Finding Experts By Semantic Matching of User Profiles

Extracting interest profiles of users based on their personal documents is one of the key topics of IR research. However, when these extracted profiles are used in expert finding applications, only naive text- matching techniques are used to rank experts for a given requirement. In this paper, we address this gap and describe multiple techniques to match user profiles for better ranking of experts. We propose new metrics for computing semantic similarity of user profiles using spreading activation networks derived from ontologies. Our pilot evaluation shows that matching algorithms based on bipartite graphs over semantic user profiles provide the best results. We show that using these techniques, we can find an expert more accurately than other approaches, in particular within the top ranked results. In applications where a group of candidate users need to be short-listed (say, for a job interview), we get very good precision and recall as well.

+ Full Paper (PDF; 246 KB)

Source: HP Labs

From the article:

Out now from Microsoft Research is U Rank, an experiment that allows people to move results around, as well as share them with friends and add comments to listings.

Source: Search Engine Land

The folks at Melissa Data have just placed a new email location database online at no charge. After entering the email address, the database will tell you where the mail server is located. Of course, this does not guarantee that the sender is located in the same place. For example, the mail server might be located in the UK but the sender is in the U.S.

Direct to Email Lookup Database Interface

Displays the city, state, country & a map of an email address.

Review All Melissa Data Lookup Databases

Source: Melissa Data

+ Add Footnotes & Endnotes to your Zoho Writer Documents
Hooray! Hooray!! Hooray!!!

+ Google Universal Search: 2008 Edition (via SEL)

+ Hackers Rig Google to Deliver Malware (via PC World)

+ It’s Hard to Hide From Your ‘Friends’ (via WSJ)
Note: No mention of the Ask.com Eraser feature that might also be of interest. You can read about it here. Gary is Director of Online Info Resources at Ask.com.

+ Oklahoma Governor Pushes Bill To Create Rx Drug Web Site

+ Middle East and Asia lose internet access after cable fails (via The Guardian, Hat Tip, Barry)

Back in 2006 we posted about research at Microsoft dealing with cameraphone searching. We also listed other players in the cameaphone search space. That post is still online and many of the links (have you seen or tried Semapedia?) are live.

On Monday, at the CES Conference, Bill Gates (video here) demonstrated Mobile Navigator.
From the caption:

At CES in Las Vegas, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates shows attendees the company’s new “mobile navigator” technology that can be used to point at a person or place, and get more information. The new software will be incorporated into devices such as cameras, PDAs, and phones.

Source: ZDNet

See Also: Cameraphone Searching in Japan (via SEW Blog)

See Also: Review: Content-Based Image Retrieval: Tools, Writings and Demos

A couple of month’s ago, Shirl posted this Resource of the Week titled, “Free Stuff From Pricey Database Vendors”. Today, another freebie. This time from the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (deceased citizens of the UK) and Oxford University Press. A free full textg biography from the dictionary is posted daily and can be accessed via email, RSS, or by visting this page where the full text of DNB bios are kept for one week (so, make sure to save those of special interest). This feature is officially named “Life of the Day” and “Lives of the Week.”

See Also: More DNB Reading

See Also: More Free Dictionaries from Oxford

Source: Oxford University Press

+ infoUSA Coming to UK
The well-known provider of directory (business and people) listings will begin building a UK database in the next few weeks. Look for additional material at info.UK soon.

+ New “Pictures” Tool from Digg Labs

+ Baidu CFO, Shawn Wang, Killed in Boating Accident (via Reuters)

UK: Databases: The Medical Register

Two databases:

+ List of Registered Medical Practitioners

You can use the List of Registered Medical Practitioners to check details of all the doctors on the GMC’s register.

It gives details of:

* the doctor’s reference number, name, any former name, gender
* year and place of primary medical degree
* registration status
* date of registration
* entry in GP/Specialist Register
* any publicly available fitness to practise history since 20 October 2005

+ List of Registered Medical Practitioners

Personalization with MyGMC

Source: General Medical Council