Another announcement by Google this week – one that didn’t get quite as much play as the launch at I/O of Google Play Music All Access and improvements to its search, map and Google + services – was this: Support for JSON-LD markup in Gmail.

The W3C in April published a Last Call Working Draft for JSON-LD 1.0 (JavaScript Object Notation for Linking Data), a lightweight Linked Data format to give data context. It has been shepherded along for some time by the JSON for Linked Data Community Group.

Manu Sporny, who has been instrumental in JSON-LD’s development and is one of the authors of the draft, heralds the news here in his blog, noting that it means that Gmail now will be able to recognize people, places, events and a variety of other Linked Data objects, and that actions may be taken on the Linked Data objects embedded in an e-mail. “For example, if someone sends you an invitation to a party, you can do a single-click response on whether or not you’ll attend a party right from your inbox. Doing so will also create a reminder for the party in your calendar,” he writes.

The news was greeted with enthusiasm on a W3C JSON LD message round, as, as Sporny describes it, “pretty big validation of the technology.”

While noting that Google followed the standard closely, Sporny does point out some issues with the implementation – including a major one that Google isn’t using the JSON-LD @context parameter correctly in its markup examples:

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Boston, Ma (PRWEB) May 15, 2013 — Cambridge Semantics has announced that the Anzo Pharma Competitive Intelligence Solution has won the 2013 SIIA CODiE Award in the highly competitive category of Best Business Intelligence/Analytics Solution. As the principal trade association for the software and digital content industries, the SIIA named Cambridge Semantics one of just 27 CODiE Award software category winners. Read more

NEW YORK, NEW YORK–(Marketwired – May 15, 2013) - ADmantX, the next-generation contextual analysis and semantic data provider, today announced that it has been included in Gartner “Cool Vendors for E-Commerce, 2013″ report, published on April 9, 2013, and authored by Chris Fletcher, Gene Alvarez, Praveen Sengar, Penny Gillespie, Regina Casonato, Andrew Frank.

The report reviews five vendors that provide innovative offerings in the digital marketing, social products, and digital and social e-commerce space. The main issue limiting the online advertising market is the disconnect between advertisement placement and the relevance of the copy. This is due to the reliance on keyword frequency without considering the meaning. Ads may appear on pages that have little significance to the assigned page or may produce counterproductive effects. Semantic technology automatically extracts the meaning in text to increase the relevance of ads, and maximize the website visitor’s receptiveness to advertising content. Read more

Prachi Patel of IEEE Spectrum reports, “Farmers today produce three times as much food as they did 50 years ago using just 12 percent more land, thanks to new technologies and better farming practices. But the global playing field isn’t level. In Africa, farmers produce a fraction of what they could, according to the Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa, and most barely get by, struggling against infertile soil, drought, and diseases. Helping farmers—in Africa and elsewhere—produce more will be key to lifting millions out of poverty and sustainably feeding a world population of 9 billion in 2050. Food-policy experts believe that a crucial step toward that goal is to give farmers, scientists, and entrepreneurs unhindered access to agricultural data which is generated at research centers worldwide.” Read more

BOCA RATON, Fla.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–LinguaSys, Inc., the international provider of human language technologies producing highly customized multilingual text analytics and natural language processing software, today announced the release of CCC Interpreter to improve accuracy and efficiency in the implementation of Chinese Commercial Codes (CCC). CCC’s are used to identify people and businesses without using Chinese characters in banking, compliance, foreign currency, law enforcement, immigration and trade transactions. Read more

[Article edited for clarity.] Moscow, Russia, May 10, 2013 –(PR.com)– Center of Intelligent Information Technologies INTELTEQ, a small but fast-growing Russian company that specializes in semantic modeling, was included in Gartner’s list of Cool Vendors in Information Governance and MDM (Master Data Management) 2013 report. The company utilizes a semantic modeling tool called Semantic Topology. Read more

SAN DIEGO, Calif., May 13, 2013 (BUSINESS WIRE) — Algebraix Data Corporation, the semantic web company(TM), today announced the launch of Algebrize(TM), the industry’s first cost-effective automated implementation of Schema.org. With this new W3C compliant Software as a Service (SaaS) offering, SEO agencies can now help website owners significantly increase traffic and conversion rates by improving SEO authority, product detail visibility and click-through rate. Algebrize is the first application of Algebraix’s proprietary and patented technology to power semantic computing. Read more

Paul Miller of Cloud of Data recently discussed the issue of proper data attribution. He writes, “There have always, it seems, been people for whom attribution and citation really matter. Some of them passionately engage in arguments that last months or years, debating the merits of comma placement in written citations for the work of others. Bizarre, right? But, as we all become increasingly dependent upon data sourced from third parties, aspects of this rather esoteric pastime are beginning to matter to a far broader audience. Products, recommendations, decisions and entire businesses are being constructed on top of data sourced from trusted partners, from new data brokers, from crowdsourced communities, or simply plucked from across the open web.”

Miller continues, “Without an understanding of where that data came from, and how it was collected, interpreted or maintained, all of those products, recommendations, decisions and businesses stand upon very shaky foundations indeed. Read more

Andrew Nusca of ZDnet recently interviewed MindTouch CEO Aaron Fulkerson about his company’s use of machine learning. Nusca writes, “When I last wrote about MindTouch, the San Diego-based company, I mentioned that there was a lot of money on the line—$83 billion, according to one market estimate—to get customer service right. MindTouch’s latest gambit? Machine learning. Read more

It’s pretty common these days for people to hit the web in search of medication advice to deal with symptoms they’re experiencing.  The trouble is, most people don’t approach the process in a truly safe manner.

Semantic technology can help rectify the situation. In fact, it’s already doing so in France, where Olivier Curé, an associate professor in computer science at the University of Paris-Est in France, created a web application based on the book by pharmacology expert and educator Jean-Paul Giroud Médicaments sans ordonnance: Les bons et les mauvais!, of which he is a co-author with Catherine Cupillard. The app is made available to their consumers via three big insurance companies there, in order to help the companies save costs on reimbursing them for buying drugs that won’t actually help their condition, or direct them to the appropriate drugs at pharmacies with which the insurers may have relationships to supply them at lower costs. An iPhone version of the app was just released to accompany the web version.

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