Cambridge Semantics has added a number of new lessons to their Semantic University. Some of the latest topics include the following:

SPARQL 101: “SPARQL (pronounced “sparkle”) is the query language for the Semantic Web. Along with RDF and OWL, it is one of the three core technologies of the Semantic Web. This lesson introduces the SPARQL query language, starting with simple queries. Future lessons will build on this material with more advanced SPARQL concepts.” Read more

SemTechBiz is Less Than 2 Weeks Away

The Semantic Tech & Business Conference (SemTechBiz) is coming to San Francisco on June 3-7! Join us for case studies, innovative panels, tutorials, and keynotes that will provide you with practical advice, hands-on guidance, and breakthrough approaches to solving business problems with semantic technology. Passes go up $200 at the door. Sign up now and save !

Robert McMillan reports that employees of IBM have been barred from using Siri at work. He writes, “If you work for IBM, you can bring your iPhone to work, but forget about using the phone’s voice-activated digital assistant. Siri isn’t welcome on Big Blue’s networks. The reason? Siri ships everything you say to her to a big data center in Maiden, North Carolina. And the story of what really happens to all of your Siri-launched searches, e-mail messages and inappropriate jokes is a bit of a black box. IBM CIO Jeanette Horan told MIT’s Technology Review this week that her company has banned Siri outright because, according to the magazine, ‘The company worries that the spoken queries might be stored somewhere’.” Read more

Manu Sporny recently shared his insights regarding open web payment standards, a topic he has discussed here as well. Sporny writes, “The purpose of a value exchange system is to increase the efficacy of human efforts by allowing each person to contribute value in his or her own way. The Web is such a system for the exchange of value in the form of information. It now helps billions of people around the world communicate, become more educated, and collaborate to solve some of the hardest problems known to man. Given the Web’s enormous success, it is a good model to follow for designing a new system for the exchange of monetary value. The key to the Web’s success has been its dedication to open networks and open standards. While it may seem obvious to us now, this was not always the case.” Read more

Facebook IPO not panning out for you? Well, there are other opportunities out there where you can get in on the ground floor for a lot less.

Take a Kickstarter project dubbed Gooey Search – it’s trying to get funding of at least $125,000 by June 8 for its consumer-facing technology, based on latent semantic analysis (LSA). It has as its goal delivering the best and most accurate Google search results in what it calls a Gooey Graph real-time diagram of discovered network concepts, while keeping user privacy intact.

With the recent announcement of Google’s Knowledge Graph, do we need another way to probe the leading search engine? Ed Heinbockel, founder, president and CEO of Visual Purple, is betting we do. “To me [what Google’s done] validates the approach we’ve gone down in terms of visualizing and letting you navigate search. It’s the same direction. The question is can we provide value to that equation,” he says.

Where he sees the opportunity: “What drives us a lot is that we’re very concerned about the direction that privacy and the Internet are going,” he says. “And we think the quality of the results they give back to users isn’t in the order it should be.”

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Bloomberg LP has acquired Dublin-based semantic software provider PolarLake and launched a new enterprise data management service. According to the article, “Bloomberg’s new EDM unit, with the addition of PolarLake, will allow firms to increase their efficiency by better managing high volumes of data from multiple sources, either third parties or proprietary sources. ‘The PolarLake purchase is a strong signal to the marketplace that Bloomberg intends to be a leader in the enterprise data management business,’ said Thomas Secunda, Bloomberg Co-Founder and Global Head of Bloomberg’s Financial Products and Services.” Read more

Hal Hodson recently covered the “semantic evolution” of Talis culminating in Kasabi. He writes, “In 1969, a group of libraries in Birmingham decided they needed to become more efficient. Calling themselves the Birmingham Libraries Cooperative Mechanisation Project (BLCMP), the group built a centralised database of ‘machine-readable’ bibliographic records, first using microfilm to store book data then, from 1982, using IBM mainframes with terminals at each library. BLCMP went on to become Talis, named after its integrated library system, and for many years it was leader in the automated library management software market. But that is a mature market, and last year Talis divested its library division to focus on the company’s other passion: semantic technology.” Read more

[Editor's Note: SemanticWeb.com was a co-sponsor of the Linked Data Platform proposal that led to the creation of the Linked Data Platform Working Group discussed here.]

Ian Jacobs reports, “Shortly after W3C announced the launch of the Linked Data Platform Working Group, I spoke with Arnaud Le Hors about IBM’s interest in linked data and their decision to co-chair the Working Group.” Asked why IBM became involved with organizing the Linked Enterprise Data Patterns Workshop and the Linked Data Platform Working Group, Le Hors responded, “IBM has been involved in Semantic Web activities from the beginning, but primarily from a research perspective. Until recently we had no products using the technology. Now we have IBM Rational, which develops a set of tools for application and product lifecycle management (requirements, bugs, etc.). Other parts of IBM are actively exploring it for complementary purposes. Customers typically use tools from more than one vendor and require integration; this is a problem IBM addresses.” Read more

Laura Newman of the Open Knowledge Foundation reports, “Earlier this year, we announced plans to launch the School of Data. Thanks to the generous support of Open Society Foundations and the Shuttleworth Foundation, we’re now ready to go! We’re holding a kick-off sprint next week, and we invite you to get involved. The School of Data is led by the Open Knowledge Foundation (OKFN) and Peer 2 Peer University (P2PU). The School will provide online training for data ‘wrangling’ skills – the ability to find, retrieve, clean, manipulate, analyze, and represent different types of data.” Read more

Attend the upcoming SemTech session that’s dubbed Using Semantic Technologies to Deliver Industrial Strength Healthcare Benefits Administration, and you’ll hear about how semantics- and model-driven computing is the future – and how it’s a future that’s already gotten underway at The Central Administrative Agency of the Netherlands (CAK).

First, a little bit about the bigger picture.  “What can happen when you go all the way to semantic, model-driven, knowledge computing [is that] … it changes the game for development,” says Mills Davis, managing director of Project 10X and one of the session’s presenters. “It enables new categories of capabilities and levels of user experience (think SIRI for the rest of us). It brings about quantum changes in all stages of lifecycle value. It enables cost-effective strategy-driven approaches to enterprise transformation. This last sentence is worth some reflection.”

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Olivia Solon reports that Professor Nigel Shadbolt has shared an outline of the plan for the UK’s Open Data Institute. She writes, “Shadbolt told Wired.co.uk: ‘Open data is not just about transparency and accountability; there is potential for economic innovation and value to come from it.’ The Institute’s remit is fairly broad, but will primarily focus on helping private and public organisations understand how to make the most of open data. It will not actually store any data itself, but it will provide business incubation for startups, providing mentoring, advice and potentially space. Shadbolt says that the aim is to cultivate and incubate 12 companies a year.” Read more