The Kim Plug-In is a plug-in for Internet Explorer, performing semantic annotation of named entities (NE, such as, persons, organizations, locations, money, etc.) over unstructured or semi-structured web content online. The annotations refer to an upper-level ontology and a knowledge base containing instances of real-world entities. This plug-in is based on the KIM Platform.

After downloading and installing the KIM Plug-In, it can be made visible in the Internet Explorer area by selecting View | Explorer Bar | KIM Plugin from the menu, or by clicking the special button from the browser's main toolbar. It will appear on the left-hand side of the browser area (see the snapshot below).

The Kim Plug-In user interface consists of the following:

•  Toolbar with the following functional buttons:

   Annotate : annotates the web content currently being displayed

  Clear : removes the semantic annotations from the annotated web content

  About : an About Box.

• Tab Bar  There are three tabs with the following content:

  1) Classes Tab

This tab contains the entity type hierarchy of the KIM Ontology. Through the class hierarchy view, one could choose the colors associated with each class, and set on/and off the displaying of annotations of a specific class or group of classes.

2) Entities Tab

After annotating the current web page, the recognized entities in the text appear in this tab, sorted by frequency of occurrence.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The entities are presented by their main aliases. On double-clicking on an entity in the list, the references of this entity in the text start and keep blinking for a while. The same effect can be achieved reached by selecting the "Blink it in the text" menu item from the Popup menu, associated with each entity.

Referring documents (documents where this entity is mentioned.) for each entity in the list can be accessed by right click on an entity and choosing "Get Referring Documents" from the Popup menu, or by clicking button in the right side of each entity. If such documents exist, they will be displayed in the KIM WEB UI result page.

By clicking the button on the left-hand side of each entity, the entity can be explored (see the "Explore an Annotation" section below)

3) Config Tab

In this tab the KIM Plug-In can be configured. The IP Address and Port of the Annotation Server can be modified there. It also contains a couple of  hyper links, pointing to  information  about the  KIM Platform and the current User Guide. The config tab will be  explained in details below, in the "Setup Connection" section.

Main Functionality:

• Annotate Web Page:  After clicking the Annotate button , the KIM Plug-In sends the currently loaded web page to the Annotation Server. The server generates annotations over the content of the page and returns the results to the Plug-In. After that  the Plug-In displays annotation marks from these results on the page. Only the selected (checked) Annotation Types are colored. 

 

After clicking the "Annotate" button, a dialog appears, indicating the progress of the annotation process. It also  gives the opportunity to stop the  annotation process by clicking "Cancel".

 

• Show / Hide Annotation marks: This operation  could be performed by checking / unchecking a subset of Annotation Types check boxes in the hierarchycal view. To show (check) all the sub-classes of an annotation type, right-click on the type in the class hierarchy and use the "Select All children " command from the pop-up menu. The " Deselect All children" command hides (unchecks) all sub-classes of the selected annotation type.
  
  

• Clear all generated Annotation marks: This can be done by clicking the "Clear" button.

Warning: After annotation, the "Annotate" button becomes read-only (disabled) until the "Clear" button is clicked on.

• Setup Connection:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

By selecting the  "Config" tab, the IP Address and the Port number of the Annotation Server might be set or modified. The "Set" button has to be pushed so that the new setting takes effect. In this case the Plug-In will try to connect to the server and to retrieve the Entity hierarchy from the KIM Ontology. If the server is not available, the Plug-In will report this problem and the default ontology will be loaded in the "Classes" tab.

 Note: these settings are configured automatically  during the installation process.

• Explore an Annotation:   If the "Place Links" check box of the Plug-In bar has been selected :

then a hyperlink to the KIM Explorer is associated with each annotation. By clicking on a hyperlink, a Kim Explorer window is opened,  providing a list of properties and attributes of the entity that is being explored (f.e. aliases). 

The KIM Explorer gives a view of a part of the KIM Knowledge Base (KIM KB), directly related to the entity that is being explored. By following the hyperlinks in the KIM Explorer, the exploration of KIM KB can go further.

Warning: a change of the status of the "Place Links" check box would cause cleaning of  current annotation marks.

• Refreshing the Ontology:  The user undertakes this  action  if he/she wants to check for an updated class hierarchy from the Annotation Server. The refresh could be performed by selecting the "Refresh ontology" command from the pop-up menu of the Plug-In bar. Such request is being sent to the server each time the user opens a new instance of the Plug-In (i.e. while the Plug-In is being shown from the "View"  menu of the Browser).

• Changing the colors of an annotation: This could be done by clicking the colored square next to each annotation type in the KIM hierarchy view. This action causes the opening of a standard MS Windows "Color" dialog box, where the color could be changed, which in its turn makes all current  annotation marks of this type change their color accordingly.