Alex Howard of O’Reilly Radar recently shared examples of great data journalism from across the globe. He writes, “When I wrote that Radar was investigating data journalism and asked for your favorite examples of good work, we heard back from around the world. I received emails from Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Canada and Italy that featured data visualization, explored the role of data in government accountability, and shared how open data can revolutionize environmental reporting. A tweet pointed me to a talk about how R is being used in the newsroom… Several other responses are featured at more length below. After you read through, make sure to also check out this terrific Ignite talk on data journalism recorded at this year’s Newsfoo in Arizona.” Read more

Miguel Paz of the Idea Lab recently announced that Poderopedia, a data journalism project that we have reported on recently, went into public beta last week. Paz writes, “We are pleased to invite you to Poderopedia, a project backed by Knight Foundation through its News Challenge 2011. We believe that Poderopedia will save reporters time in their reporting and will help citizens understand the relationships between people, companies and organizations that influence our daily lives. We know our 3,000 pre-registered users have been waiting several months, and therefore we want to thank them and you for your patience and support through this invitation to browse our site and review the profiles of individuals, businesses and most influential organizations in our country.” Read more

Some in the Semantic Technology community have pointed out that from a development perspective, Semantic Technologies are well suited for an agile approach to programming, and we will be discussing that idea more in future here at SemanticWeb.com. Today, however, we’re taking a look at some novel thoughts on agile development of a standard, thanks to guest contributor, Andreas Gebhard. He is Director, Editorial at Getty Images, and Board member of the IPTC.

We caught up with Gebhard at the recent Semantic Technology & Business Conference in New York, where he initially shared this idea with us.

He has expanded on these ideas in a post on the Getty Images blog. As Gebhard says, “I want to tell you the story of how we got there in just about a year — tremendously fast, in the world of standards.”

We re-print the post in its entirety below with thanks to the author and Getty Images.

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Miguel Paz of the Idea Lab recently discussed how the team behind Poderopedia, a project we have covered previously, has been going through a period “full of learning, making mistakes, correcting them, and learning again in a never-ending iteration process. In the beginning of November, we started our private beta testing with friends and family, fixing bugs and updating the platform in order to release our public beta in December. When we launch, we’ll include feedback tools on our website to gather your ideas and suggestions. We’ll also include basic guidelines on how to create a local chapter of Poderopedia in other countries.” Read more

Zite, the company that recently sold to CNN for $20 million, has launched version 2.0 of the company’s iPhone and iPad application: “For our current fans, don’t worry: we’ve kept all of the things you love about Zite. Our underlying discovery engine still looks at millions of articles each day and create a magazine unique to you based on your personal interests. You’ll discover interesting articles to read that you would have never found otherwise. And we’ll continue to bring you the best of your favorite magazines, newspapers, authors, blogs, and videos. But today, we’ve made Zite a lot better. Zite 2.0 is the evolution of Zite from a personalized magazine to an intelligent magazine. In Zite 2.0 we’ve focused on making Zite smarter than ever, introducing discovery at every turn, and designing Zite to be both beautiful and smart.” Read more

Good news for media startups: “Fusing public media values with Silicon Valley entrepreneurship, KQED, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and Public Radio Exchange (PRX) today launched Matter Ventures, a start-up accelerator supporting media entrepreneurs building a more informed, connected, and empowered society. Reflecting their commitment to media innovation and leadership development, founding partners KQED and Knight Foundation have each invested $1.25 million in the initial $2.5 million fund, while PRX will provide strategic and management support to Matter.” Read more

This week, Manning Publications is launching the book “Linked Data,” by David Wood, Marsha Zaidman, Luke Ruth, and Michael Hausenblas.

As part of that launch, Manning is offering a one-day 50% discount for readers of SemanticWeb.com. The discount applies to all versions of “Linked Data”: eBook, print books, and Manning’s “MEAP” books (more on MEAP below). To claim the discount, use coupon code “12linksw” when ordering.

This offer expires at 11:59 pm (US EST) on December 6, so if you’re interested, act fast!

About the Book (description by David Wood):

The flexible, unstructured nature of the Web is being extended to act as a global database of structured data. Linked Data is a standards-driven model for representing structured data on the Web that gives developers, publishers, and information architects a consistent, predictable way to publish, merge and consume data. The Linked Data model offers the potential to standardize Web data in the same way that SQL standardized large-scale commercial databases. Linked Data has been adopted by many well-known institutions, including Google, Facebook, IBM, Oracle and government agencies, as well as popular Open Source projects such as Drupal.

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News360 recently launched a “reimagined edition of its popular free newsreading app to iPhones everywhere. First unveiled for iPads and Android tablets in July, the new edition of News360 boasts a completely redesigned interface that’s as beautiful as it is smart, revamped personalization technology that learns from your every move online and in the app, and deeper customization options that empower you to make the newsreading experience your own. These overhauls have earned high marks from users, reviewers and publishers alike and have delivered on the promise of keeping you well-informed about the most important, personally relevant news of the day.” Read more

The African News Innovation Challenge winners have been announced, and among the victors is openAFRICA, a semantic toolkit for analyzing access to information requests. According to the team behind the project, openAFRICA aims to “Create a standardised digital management toolkit for African freedom-of-information organisations and investigative journalists, on top of a pan-African semantic document repository.”

Asked to describe the real world challenges that their project solves, the creators stated, “Journalists and citizens routinely ‘liberate’ government information when they make successful requests using access to information laws. But, this information immediately disappears again from public consciousness, because it is not digitally captured in a centralised, searchable, public repository. Public knowledge therefore remains fragmented, with media and civic watchdogs constantly ‘reinventing the wheel’.” Read more

Following successful runs in London and New York City, the Semantic Technology & Business Conference (#SemTechBiz) is returning to San Francisco June 2-5, 2013. Today, we are pleased to announce that the Call For Presentations is open for submissions.

The deadline to enter is January 18, 2013, and we are currently seeking proposals for:

• Conference Sessions – 45 minutes
• Panel Sessions – 45 minutes (must propose moderator and panelists, even if not finalized)
• Tutorials – 3 hours
• Lightning Talks – 5 minutes

What are we looking for?

We are interested in a wide variety of presentations, from business and consumer applications through to fundamental technology discussions.  Over the years, the emphasis of the program has gradually shifted more towards practical experience as Semantic Technologies have matured and gained adoption both on the web and in enterprise systems, so we’re very much looking for semantic case studies and project experience. If you are developing a tool, or using semantics to create an exciting new start-up company, we want to hear from you as well.  Keep in mind that precedence will be given to sessions that offer an interactive element and are designed to provide actionable ideas (get to the heart of the matter!). And having said all that, we still keep time-slots available for cutting edge research and thought-leadership.  So SemTechBiz really is an all-inclusive program for the community.

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