Provenance in Web Feed Mash-Up Systems

The recent emergence of web 2.0 technologies and rich internet applications is driving the development of a new class of applications that combines data from diverse sources which we refer to as “mash-ups.” One of the most popular mash-ups comes in the form of web feed mash-ups relying on syndication technologies such as RSS and Atom. This kind of mash-ups aggregates web feeds derived from multiple news websites or blogs and then timely presents them in a single interface. In such systems, it is difficult to know exactly how feed results in data mash-ups are generated. In particular, it is difficult for users to make determinations about whether information is trusted. Therefore, it is necessary that web feed mash-ups have to support a mechanism that is capable of recording and querying provenance information - the information about the process that led to result data. In this paper, the author proposes a provenance tracking solution that enables provenance functionality to be facilitated in web feed mash-ups. He demonstrates how the provenance of feed mash-up results to be determined by means of a provenance query algorithm. To tackle the storage problem resulting from the persistence of intermediate web feeds, a novel storage optimization method is introduced. Finally, the author evaluates his provenance solution in terms of storage consumption for provenance collection, demonstrating significant reductions in storage size and achieving reasonable storage overheads.

A Scalable Approach to Harvest Modern Weblogs

Blogs are one of the most prominent means of communication on the web. Their content, interconnections and influence constitute a unique socio-technical artefact of our times which needs to be preserved. The BlogForever project has established best practices and developed an innovative system to harvest, preserve, manage and reuse blog content. This paper presents the latest developments of the blog crawler which is a key component of the BlogForever platform. More precisely, our work concentrates on techniques to automatically extract content such as articles, authors, dates and comments from blog posts. To achieve this goal, we introduce a simple yet robust and scalable algorithm to generate extraction rules based on string matching using the blog's web feed in conjunction with blog hypertext. Furthermore, we present a system architecture which is characterised by efficiency, modularity, scalability and interoperability with third-party systems. Finally, we conduct thorough evaluations of the performance and accuracy of our system.

The World of Podcasting, Screencasting, Blogging, and Videoblogging

A podcast is a Web feed containing audio or video files which is then placed on the Internet for anyone to download. What makes the podcast distinct from traditional media like broadcasting and streaming is that the podcast file will arrive in archived form. A Screencast is a digital recording of computer screen output, which contains audio narration. Screencasts are useful for demonstrating simple and complicated new software to others. It is a neat way to show off work, report bugs, and show how a task can be accomplished. Screencasting is a term for recording a movie of a computer screen to a file that others can view. Screencasts are mostly used for tutorials, overview/ tours, reviews, and demonstrations. Screencasts may also be used as a way to enhance regular movie files. A Weblog, or blog, is a Web site were the owner or user of the Web site posts messages on it so that others can log on and read them. Blogs often focus on one subject, for example, if the blogger is a computer programmer, then the topic of his messages is mainly related to programming languages. However, many are using the blogs as online diaries where they post messages describing their daily news or how they feel about certain subjects. Videoblogging is a new form of blogging, which includes posting videos on the Web. It is a new paradigm for people to place aspects of their personal lives on the Web. Videoblogging is rising in popularity partially due to the release of the Video iPod and the availability of videoblogs on iTunes. So this means that with the recent boom in iPod sales, they will see this one as the most updated one and this will also hit the computer industry by storm. The rest of this article examines the new phenomenon of podcasting, screencasting, blogging, and videoblogging.