Steven Rosenbaum of Forbes recently posed the question, is there too much information out there? He writes, “If anyone knows anything about the web, where it’s been and where it’s going, it’s David Weinberger.  As a co-author of the seminal Clue Train Manifesto, Weinberger gave a generation of web innovators a clue as to how the web would evolve. In Too Big To Know Weinberger sets out to argue that the very nature of information and ideas is changing, even as you flip the pages of his book.”

Rosenbaum continues, “The world was, almost since the beginning of time, built around the concept of triangular knowledge. At the bottom of  the triangle is data. Raw and unstructured.  The Knowledge Triangle presented first in 1988 by Russel Akkoff presented DIKW (Data, Information,  Knowledge, Wisdom) as the basis for our information ecology.  Weinberger says our Information Age was built on this pyramid – creating an elaborate filtering system to sort Wisdom from Data.”

Read more here.

Image: Courtesy David Weinberger

SemTechBiz is Less Than 3 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 !

Kerstin Forsberg has written an article discussing a presentation she and Frederik Malfait gave regarding the use of semantic models for CDISC-based standard and metadata management, pointing to case studies at AstraZeneca and Roche. She writes, “In AstraZeneca we have a new program called Integrative Informatics (i2) establishing the components required to let a linked data cloud grow across R&D. A key component is the URI policy for how to make for example a Clinical Study linkable by giving it a URI, that is a Uniform Resource Identifier, e.g. http://research.data.astrazeneca.com/id/clinicalstudy/D5890C00003. Read more

Today, May 9, 2012 is Global Accessibility Awareness Day (#GAAD). What started with a simple blog-post by Los Angeles Web Developer, Joe Devon, has grown to include events around the world designed to increase awareness about web accessibility issues. To read more about the day and these various activities, see the official GAAD Website and Facebook page.

According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “Today, about 50 million Americans, or 1 in 5 people, are living with at least one disability, and most Americans will experience a disability some time during the course of their lives.” In other parts of the world, this number may be significantly higher.

In the interest of full disclosure, Joe Devon is a personal friend of mine, and I must admit that if he were not, I likely wouldn’t have seen his blog post or explored the issues of accessibility as deeply as I have in recent weeks. But I have been exploring, and I’ve been surprised at what I’ve found. In my opinion, Semantic Technology and Assistive Technology are a natural fit for one another, but there seems to be very little discussion or work around the intersection of the two. I have looked, but have not found much collaboration between the two communities. I have also found few individuals who possess much knowledge about both Semantic Tech and Assistive Tech. Of course, if I’ve missed something, please let me know in the comments!

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Are you wondering why your product pages don’t stand out in search results like those from Amazon (shown below) or other competing e-commerce websites? These expanded results are commonly known as Rich Snippets (as named by Google) and are the result of having your HTML structured correctly with semantic markup. Whether you’re savvy to HTML5 and the latest design trends, or you haven’t updated your website code in years, this is article will explain why it’s important you structure your data properly utilizing semantic standards.

There are a number of ways to structure your data to make it more relevant to search engines, as well as social media sites. As an e-commerce retailer it is important to understand which of these standards you should consider including in your website. You should take some time to ensure you are implementing semantic markup, and doing it correctly. It has the power to better inform potential customers with upfront knowledge prior to landing on your site. Customers can see product reviews, pricing and stock information, and even images before clicking through to your website. This can lead to increased click-through rates, improve conversions, and generally enhance your SEO objectives.

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Remember the days before Wikipedia had all the answers? We looked things up in libraries, referring to shelf-filling encyclopaedias. We bought CD-ROMs (remember them?) full of facts and pictures and video clips. We asked people. Sometimes, school home work actually required some work more strenuous than a cut and paste. We went about our business without remembering that New Coke briefly entered our lives on this day in 1985.

Wikipedia is far from perfect, and some of the concern around its role in a wider dumbing down of thought and argument may be justified. But, despite that, it’s a remarkable achievement and a wonderful resource. Those who argued that it would never work have clearly been proven wrong. Carefully maintained processes and the core principle of the neutral point of view mostly serve contributors well.

With Wikimedia Deutschland‘s recent announcement of Wikidata, many of the early concerns about Wikipedia itself have resurfaced once again. Read more

There is a fierce debate going on in the world of the Semantic Web and Linked Data, the question being is it of fundamental importance to realising the benefits of the technology or are they just dancing on the head of a pin.    The core debate revolves around something with the stunningly opaque title of the httpRange-14 issue.

The debate has been rumbling on for years but was reignited over the last few days by proposals being submitted to the W3C to clarify and hopefully simplify things.  I use the word ignited as that what I was beginning to think my iPhone was about to do – it has been buzzing away like a bumblebee on speed over the last few days announcing the arrival of yet another passionately held opinion from a member of the respected Semantic Web/Linked Data community from Sir Tim Berners-Lee downwards.    Fortunately for those of you that do not follow the W3C’s Technical Architecture (TAG) and Linked Open Data (public-lod) mailing lists it may have gone unnoticed.

Let me try to explain, in as simple terms as possible, what the fuss is all about and why it may be important.  From my point of view, and there are many surrounding this, the issue is a combination of two problems.

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Earlier this week I spent an enjoyable hour on the phone, discussing the work done by a venerable world-class museum in making data about its collections available to a new audience of developers and app-builders. Much of our conversation revolved around consideration of obstacles and barriers, and the most intractable of those proved something of a surprise.

Reluctance amongst senior managers to let potentially valuable data walk out the door? Nope. In fact, not even close; managers pushed museum staff to adopt a more permissive license for metadata (CC0) than the one (CC-BY) they had been considering.

Reluctance amongst curators to let their carefully crafted metadata be abused and modified by non-professionals? Possibly a little bit, but apparently nothing the team couldn’t handle.

A bean-counter’s obsession with measuring every click, every query, every download, such that the whole project became bogged down in working out what to count and when (and, sadly, that really is the case elsewhere!)? Again, no. “The intention was to create a possibility” by releasing data. The museum didn’t know what adoption would be like, and sees experimentation and risk-taking as part of its role. Monitoring is light, and there’s no intention to change that.

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In 2005, I started learning about the so-called Semantic Web. It wasn’t till 2008, the same year I started my PhD, that I finally understood what the Semantic Web was really about. At the time, I made a $1000 bet with 3 college buddies that the Semantic Web would be mainstream by the time I finished my PhD. I know I’m going to win! In this post, I will argue why.

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Paul Miller recently responded to an assertion that Big Data tools trump the knowledge and experience of Data Scientists. He writes, “Data scientists are an increasingly capable bunch, and the tools at their disposal sometimes appear almost magical in their capability to derive insight. Competitions such as those run by Kaggle (more on them in a moment) clearly show that an aptitude for numbers and analysis can deliver some remarkable results, even when that analysis is being undertaken by individuals who lack specific domain expertise. But to suggest that simply ‘letting the numbers speak for themselves’ is an effective way to make real decisions is, quite simply, bonkers.” Read more

Roy Tennant recently wrote an opinion piece declaring that microdata, not RDF, will power the semantic web. Needless to say, this stirred up some strong opinions in the comments. Tennant writes, “While RDF is complex, and designed to be implemented as a stand-alone depiction of metadata, it does have an implementation that is designed for embedding in web pages: RDFa. On the other hand, microdata is relatively simple and solely designed to be embedded in web pages. While the metadata cognoscenti are in the RDF camp, Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo! have thrown their lot in with microdata by launching the Schema.org effort. Were I a betting man, I wouldn’t be backing RDF at this point.”

As we reported in November, schema.org has indicated support for both microdata and RDFa. Read more