A recent report asked the question, is the future of sharing the Semantic Web? The abstract states, “Current information sharing is based mostly on using so-called Web 1.0 search tools and Web 2.0 tools such as social media to collect and display data and information on the Web and make it easier for people to access. The next generation of Web technologies — collectively called the Semantic Web — will move sharing into the era of Web 3.0.”

It goes on, “Semantic Web technologies are already used in government sites such as Data.gov and Recovery.gov, which are part of the Obama administration’s push for open government. 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 !

Christian Zibreg recently reported on the future of Siri and how the service intends to become even more personalized. Zibreg writes, “Digital secretary Siri was, and still is, the headline feature of the iPhone 4S. It owes some of its allure to the vast processing power of Apple’s servers that run a remarkably sophisticated voice recognition software licensed from Nuance, a Burlington, Massachusetts-based provider of arguably the best voice technology money can buy. According to Nuance’s marketing honcho, you can bet on Siri to improve over time.”

He continues, “Upcoming developments in personal assistants will enable new stuff, such as more accurate voice recognition and personalization. So yeah, eventually you’ll be able to ask Siri ‘Is my favourite movie on tonight?’ Read more

Q: What do Google, Microsoft, Yahoo!, Yandex, the New York Times, and The Walt Disney Company have in common?

A: schema.org

On June 2, 2011, schema.org was launched with little fanfare, but it quickly received a lot of attention. Now, almost exactly one year later, we have assembled a panel of experts from the organizations listed above to discuss what has happened since and what we have to look forward to as the vocabulary continues to grow and evolve, including up-to-the-minute news and announcements. The panel will take place at the upcoming Semantic Technology and Business Conference in San Francisco.

Moderated by Ivan Herman, the Semantic Web Activity Lead for the World Wide Web Consortium, the panel includes representatives from each of the core search engines involved in schema.org, and two of the largest early implementers: The New York Times and Disney. Among the topics we will discuss will be the value proposition of using schema.org markup, publishing techniques and syntaxes, vocabularies that have been mapped to schema.org, current tools and applications, existing implementations, and a look forward at what is planned and what is needed to encourage adoption and consumption.

Panelists:

	Moderator: Ivan Herman Semantic Web Activity Lead, World Wide Web Consortium		Dan Brickley Contractor, schema.org at Google
	John Giannandrea Director Engineering, Google		Peter Mika Senior Researcher, Yahoo!
	Alexander Shubin Product Manager, Head of Strategic Direction, Yandex		Mike Van Snellenberg Principal Program Manager, Microsoft/Bing
	Evan Sandhaus Semantic Technologist, New York Times Company		Jeffrey W. Preston SEO Manager, Disney Interactive Media Group

These panelists, along with the rest of the more than 120 speakers from SemTechBiz, will be on-hand to answer audience questions and discuss the latest work in Semantic Technologies. You can join the discussion by registering for SemTechBiz – San Francisco today (and save $200 off the onsite price)

 

Andy Tebay of The Next Web recently reported on Treum, a Korean company that is cutting through the noise to find value from social media data. Tebay writes, “A major challenge, when trying to do market research or analyze social media trends, is the massive amount of information you have to sort through. Korean startup Treum is a social intelligence company which specializes in providing high-profile companies with solutions for analyzing various elements of social media. This information can then be used to improve marketing, customer relations and more.” Read more

MarkLogic has a new CEO. According to the company, “Gary Bloom, a proven technology executive who was most recently the CEO and president at eMeter, has been named president and chief executive officer. Gary brings an exceptional background that includes more than two decades of successful leadership in enterprise software. He was the CEO and president at eMeter, which provides smart grid management software for electric, gas, and water utilities. eMeter was recently acquired by Siemens Corporation. Prior to that, Gary was a consultant of TPG, a leading global private investment firm.” Read more

Oleg Shilovitsky, CEO of Inforbix and speaker at next month’s SemTechBiz Conference, has written a new article discussing the move to intelligent data. He writes, “I think the word ‘intelligent’ adds a special panache to most anything. It imparts a refreshing ‘smell’ that evokes the impression that something ‘smart’ is involved.  So a move from ‘dumb’ to ‘intelligent’ must be a good move, right? Jos Voskuil would answer ‘yes’ when it comes to moving data towards something more intelligent.”

Shilovitsky quotes a recent post by Voskuil regarding dumb data: “Here it was even more a key point of the discussion that most of the legacy data is stored in dumb documents. And the main reason dumb documents are used is because the data needs to be available during the long lifecycle of the the plant, application independent if possible. So in the previous century this was paper, later scanned documents (TIFF – PDF) and currently mainly PDF. Most of the data now is digital but where is the intelligence?” Read more

[Editor's Note: This guest editorial is provided by Sean Golliher. He can be found on Twitter at @seangolliher]

Google announced they’re rolling out new enhancements to their search technology and they’re calling it the “Knowledge Graph.”  For those involved in the Semantic Web Google’s “Knowledge Graph” is nothing new. After watching the video, and reading through the announcements, the Google engineers are giving the impression, to those familiar with this field, that they have created something new and innovative.

While it ‘s commendable that Google is improving search it’s interesting to note the direct translations of Google’s “new language” to the existing semantic web vocabulary. Normally engineers and researchers quote, or at least reference, the original sources of their ideas. One can’t help but notice that the semantic web isn’t mentioned in any of Google’s announcements. After watching the different reactions from the semantic web community I found that many took notice of the language Google used and how the ideas from the semantic web were repackaged as “new” and discovered by Google.

Read more

Google’s Knowledge Graph has been the subject of lots of attention over the past few days since the announcement. And the focus of a lot of questions, too.

There’s been discussion on chat boards, for instance, about just who’s gotten access and who hasn’t. In a discussion with a representative from Google, The Semantic Web blog has learned that, like many other new Google services, the roll-out is gradual, in order to ensure the system is handling new functions well. First-come, first-served are those who are signed into Google – but then again, not everyone who is signed in. But the plan is to have everyone who’s signed in on board over the next few days, the rep says; so if you are and don’t have it yet, it should be hitting your browser shortly. Those not signed into Google accounts probably have a week or two of a wait left. So far, the rep said that things have been pretty smooth, so Google’s going at the pace it was hoping to.

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3M has opened up the 3M Healthcare Data Dictionary under an agreement with the Department of Defense and the Department of Veterans Affairs. According to the article, “The 3M Healthcare Data Dictionary will provide the core technology to enable semantic interoperability for the joint DoD/VA integrated Electronic Health Record (iEHR), making it possible to share medical knowledge and secure patient data between care providers at U.S. military treatment facilities located around the world and VA Medical Centers. Access to actionable clinical information whenever and wherever care is delivered will enable safer, better coordinated, and higher quality care for the country’s 32 million veterans, active service members, and their families.” Read more

Kapow Software has partnered with Informatica to provide Big Data solutions. According to the companies, “The partnership introduces Informatica PowerExchange for Kapow Katalyst which will be made available as part of Informatica 9.5 announced at the Informatica World 2012 user conference this week. Informatica PowerExchange for Kapow Katalyst harnesses the power of web, cloud applications and social media, and enables IT to quickly access and extract relevant information from the long tail of disparate data sources.” Read more