the list of food stuff he may need for this week. The refrigerator agent, from jack’s previous food buying, knew what he prefers to have in breakfast. So jack’s agent consulted his refrigerator agent for the list of food stuff. After that the personal agent connects to the super market and finds the available food products that it gained from refrigerator agent. Personal agent also checks out the available money from jack’s bank account agent and places some orders. The personal agent knew what time jack had set his alarm to wake up. Thus it gave super market the order to deliver bought items according to that time. More over, there was a party planned for tonight at jack’s place. Jack’s personal agent and his kitchen agent had also made some arrangements for this party.

This is just a small scenario of how much ease semantic web can bring to our daily lives. Because of the new semantic web technology, jack has very much less to worry about his house hold activities. For example, his personal agent can also pay his bills, taxes etc. But trust is a very important factor. In the scenario described here we can see that the trust level among jack and his semantic web agents is of a high degree. Jack was lying in bed when the agents were working all by themselves, ordering food, arranging party and paying bills for him.

Group Members:

Mehdi Hassan 07-0578

Sundhas Zafar 06-0227

Naaimah Saghir 06-0005

SemanticWeb.WatchOut

StumbleUpon Grave yard

StumbleUpon

A Semantic Web Technology Scenario