Marisa Peacock reports that the new release of Bottlenose introduces reader and newspaper modules. She writes, “With Bottlenose 3, more than 30 new features work to improve the way users can connect with more types of social accounts, discover and respond to more than 140 kind of messages, and interact through more user friendly interfaces. Most, if not all of these new and improved features were the result of feedback from Bottlenose’s more than 50,000 beta testers, who have spent an average of 60 minutes a day using Bottlenose. Still in Beta, Bottlenose has released two completely new apps, ‘Reader’ and ‘Newspaper,’ as well as an improved version of Sonar, powered by Bottlenose’s platform, called StreamOS.” Read more

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 !

Andreas Blumauer of the Semantic Web Company reports, “PoolParty PowerTagging (PPP) is on its way: By extending Confluence’s label management, new application scenarios which make use of content recommendation and semantic indexing will be supported soon. PPP will be published at this year’s Atlassian Summit and at SemTechBiz in San Francisco at the beginning of June.”

Blumauer continues, “Tagging is still not a very popular task, especially in corporate environments. Read more

Cambridge Semantics’ new Competitive Intelligence Solution has been named Best in Show at the 2012 BioIT World Conference. The company reports, “Based on the flagship Anzo Software Suite, the Cambridge Semantics Competitive Intelligence Solution was recognized for its unique approach to helping biopharma companies handle their diverse and ever-changing information needs.” Read more

David Myer of GigaOm reports that Instagram rival EyeEm is working on a few developments of its own. Myer writes, “It may not have Instagram’s user numbers, but what EyeEm does now have is wider platform reach. On Wednesday the Berlin firm’s Windows Phone app came out, through a close tie-in with both Microsoft and Nokia. The release means EyeEm is now available on iOS, Android, Windows Phone and the web, which makes for two more platforms than its biggest rival can manage for now.” Read more

Jason Del Rey of Ad Age reports, “DG, a traditional-TV ad delivery company that moved into the online-ad space with last year’s acquisition of MediaMind, has acquired semantic ad-targeting startup Peer39 in a deal that could reach $15.5 million in cash and stock. Peer39, which is based in New York City, will get $10 million up front in addition to approximately 357,000 shares of DG stock. The acquisition also includes a $2.3 million earn out.” Read our previous coverage of Peer39 here. Read more

SemanticWeb.com and parent company WebMediaBrands recently announced a contest to earn the title of  “Top Semantic Technology Start-Up.” Today, we have two exciting announcements to make about the contest.

Deadline Extension

We have had several requests to extend the deadline, and are announcing today that we will now accept applications for the contest until April 30, 2012. We also learned of some applicants who encountered technical problems when trying to submit in the early days of the contest. We have fixed the code that caused these problems, and encourage all who experienced difficulties to try again.

Judges

We are also pleased to announce the panel of judges that will be at SemTechBiz evaluating the companies. It’s a great group, and we’re looking forward to a lively afternoon!

Left to Right, they are: Read more

Digital marketing agency BigVoice Unlimited has announced a new Big Data analysis platform. According to the company, the platform is “a comprehensive set of consumer research tools and methodologies designed to deliver more meaningful web-based consumer insight & brand information. At BigVoice our goal is to help our clients improve the accuracy and efficiency of marketing activities by providing fast, cost-effective digital solutions for consumer research, strategic planning, and measurement analytics. Our new Big Data Analysis platform utilizes patented technology to capture timely and precise consumer insight from the web and social media that can be used to more effectively reach, attract and engage consumers to accelerate business growth.” Read more

Sarah Mitroff of VentureBeat reports that Springpad, a digital notebook service that we have covered before, has released the latest version of their service for the web, iOS, and Android. Mitroff writes, “The new version is a major overhaul of the service and includes some Pinterest-inspired design elements. We all tend to save a lot of digital information these days; it’s one of the reasons Pinterest has become so popular. But before Pinterest’s time, Evernote and Springpad were competing to be the best digital notebook to save snapshots of webpages, notes, to-do lists, and anything else you want to remember later. Springpad has become outdated in recent years, with an almost cartoony-like interface.” Read more

We caught up with Bernie Spang, IBM’s Director, Strategy and Marketing, Database Software and Systems, to discuss the latest release of its enterprise data products DB2 and InfoSphere. Version 10 of both products have just been released. DB2 is used by thousands of organizations worldwide and comes in flavors ranging from a free version that maxes out at 2GB storage to systems that support large enterprises (Coca-Cola was an early adopter of DB2 version 10, and is already reporting cost-savings of over $1 Million).

The latest version of DB2 is the first in four years and represents a significant release, according to Spang, “This is a culmination of four years of effort by hundreds of engineers in IBM Research and Software Development Labs around the world; we also had more than 100 clients and over 200 business partners involved in the ‘early access program’ to help deliver this software. With the fundamental goal of delivering faster, easier, lower-cost data management.”

The early testing is showing positive results, with customers reporting “up to 10x faster data warehouse queries; freeing up to 90% of storage space using compression; and 98% code compatibility with Oracle Database, which makes it easier to migrate from Oracle to IBM software without changing data or retraining staff.”

For our readers, though, one of the more intriguing new features of DB2 is its built-in support for RDF. While semantics is not new to IBM — IBM Watson has gained particular fame — the appearance of RDF support in such a widely used, stable, enterprise database system is exciting.
Read more

Behavioral Recognition Systems (BRS Labs) has been issued a US Patent for “the company’s unique artificial intelligence based technology that serves as the foundation for its AISight® 3.0 video surveillance software platform. This is one of a series of more than 60 related U.S. Patents that have either been granted, are pending, or are in process.”

BRS Labs President John Frazzini commented, “The video surveillance technology we have invented is distinctly and materially different from the simple recognition capabilities found in video analytics solutions currently available from a number of vendors in the physical security market… Read more