The SIMILE Project is happy to announce the availability of the 2.1.0
version of Piggy Bank, it's semantic web extension for the Firefox Browser.
Get it from
http://simile.mit.edu/piggy-bank/
by clicking on the "get piggy bank" button on the top right.
- o -
There are the features of this new stable release:
- drastically improved firefox extension design, fixes severe memory
leaks experienced in the previous versions
- massive speed improvements (up to 30x!)
- welcome wizard and "now what?" documentation will guide the user
during the first installation and help configure Piggy Bank for their
needs (including hooks to where to find useful scrapers to collect
non-RDF data from existing web sites)
- optional integration with Google Maps works again and will be long
lasting, since Piggy Bank now uses the official API (DISCLAIMER: you
will have request a free key to enable support for GMaps in your Piggy Bank)
- overall cleanup of the user interface graphics for a fresher and
more pleasant look and snappier feel
- o -
Piggy Bank 2.1.0 features also useful new functionalities for semantic
web and for screen scrapers developers:
- support for the upcoming Firefox 1.5 series
- development mode allows developers interested in the inner workings
of Piggy Bank to have a better understanding of what's going on by
looking at the extensive trace logs
- special handlers make Firefox handle RDF content directly thru Piggy
Bank (thus giving a semantic web equivalent to the early IE XML-tree
that catalyzed the XML adoption)
- added new utility functions to the scraping utilities available to
the screen scrapers, to make it easier to write them
- o -
Thanks to the modular architecture (both systems are built around
Longwell, the SIMILE faceted browsing tool), Semantic Bank, the server
side companion of Piggy Bank, features a lot of the same improvements,
most notably speed and Google Map integration. For more information on
Semantic Bank and how to install your own, please visit
http://simile.mit.edu/semantic-bank/
and to see the SIMILE's own semantic bank in action visit
http://simile.mit.edu/bank/
- o -
Happy Semantic Web!
On behalf of the SIMILE team,
--
Stefano Mazzocchi
Research Scientist Digital Libraries Research Group
Massachusetts Institute of Technology location: E25-131C
77 Massachusetts Ave telephone: +1 (617) 253-1096
Cambridge, MA 02139-4307 email: stefanom at mit . edu
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Received on Mon Oct 03 2005 - 20:09:42 EDT