The day has come to wrap up the research I have been doing for the last couple of years. After closing the write up and submitting my thesis in February this year, my PhD defense is approaching very soon.

Here is some information about it. If you are around Galway next Monday – you are welcome to come and watch my presentation at the open session.

When: May, 18th 2009

Where: Conference Room, DERI, NUI Galway (IDA Business Park, Lower Dangan, Galway, Ireland)

Schedule:

• 10.00 – 10.30 – Open session
• 10.30 – 11.30 – Closed session – you & the 3 examiners (fingers crossed!)
• 11.30 – 12.00 – Closed session – examiners only

Abstract:

Until recently, libraries were the prime source of information for both students and scholars. Now this information is published using online with digital library systems. Current digital libraries have to provide efficient information discovery solutions to adapt to the fast development of new technologies; they also have to cater to the current generation of students. The research on the Semantic Web and online social networks contributes to the digital libraries domain by supporting interoperability with formal semantics, improving interlinking of information and encouraging users to contribute and share knowledge.

Semantic technologies support more flexible information management than that offered by classic digital libraries. Information on library resources can be gathered from heterogeneous sources, including contributions from the communities of library users. These annotations, combined with legacy data, build the foundations for more efficient information discovery in digital libraries.

This thesis reviews architectures, abstract models, metadata standards, and various technologies for building digital library management systems. We derive requirements for advanced digital libraries and propose an architecture model and a set of ontologies for semantic digital libraries. Finally, we present information discovery services using semantic and social technologies, and the prototype implementation of a semantic digital library that fulfills the aforementioned requirements.

Our hypothesis is that semantic and social technologies applied to a digital library management system deliver more efficient information discovery solutions, while the library users become more satisfied and can remember more of the information they have learned when using the library. We present two information discovery services that use semantic and social technologies; we also show a prototype of a semantic digital library. We support our hypothesis by discussing the results of initial evaluations of both services and a comprehensive evaluation of the semantic digital library prototype.

If you are interested in doing a PhD yourself check a collection online PhD programs.

I have been extremely busy recently. Probably this is why I was not blogging too much. But here is the reason:The last two months I have been building a new software platform for knowledge management on Web 3.0 called digi.me.
It is based on the research of my team (formerly Corrib.org, now KnowledgeHives.com) on semantic digital [...]

I hear people asking – how are things? I tell ya – things have never been that busy (so you can imagine …).
But it is getting better. There were three projects ahead of me when I was living DERI in December 2008:

finish furnishing our new apartment and move in
submit my PhD thesis
deliver the private beta [...]

Packages ready for shipping Originally uploaded by skruk
The time has come to say goodbye to Ireland and move back to Poland. We have just packed our last 5 years into 40 boxes which will be shipped today.
see http://www.flickr.com/photos/skruk/3111459782/ for the second group of boxes … [...]

Last week I was attending a very interesting presentation on Google Translate.As could expect – statistical approach to translations is not perfect.But I did not dream that Google can translate:

Mazury as Hawaii

Gdańsk as Atlanta

Wawelski Smok as George Washington

Or even decide that it cannot translate at all

(see for yourself – the Polish translation [...]

Weź to k***a zrób
View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: agora 25)

A few weeks ago my MacBook Pro battery decided it is too old (1 year !) and needs to retire. After many unexpected drops for power from 40% to 0% in a second I decided it will not heal itself magically.
Colleague of mine suggested I should not buy an Apple replacement (which I should got [...]

HDR is a cool technique – even though some of the photos look artificial/artistic – usually it is worth trying.

You can view a slideshow with it here

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Usually I do not care too much about politics, etc. And in most cases I agree that people have their right to live their own way as long as they do not affect the way other people live.
Call me homophobic – but I cannot stand when I head more and more countries in Europe allow [...]

Just a short note to everybody who is struggling with either (or both) problems:
* since only recenly was unable to use your sourceforge.net hosted subversion account with strange response 403
* was trying to use SCPlugin for MacOSX with https:// repositories without success
The solution to the first problem is pretty simple – you are probably using [...]