On Friday, April 13, a group of Semantic thought leaders from around the globe met with their host and colleague, Paul Miller, for the latest installment of the Semantic Link, a monthly podcast covering the world of Semantic Technologies. This episode includes a discussion about various approaches to building semantic systems, and “the Linkers” were joined by special guest, Daniel Tunkelang, Principal Data Scientist, LinkedIn. Daniel — who will deliver a keynote address at the June Semantic Technology & Business Conference — shared insights gained over many years working at LinkedIn, Endeca, and Google, and IBM among others.
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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 !

SemanticWeb.com and parent company WebMediaBrands are pleased to announce that a competition will be held at the upcoming Semantic Technology and Business Conference (SemTechBiz) in San Francisco. The contest begins with an online application process. Out of that pool of applicants, ten companies will be selected to compete in person and on stage at SemTechBiz San Francisco. At the conference, a single winner will be awarded the prize as “Top Semantic Technology Start-Up.”

Dramatic growth in semantics-based products and applications released over the past years is on the rise. Semantic technologies are no longer a discovery of the future. Organizations such as Google, Yahoo!, LinkedIn, The New York Times, Facebook, Apple, Oracle, IBM, the Library of Congress, Amdocs, Volkwagen & the BBC use them today.

Requirements

SemanticWeb.com is currently accepting entrants from now until April 23, 2012. Companies encouraged to apply are those who meet the following conditions:

1. have a demonstrable product (at least in “beta” stage) in the SemTech and or SemWeb space
2. have received no more than a Series A round of financing

Companies can be located anywhere but must have the financial means to attend SemTech 2012.  Ten Finalist companies will be selected to compete in a “Pitch Slam” before a panel of expert judges at the Conference. These finalists will be listed in an article at SemanticWeb.com.

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The highly-anticipated program for the Semantic Technology and Business Conference, June 3-7, 2012 in San Francisco has been announced. SemTechBiz returns to the Hilton Union Square for five comprehensive days of fresh insight and immersive learning from global experts.  The conference brings together today’s industry thought leaders and practitioners to explore the challenges and opportunities jointly impacting both corporate business leaders and technologists.

When asked about the program, SemTechBiz Co-Chair Tony Shaw said, “Every year we move further towards the ‘business’ end of the ‘Tech-to-Biz’ spectrum, and that will be even more obvious in the agenda for 2012.  The experience of practitioners is deeper and better-informed, while the increasing maturity of solutions and products is making it much easier to implement semantic applications.  If it’s been a couple of years since you last looked at semantic technologies, you will find it almost unrecognizable today.”

View the program here

Throughout the five days, attendees will find case studies; real-world business applications; introductory and advanced sessions; hands-on tutorials; news on the latest standards and best practices; sessions that focus on specific verticals such as financial services, healthcare, and government; networking opportunities; and much more.

Early Registration Pricing Expires Tomorrow!

Those considering attending the Semantic Technology & Business Conference may want to register right away as there is an early registration deadline tomorrow, Friday, February 17.

Tom Dunlap
SemanticWeb.com Contributor

Bing is Microsoft’s newest search engine, marketed as a “decision engine.” It’s designed to integrate searches to bring surfers better results than Google and Yahoo, and it’s getting some impressive press.

Microsoft launched a Bing media blitz, running several TV commercials about it (although I’ve seen better technology spots.) Tech writers, some of them pretty wowed, have written a lot about Bing, including SemanticWeb.com’s Ron Miller, who filed a nice video tour of the search engine yesterday.

But is it all just pie in the sky? Google’s Eric Schmidt recently slammed Bing, saying Microsoft does this about once a year. So my question is:

Have You Tried Bing?

To Vote in the Poll (it takes a couple steps, so I beg your indulgence):
1. Click Watch Now below.
2. Look for the small Vote Now link. Click it
3. A box pops up. Vote, and you’ll see your vote tally in real time
4. You can also post a comment

Jeni’s Musings

There’s a big push within the UK government right now, helped along by the appointment of Tim Berners-Lee, to publish their data using Linked Data principles.

One of the challenges is how to publish Linked Data in a world that sometimes, even frequently, changes. Cool URIs don’t change, but departmental domain names do, as departments are split and merged and rebranded. So the URIs that are minted for things like schools and roads need to be detached from the departments that have responsibility for them, neutralised into general domains such as education.data.gov.uk and transport.data.gov.uk.

