Information Today
Volume 19, Issue 1 — January 2002
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Applied Semantics Enhances Auto-Categorizer Software

Applied Semantics, Inc., a provider of tools and applications for information management and retrieval, has announced that it has added direct support for the International Press Telecommunications Council's (IPTC) subject codes to its Auto-Categorizer enterprise software product. According to the announcement, this enhancement enables electronic publishers to automate the process of tagging news articles with topiclabels for easy routing, archiving, syndication, and retrieval by reporters, researchers, librarians, and fact-checkers—a high-value, yet labor-intensive business process.

Augmenting Applied Semantics' Auto-Categorizer with IPTC's subject codes—a three-level hierarchical taxonomy comprising over 900 categories—also allows electronic publishers to integrate news content with other document collections for presentation in intranet portals. News aggregators as well as corporate and institutional libraries can also benefit by categorizing multiple, disparate inbound news streams against this uniform, standard taxonomy.

"Using Applied Semantics' two gigabyte ontology—a perpetually maintained knowledge base containing millions of concepts and relationship links—a small team was able to build this taxonomy in less than 5 days, all without the need for any sample documents or training sets," said Steve Bernstein, general manager of Applied Semantics' Enterprise Solutions division.

Applied Semantics' Auto-Categorizer tool accepts XML input and responds with XML output to provide compatibility with any XML format, but particularly with NewsML and the News Industry Text Format (NITF)—two additional standards established by the 50-plus-member IPTC organization. IPTC developed the subject codes in support of these two standard XML schemas, both of which provide for the use of topic tags. Currently, many publishing organizations tag and categorize articles manually, a burdensome process fraught with inconsistency, according to the announcement.

"Outdated manual processes simply won't scale with the onslaught of digitized news content," said Bernstein. "Applied Semantics' enterprise software products automate categorization, metatagging, and document summarization, increasing productivity and efficiency, and enabling publishers to deliver more relevant content more quickly to their subscribers. Our products scale with the growth of a company's content."

Applied Semantics (formerly known as Oingo) develops software solutions that enable businesses to better organize, manage, and retrieve digital information in Web-enabled, enterprise, and e-commerce environments. Applied Semantics' solutions are based on the company's CIRCA Technology, which understands, organizes, and extracts knowledge from unstructured content in a way that mimics human thought and language, allowing for more effective information retrieval. Founded in 1998, Applied Semantics provides customized, stand-alone software applications for businesses, as well as tools and middleware solutions that can be integrated into existing systems.

Source: Applied Semantics, Inc., Los Angeles, 310/446-8162; http://www.appliedsemantics.com

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