OKKAM for Hotmail

Environment

Windows Live Hotmail, formerly known as MSN Hotmail and commonly referred to simply as Hotmail, is a free web-based email service operated by Microsoft as part of its Windows Live group. The HotmailOKKAM button is a plug-in to OKKAM-enable the Hotmail site.

What it does

This paragraph focuses on the different steps of the OKKAMization process. In particular, we will analyze how OKKAM moves and processes data, in order to better understand the OKKAM Empowered tool functionality.
The following picture describes the three main steps of this workflow:

The user starts writing an email
The HOTMAIL OKKAM empowered tool takes the email’s body and sends it to the OKKAM System.

ATTENTION: In order to perform the annotation process, the content of your email is sent to the OKKAM annotation pipeline! However, your email IS NOT STORED by OKKAM.

To recognize the named entities inside the email it is fundamental to analyze the email using the OKKAM technology. This technology is very complex, based on a semantic approach and is impossible to use on the client side, so using a server side approach is needed. Before starting, the process requires you to view and accept the OKKAM privacy statement. Otherwise you can of course abort the process and no data is sent to OKKAM.
OKKAM starts to analyze the plain text coming from the email. The first step is the Entities extraction. It is clear that every tool analyzes different kinds of information. Depending on the situation, the gathering of data (ACQUISITION) can be carried out in various ways. After acquisition, the first processing step is the parsing and analysis of a text for entities extraction. In particular, the system contains three different approaches:

Keyword based
Shallow linguistics
Semantic Analysis

The main module is the semantic analysis based on COGITO® Discover semantic capabilities, which provides Semantic Analysis for texts in English and Italian. A query is created for each identified named entity (e.g. people, location). It contains the main features useful to better identify the potential entity in a unique way. The query is sent to the OKKAM Engine. The Entity Matching stage generates an OKKAM ID for entities, where this is required. This process is based on the following steps:

Query processing
The OKKAM Engine analyzes the query, searches the repository and returns, if present, the correct OKKAM ID for the named entity.

The correct OKKAM ID identification
The OKKAM ID resulting from matching is a value ready to be included as a new field in the document.

The use of this module is the basis for building a Web of Entities, where information about the same entity is consolidated in such a way that aggregation, integration and mash up become easier and faster.
The result you have is your email will be tagged with the OKKAMids.

Features

This tool allows to find and highlight entities inside your text in many different ways.
There are some different functions:

RDFa
This function will write RDF fragment around words representing an entity.
Okkamize text
Selecting this your email will be enhanced with a little report showing, for each entity inside your text, their Okkam identifier.
Full Okkam
This will display three little widgets summarizing all the available information about entities inside your text. The one entitled 'Extraction' shows the name of the recognized entities and their semantic type, the 'Okkamize' one reports the information returned by OKKAM for each entity, and the 'Enrichment' one shows the text enriched with OKKAM semantic information.
Search
Links to Okkam webpage where to search for entities.
Add entity
Links to Okkam webpage where to add an entity. It requires registration. http://api.okkam.org/EnsWebToolKit
Homepage
Keeps links to OKKAM homepage and the pages where to search for and add entities.
Help
If you need additional help, here you will find user's manual.
About
Automatic upgrade detection. It keeps links to OKKAM feedback page to provide feedback.

Technology

This Rich Internet Application is created using:

Javascript
JavaScript is an object-oriented scripting language used to enable programmatic access to objects within both the client application and other applications. It is primarily used in the form of client-side JavaScript, implemented as an integrated component of the web browser, allowing the development of enhanced user interfaces and dynamic websites. JavaScript is a dialect of the ECMAScript standard and is characterized as a dynamic, weakly typed, prototype-based language with first-class functions. JavaScript was influenced by many languages and was designed to look like Java, but to be easier for non-programmers to work with.

Greasemonkey
Greasemonkey is a Mozilla Firefox add-on that allows users to install scripts that make on-the-fly changes to HTML web page content on the DOMContentLoaded event, which happens immediately after it is loaded in the browser (also known as augmented browsing). As Greasemonkey scripts are persistent, the changes made to the web pages are executed every time the page is opened, making them effectively permanent for the user running the script. Greasemonkey can be used for adding new functions to web pages (for example, embedding price comparison in Amazon.com web pages), fixing rendering bugs, combining data from multiple webpages, and numerous other purposes.

jQuery
jQuery is a lightweight cross-browser JavaScript library that emphasizes interaction between JavaScript and HTML. It was released in January 2006 at BarCamp NYC by John Resig. Used by over 27% of the 10,000 most visited websites, jQuery is the most popular JavaScript library in use today. jQuery is free, open source software, dual-licensed under the MIT License and the GNU General Public License, Version 2.[2] jQuery's syntax is designed to make it easier to navigate a document, select DOM elements, create animations, handle events, and develop Ajax applications. jQuery also provides capabilities for developers to create plugins on top of the JavaScript library. Providing this option, developers are able to create abstractions for low-level interaction and animation, advanced effects and high-level, theme-able widgets. This contributes to the creation of powerful and dynamic web pages.

IE7Pro
IE7Pro is an add-on to Internet Explorer 6, 7 and 8 beta version that aims to enhance the feature set provided by the browser. IE7Pro adds features such as tab enhancement, ad blocker, flash blocker, mouse gestures, inline search, privacy enhancements, online bookmark service, Greasemonkey-like user script support, and plug-in support. IE7Pro is also known as IEPro, and is available in several languages – this is made possible by user translations.

Installation

This tool is available for Microsoft Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox

Mozilla Firefox

Installing an Okkam Empowered Tool for Firefox is pretty simple, just follow the steps explained:

Make sure you have the last version of Greasemonkey plugin for Firefox installed. If not just go to
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/search?q=Greasemonkey, click on the ‘add to firefox button’ of the first result and follow the guided installation procedure.
Download the plug-in from the following link
http://community.okkam.org/index.php/Downloads/
Unzip the zip file, keeping the javascript and css file in the same folder.
Once Greasemonkey is up and running, open Firefox and go to a blank tab (just press Ctrl+T).
Select the script file and drag it onto the blank tab. You should see something like this:

Click on the ‘Install’ button and check for the confirmation message appearing at the bottom right corner of Firefox window.
In some cases you could see the code of the plug-in in the blank tab.
To install the script click on the install button shown in the right side of the yellow strip appearing at the top of the tab or select on the Firefox toolbar Tools > Greasemonkey menu > Install script.

Microsoft Internet Explorer

To install an Okkam Empowered Tool for Internet Explorer follow these steps:

Make sure you have installed IEPro addon for Internet Explorer. If not you can find it here:
http://www.brothersoft.com/download-ie7pro-54469.html (or find the right link from the official site http://www.ie7pro.com ).
Download the plug-in from the following link
http://community.okkam.org/index.php/Downloads/
Unzip the zip file, keeping the javascript and css file in the same folder.
Copy the script file in the IEPRO ‘userscripts’ folder which probably looks like
c:\program files\IEPRO\userscripts.
Just to see if everything is ok, open IE, double click on the IEPRO icon at the right bottom corner of the browser window.
You should see something like this:

In the user script submenu the checkbox labelled “Enable user script” and the one with the name of the script must be checked.