But that’s the least of the problems. Because schools and roads themselves don’t remain static either. They are split and merged and rebranded. They are resources that change over time. What should their URIs look like?

Complete story

By Scott Booher
CIOpedia

As IT leaders we often see opportunities for innovation in the technology assets developed and managed within our organizations. Such is the case for the following proposition around corporate web site search, which may be relevant considering the recent introductions of Bing, WolframAlpha and the word “semantic” back in the news again.

The magnitude of the Internet’s success is now matched by user frustration in sifting through endless unstructured web sites and billions of web pages for immediately relevant information.

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Richard MacManus
SemanticWeb.com Contributor

ReadWriteWeb:

Semantic technology company TopQuadrant announced today that NASA is using its semantic application platform, the TopBraid Suite, to “model, organize, integrate and exchange data” within the NASA Constellation Program. The goal of the NASA Constellation Program, announced in 2004, is to explore the solar system – starting with a return to the Moon and ultimately aiming to explore Mars and other destinations.

Part of the reason NASA is using TopQuadrant is to reduce operational costs and shorten development cycles.

Complete story

Tom Dunlap
SemanticWeb.com Contributor

I have a feeling we’re overreacting to this Swine Flu outbreak. At the risk of being callous, don’t a certain amount of people die from various strains of the flu every year? Nevertheless, the Web is driving new disease-tracking and prevention tools.

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By Nova Spivack

My Public Twine

“Stephen Wolfram is building something new — and it is really impressive and significant. In fact it may be as important for the Web (and the world) as Google, but for a different purpose. It’s not a “Google killer” — it does something different. It’s an “answer engine” rather than a search engine.

“Stephen was kind enough to spend two hours with me last week to demo his new online service — Wolfram Alpha (scheduled to open in May). In the course of our conversation we took a close look at Wolfram Alpha’s capabilities, discussed where it might go, and what it means for the Web, and even the Semantic Web.”

Complete story

Jennifer Zaino
SemanticWeb.com Contributor

Florida is once again a notch in Metatomix’ belt. The semantic web vendor’s platform powers its Judicial Inquiry System (JIS), and now the Sunshine State’s Lee County has extended the technology behind that system in its implementation of the platform for its Active Warrant Alert System.
The Active Warrant system identifies defendants appearing before the court who have open local, Florida, out-of-state or federal warrants.

In that capacity, the technology serves as the platform providing much-needed help for a county that didn’t have enough manpower to consistently and holistically check warrant information from sheriff’s departments and attorney’s offices across local, state and national information systems at every stage of the process, from first appearance through arraignments, docket appearances, and any other time a defendant shows up in court. Previously, with staffing being what it was, it wasn’t always possible for bailiffs to conduct full background checks for other warrants across more than a dozen databases, in multiple formats, at every turn beyond the first appearance, because the process was too-labor intensive, says Sheila Mann, court operations manager for communications.

That was a problem, because if the defendant had been suspected of engaging in other criminal activity between first appearance and his formal charging at arraignment, or even at a docket sounding to check that everything is ready for trial, the fact that he was wanted on another charge might not be uncovered.

“If they walked into court, and we don’t know they had another warrant out on them, they might walk right back out,” says Mann. “If we knew a warrant was out we could arrest them at their arraignment or court dates.”

The Metatomix Semantic Platform that underlies the Active Warrant Alert System, developed by Metatomix in conjunction with the Florida Office of State Courts Administrator, connects data from multiple sources in real-time and presents active warrant information to the court’s calendar system and the Comprehensive Case Information System.

Lee County began testing the technology in October, going live in November with the implementation that cost around $150,000 as part of a joint effort with the Lee County Sheriff’s Department. Within the first eight days of going live, the Metatomix system ran through some 3,000 names and identified 141 warrants, Mann says. Metatomix notes that that led to 16 arrests. “Now we can see we are hitting things outside of our local area that weren’t picked up before – we just didn’t have manpower,” says Mann.

This is the first county in Florida to integrate the Active Warrant Alert System, but Mann notes that the Collier County’s sheriff’s department has signed on to use the technology as well.

“It goes through all of the databases, and highlights various information,” she says. “You can search through a limited part of databases or drill deeper.” What does she think about the semantic technology that makes all this possible? Mann cares only that it works, and works well. “I heard all the semantic stuff and I get that it is something really cool, but I’m just glad that we get these hits.”