A Tool for Defining the Semantics of Prescriptive Tags Jon Iturrioz Computer Science Faculty, University of the Basque Country P a Manuel Lardizabal, 1 20018 San Sebastián, Spain jon.iturrioz@ehu.es Oscar Díaz Computer Science Faculty, University of the Basque Country P a Manuel Lardizabal, 1 20018 San Sebastián, Spain oscar.diaz@ehu.es Iker Azpeitia Computer Science Faculty, University of the Basque Country P a Manuel Lardizabal, 1 20018 San Sebastián, Spain iker.azpeitia@ehu.es ABSTRACT The most common role of tags is descriptive. However, this work focuses on “prescriptive tags” that have associated some implicit behaviour in the user’s mind. We introduce the notion of “reactive tags” as a means for tagging to impact sites other than the tagging site itself. The operational se- mantics of reactive tags is defined through event-condition- action rules. The specification of this behaviour semantics is hidden through a graphical interface that permits users with no programming background to easily associate “reac- tions” to the act of tagging. This contribution presents a demo on TABASCO, a tool that supports the specification and enactment of reactive tags. 1. MOTIVATION Tags can serve a broad range of purposes [1]. This work focuses on tags that serve to annotate the user’s intentions on the resource being tagged. While descriptive tags are passive, prescriptive tags convey some associated behaviour ( “toDo ”, “toRead ”, “toDownload ”, etc). So far, no way exists for the user to define and automate this behaviour. Addi- tionally, this behaviour tends to surpass the tagging site to impact other places, and might affect other users.Prescriptive tags enables the binding of disperse communities through the tagging sites members of the community use. As a running example, consider an end user, Oscar who tags with “toread” interesting papers in his Delicious ac- count. However, Delicious is not a scheduling tool. Hence, Oscar keeps a “myReadingList” folder in Remember The Milk (RTM). RTM provides means to monitor, schedule or share to-do tasks. To keep both lists in synchrony and avoid man- ually recording data twice, Oscar decides to make “toread” reactive. The operational semantics can be read as follows: “on tagging toread at Oscar’s Delicious, do create a task in the myReadingList folder on Oscar’s RTM” . Finally, RTM permits to assign priorities to tasks. This priority can not be derived from the bookmark but it can be provided as a tag parameter (e.g. “toread:3” ). This contribution presents a demo on TABASCO, a TAg- BASed, inter-site COmmunication platform 1 , permits users to communicate seamlessly through heterogeneous websites. Users are represented through their website accounts. Tasks are those set by the websites themselves, and normally avail- 1 Available on http://www.onekin.org/tabasco Copyright is held by the author/owner(s). The 22nd ACM Hypertext Conference, Posters and Demos. HT’11, June 6–9, 2011, Eindhoven, The Netherlands. Figure 1: TABASCO tabs: a) granting TABASCO access to your accounts; b) requesting authorization on someone else’s account; and c) managing autho- rization petitions on your accounts. able through an API. Tags are the means to denote the message that enacts the associated task in the target ac- count (hereafter referred to as “reactive tags”). Messages are originated in the sender website and impact on the re- ceiver website. Finally, web resources (e.g. bookmarks, blog posts, etc) stand for message parameters. 2. TABASCO AT WORK This section outlines the main TABASCO GUIs that go with creating a collaboration space through prescriptive tags. Registration ( “My Account” tab: Figure 1(a)). Users first indicate whether their accounts will participate in this TABASCO installation. So far, accounts are limited to Deli- cious, WordPress and RTM. The process goes as follows: (1)