Distributed bookmark sharing primitives

Abstract

The popularity of the Internet and the Web, along with the resources on this distributed global network is increasing exponentially. Today, the Web is used for almost every purpose from entertainment to communication, from advertisement to research. Researchers use the Web because the information is fresh, it is as close to you as your computer, and it is huge. But it lacks structured indexing and/or categorization mechanism which makes the search process difficult. People use one or more of four methods to access the information on the Web: search engines, directory services, personal bookmarks, or asking someone who knows where the information is. Search engines and global directory services try to index the Web, but they have their own problems such as too many returned results, low quality, etc. People's bookmarks do not help as much as they should, because they are usually unstructured, being personal. Distributed indexing is one possible solution to this existing problem. Research is going on in distributed indexing, but the resulting systems are not usable by the public yet. Bookmark sharing through bookmark managers is another possible solution provided that the bookmark manager in use can be accessed easily, can store enough information about the resource, and can search its repository effectively. Finally, we propose a new approach called distributed bookmark sharing (DBS), which is both a bookmark manager and a search tool. It is like a Virtual Web on top of the existing Web. In our research we built the prototype parts of a DBS, a stand-alone DBS client and a DBS server. We provide mechanisms to insert well-described bookmarks using Resource Description Templates and Resource Description Predicates. Resource Description Predicates are also used in queries. The DBS server can handle different descriptions of the same resource. The system also provides a simple feedback mechanism to promote and demote the resources. The DBS system, with the help of description templates and description predicates, makes insertions and queries easy and efficient.