Richard Wallis is founder of Data Liberate.  A Technology Evangelist and Consultant,  he is at the forefront in promoting, explaining, and applying new and emerging Web and Semantic Web technologies in the wider information domain.  Richard is well known on the conference platform in the Semantic Web, Library, and Information Management sectors.  He is also an active blogger and regular podcaster.

2012 will be the year that Semantic Web and Linked Data technologies could go mainstream, but yet will get talked about less.  I believe this is inevitable, for a technology that is about to turn the corner, or kick up the adoption curve – choose your favourite phrase.  Like the Web itself, already adopted by technology laggards, and now recognised only as a service that facilitates being ‘in Facebook’ or streaming movies to your tablet.

To support this theory, it is interesting look at some of the recent moves taking place in my own backyard, the UK.   A couple of significant ones are coming out of the Talis stable.  Talis have been at the leading edge of Semantic Web development for much of the last decade, with a reputation for promoting the practical benefits of applying Linked Data techniques and technologies, whilst evolving their cloud-based Linked Data platform to deliver and demonstrate these benefits in their own products and services. Read more

Announcing Semantic Tech & Business Conference - San Francisco 2012

Semantic Tech & Business Conference is returning to San Francisco in June! Join us from June 3-7 for complete coverage of Big Data, Linked Data, Extreme Information Management, and Semantic Web. From breakthrough approaches to solving business problems to the big data implications of fast–evolving technologies, SemTechBiz provides you with an unparalleled interactive experience and delivers tangible business value. We're offering a special early rate when you register by February 17. Sign up now!

Oleg Shilovitsky, CEO, Inforbix recently commented on the exciting events that will be happening this year in the Semantic Web world, commenting, “One of the events I’m afraid I may miss is the upcoming SEMTECHBIZ in Berlin this February. I was catching online program and session information for the conference. One of the sessions caught my attention: The simple power of the link. Richard Wallis, technology evangelist of Kasabi will be talking about the power of linked data and some examples of implementations.” Read more

It cannot be denied that Stephen Wolfram knows data. As the person behind Mathematica and Wolfram|Alpha, he has been working with data — and the computation of that data — for a long time. As he said in his blog yesterday, “In building Wolfram|Alpha, we’ve absorbed an immense amount of data, across a huge number of domains.  But—perhaps surprisingly—almost none of it has come in any direct way from the visible internet. Instead, it’s mostly from a complicated patchwork of data files and feeds and database dumps.”

The main topic of Wolfram’s post is a proposal about the form and placement of raw data on the internet. In the post, he proposes that .data be created as a new generic Top-Level Domain (gTLD) to hold data in a “parallel construct.”

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…and we want to hear from you.

After December’s episode of the Semantic Link, we asked for your thoughts on both the topics we should cover, and the ways in which you would like to interact with the podcast. You spoke, very clearly asking for an opportunity to pose questions for the team to answer during recordings. This is that opportunity.

January’s episode of the show will be recorded this Friday, 13 January, and we’re joined by a guest with much to contribute. I’m sure he needs no introduction for most of you. Nova Spivack was behind semantic technology startup Twine, and has subsequently turned his hand to supporting a range of semantically relevant offerings such as Bottlenose (our coverage) and StreamGlider (our coverage).

Drawing upon some of Nova’s experiences, and digging further into questions that we have touched upon before, we’re going to take a look at the following topic this month:

Is it important to hide semantic smarts behind a simple user experience/interface? If not, why not? If so, how are we beginning to see that manifested?

Siri‘s obviously one example that we’ve discussed before, but there have been other examples recently that also attempt to hide significant power behind UI simplicity. Read more

Today, Experian, the global information services company, announced that it has acquired Garlik Limited, a provider of web monitoring services based in the United Kingdom. Garlik uses Semantic Web Technologies to help consumers protect themselves from the risks of identity theft and financial fraud.  At the last SemTechBiz UK Conference, Steve Harris, CTO of Garlik, presented “Combatting Online Crime with RDF.” Mr. Harris presented a compelling case of Garlik’s use of Semantic Technology throughout its offerings to support business-critical, highly sensitive production systems to financial institutions worldwide. Read more

StreamGlider, which we first covered here, made its debut yesterday. The iPad news and social reader application in its initial version debuts sans the location-aware and some of the more heavy-duty semantic topic stream smarts discussed in that piece, but newly named StreamGlider Inc. CEO Bill McDaniel – also CEO of SemantiStar, which developed the application – says to expect them in updates beginning in March. McDaniel is partners in StreamGlider with co-founder Nova Spivack, also CEO of Bottlenose among other pursuits, and co-founder John Breslin, DERI researcher, NUI Galway lecturer,  and founder of New Tech Post.

What’s in the current version that McDaniel says differentiates the software from other iPad news reader apps like Pulse and Flipboard are real-time news streams composed of mixed media – sources such as RSS, YouTube, Flickr, Google Reader, Twitter, and Facebook – so you can see news items, images, video, social media updates and more about particular content of interest, any way you like in a stream. “You can put them all together in a single stream so you can build streams to be more topic-oriented,” McDaniel says.

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Profium recently announced that the company has extended their license agreement for Profium Metadata Server (MDS) with Agence-France Presse, the oldest press agency in the world. According to the article, the value of the contract exceeds one million euros. Profium CEO Janne Saarela commented, “This extension demonstrates the good fit Profium’s products provide for delivering multimedia news in real-time. The inference capabilities of MDS product are now taken to full use when AFP matches their customers’ interests against news metadata.” Read more

This month, we present the twelfth Podcast episode in our monthly series of discussions with Semantic Web thought leaders from around the globe. In this episode, we reflect on the last year and make some predictions for 2012.

We also are making a request below for input from you, our audience, in the form of two poll questions. Please take a moment to let us know what you think! Read more

Users of Prestashop, the popular open source e-commerce package that powers over 100,ooo shops, now have easy access to semantic markup through the release of a free extension module from Makolab S.A. The extension adds markup from the GoodRelations vocabulary using RDFa syntax to the product item page templates. Read more

We are pleased to announce the preliminary program for SemTechBiz – Berlin, the latest in our growing series of regional Semantic Technology and Business Conferences. The conference will take place on 6-7 February, 2012 and like the recent regional events in London and Washington DC, this event is designed to be smaller and more focused than the large, annual SemTechBiz – San Francisco Conference. The Berlin program boasts two days of sessions aimed at showing how Semantic Technologies are being used today to help companies make money, save money, and solve business problems. There are sessions aimed at both technical and non-technical attendees.

In coming weeks, we will feature some of the presenters and companies here at SemanticWeb.com. In the meantime, the full program can be viewed here.  (Please note: there are some gaps in the program while we confirm the last few speakers.)

Registration

Significant registration discounts are available to those who register and pay prior to 13 January 2012.

Sponsorship opportunities are also available.

Companies in the USA should contact Frank Fazio at eventsales@mediabistro.com or +1.203.662.2887 for available opportunities.

Companies in Europe should contact Claudia Pacheco at claudia.pacheco@risingmedia.de or +49 89 7670 4459 for available opportunities.