The ViCTE Newsletter  

Helps professionals keep and improve their English through the Internet since February 2009: Study Technical English and get information about new technologies.

Number 34                                                                                 November 2011

Editorial

We are getting on with studying technical texts about the Internet. The other principal technical text on this theme is brought up on the blog http://techenglish.wordpress.com titled The Semantic Web – great expectations. Together with a short text Schema.org project supports building the Semantic Web in this Newsletter it forms a base for following three exercises. The first of the exercises reminds how to decide what to use so or such (see also Number 29 – Easy such and so / April 2011). Given the opportunity look through very nice quizzes on this theme in So vs Such, too. The next exercise is about synonyms. Your are encouraged to use as many synonyms in your writing as possible. Drop a look at Number 24 – SYNONYMS/ August 2010 and get inspiration in Synonym Finder. The word order in English is not too complicated. Nevertheless, it should be strictly kept when writing or speaking. Thus you are offered to do the last exercise for training correct usage of the word order. For refreshing appropriate rules see again Word order in English http://linguapress.com/grammar/word-order.htm and Number 15 – SVOMPT (Word Order) / November 2009. Compare your solutions with keys in Keys to Internet English. Technical terms and expressions, possible abbreviations connected with both above mentioned texts could be found in Internet English Vocabulary.

Schema.org project supports the Semantic Web

 

1

The term Semantic Web was for the first time mentioned by W3C director Tim Berners-Lee, the World Wide Web inventor, in 2001. Nonetheless, implementation of Semantic Web principles has not been widespread since then. Up to now the approach has been successful in two major ways.

2

First – Linked data.  Sophisticated Web users have built and implemented a network of linked data. Due to this searching for various content sources that address the same concepts of the information has become much easier.

 

3

Second – Embedding metadata. Structured data specifications have appeared for embedding metadata directly in HTML pages. The most common specifications are microdata, microformats, and RDFa (Resource Description Framework in attributes). However, these specifications take different approaches to using tags to embed information about elements in web pages.

 

4

Nowadays major search engines are still built on different syntaxes and different vocabularies even for the same type of information. Thus, in the worst case, website developers mark up their pages in multiple ways in order to make them work with several search machines. This has made the process complicated and capable of making of errors.

 

5

Schema.org project has arisen as a response to improve conditions for building the Semantic Web and to help advance Semantic Web implementation. The project was launched by Bing, Google and Yahoo! on 2 June 2011. The operators of the world three largest search engines have agreed to support structured data specifications and vocabularies They propose to mark up website content as metadata about itself, using microdata, according to their schemas.

 

6

It could arouse the visibility of semantic technologies and encourage website operators to incorporate semantic data into their web pages. Though the project started with microdata, its long term goal is to support a wider range of schemas. Nevertheless, present exclusive use of microdata in the Schema.org project raises concerns that the specification limitations could cause some problems. The Web is so diverse, creating a single vocabulary that addresses all markup needs has not proven to be practical. In any case, now website owners and search-engine-optimization specialists know that the three major search engines will understand their pages. And as Web-development tools increase support for microdata, the Schema.org specifications should become easier to implement.

7

The project also comprises an extension mechanism for appending additional properties of data. A mailing list is provided for discussing of the project.

References:

 

Exercises

 

Exercise 1  In the sentences below use SO or SUCH:

  1. ▪▪▪ an approach has been successful ▪▪▪ far in two major ways.
  2. Adoption of ▪▪▪ Semantic Web principles has been somewhat limited.
  3. ▪▪▪ sophisticated Web users have built a network of linked data, ▪▪▪ a system of linked datasets describing the same people, places, and things.
  4. These new technologies are ▪▪▪ powerful that let sophisticated users find, share, and process data, as well as find related datasets.
  5. ▪▪▪ specifications take different approaches to using tags to embed information about words, numbers, and other elements in web pages.
  6. Unfortunately, most of all websites incorporate data, whose specifications are ▪▪▪ incompatible that could not be successfully searched by different search engines.
  7. The Web is ▪▪▪ diverse that creating ▪▪▪ a single vocabulary, which addresses all markup needs, has not proven to be practical.
  8. We are expecting the Schema.org will have ▪▪▪ an impact in the next few months.
  9. Due to linked data searching for various content sources that address the same information has become ▪▪▪ easy.
  10. But the specifications take ▪▪▪ different approaches to using tags to embed information about elements in web pages that they do not help much.

 

Exercise 2   Match proposed synonyms to words in the text:

Paragr.

Synonyms in the text

 Proposed synonyms

1

  … … … coined

2

  … … … intelligent

3

  … … … emerged

4

  … … … difficult

5

  … … … , … … … progress, was started

6

  … … … , … … … embody, varied

7

  … … … supplementary

 

Exercise 3  Make sentences putting the given words into a correct order:

  1. an – Such – in – ways – so – has – approach – major – two – successful – far – been -.
  2. principles – Semantic – Adoption – been – limited – Web – has – such – somewhat – of -.
  3. linked – sophisticated – have – data – Such – users – of – Web – network  – built a -.
  4. incorporate – are – all – of – Most – incompatible – so – specifications – , whose  – data – websites -.
  5. vocabulary – needs – is – The – so – is – all – not – for – a single  – that – creating  – Web – practical – diverse -.
  6. the – impact – positive – so – are – We – Schema.org – expecting  – be – will -.
  7. approaches – help – to – different  – do – they – The – that – much – such – take – specifications – using  – not – tags -.

 

Do you remember Teacher Joe? Listen to him and learn smooth English rhythm with this video.

GOOD LUCK!

 

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