I am a researcher in the IAM group, at the School of Electronics and Computer Science, University of Southampton.
I am primarily concerned with research into the exploration of large heterogeneous data sets, with additional research interests including the Semantic Web, scalable distributed and federated querying, multimedia and HCI.
My publications are maintained locally at EPrints (this is a definitive collection), and selected papers externally at The ACM Portal and DBLP.
To my research areas I apply my engineering expertise in scalable exploration of faceted browsing. I have considerable experience in optimising MySQL (using both MyISAM and InnoDB storage engines), optimising SQL queries, database normalisation, denormalisation, and ETL.
I created, and am responsible for the query engine that powers the mSpace faceted browser.
My day to day work involves looking for and looking at datasets, mapping them to ontologies (or creating ontologies for them), marking them up as RDF, and brainstorming with my team about how we might best provide exploratory interfaces to the data, and how other datasets could be pulled in to improve the browsing experience for the users.
Data Processor: A lightweight web management interface for adding knowledge bases to triplestores and adding RDF sources to those triplestores. Written as PHP5 objects using an MVC architecture. The triplestore backend is genericised, loading appropriate backend connectors dynamically, and includes a backend connector for OpenLink Virtuoso. All operations (list KBs, add new KB, get KB detail and add RDF source to KB) are possible using a human UI as well as a RESTful XML API.
iPlayer powered By mSpace2.0: As a demonstration of the mSpace2.0 framework, we present the BBC iPlayer, powered by mSpace2.0. On this interface, which is updated every night, Television and Radio programmes from the BBC are available to play (for UK viewers), and explore using the mSpace faceted browsing framework.
Music Space: "To provide the best support possible for researchers to be able to explore relevant information sources and build new knowledge." Data integration and exploration project, co-run with Music, School of Humanities. Press release.
sotondocks: A twittering bot that updates ship movements in Southampton docks.
Rich Tags: Supporting better exploration of Digital Repositories with Semantic Social Tagging. Rich Tags is a project to develop a system to better support exploratory search (as opposed to keyword search) across digital repositories.
mSpace is an interaction model to help explore relationships in information. I was the project manager on the mSpace Classical Music Browser, an implementation of the mSpace interaction model on the web. This software was created using an AJAX front-end, which has recently grown to support Internet Explorer as well as gecko-based browsers such as FireFox, Netscape and Camino.
mSpace Mobile is a handheld geolocation application that allows the user to discover their surroundings. mSpace Mobile utilises an innovative fisheye zooming interface, and harnesses the power of the Semantic Web. By using the Semantic Web elements of projects such as The Open Guide To London, The Open Guide To Southampton and The FOAF Project, it allows for community collaboration by both users of the web, and users of handheld devices, through the mSpace Mobile application.
There are are some pictures of me on flickr that other people took (and that I have happened to stumble upon, there may be more):
Copyright © 2005–2010 Daniel Alexander Smith