The Software & Information Industry Association this year debuted a category for Best Semantic Technology Solution in its 2013 SIIA CODiE Awards. Two products were finalists in the category (see our story here), and yesterday the winner was announced. It was the Luxid Content Enrichment Platform from TEMIS Inc, which is used by publishers to automate the extraction of entities, relationships, concepts and topics from their digital assets, and augment content enrichment and linking.

It won out over finalist Elsevier with its ClinicalKey solution for helping doctors and clinicians search Elsevier’s medical and surgical content smarter and faster. ClinicalKey maps content to Elsevier’s proprietary medical taxonomy, and builds relationships using a semantic framework to faster and more clinically relevant answers. Elsevier, by the way, just ended the voting for its own ClinicalKey Key Innovator Awards, with the prize being a $10,000 grant to a U.S.-based hospital, medical school or institution that has demonstrated the most innovative use of information and technology to save lives and improve patient care.

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Asina Pornwasin of The Nation reports, “In the second country to launch the iSnap multimedia augmented reality (AR) capability after Malaysia, Nation Multimedia Group’s three national newspapers – The Nation, Kom Chad Luek and Krungthep Turakij – will enable readers to watch video, scan through more photos and graphics, play games, and engage in social media communication as well as interactive advertising.  People can read newspapers with the iSnap multimedia capability through smart phones with the iPhone and Android ‘Nation News’ app from February 4. Nation News already has a download base of 208,000, which is expected to swell.” Read more

Matt Shearer of the BBC recently reported that the BBC’s News Lab team will begin exploring linked data technologies. He writes, “Hi I’m Matt Shearer, delivery manager for Future Media News. I manage the delivery of the News Product and I also lead on BBC News Labs. BBC News Labs is an innovation project which was started during 2012 to help us harness the BBC’s wider expertise to explore future opportunities. Generally speaking BBC News believes in allowing creative technologists to innovate and influence the direction of the News product. For example the delivery of BBC News’ responsive design mobile service started in 2011 when we made space for a multidiscipline project to explore responsive design opportunities for BBC News. With this in mind the BBC News team setup News Labs to explore linked data technologies.” Read more

Barbara Starr of Search Engine Land recently posed the question, is Google hijacking semantic markup and structured data? She writes, “In 2012, I started a series, How The Major Search And Social Engines Are Using The Semantic Web, which took us to a point in time around September 2012. Since then, there have been further interesting developments. In this article, I am going to focus on recent developments that are search engine and/or Google specific, then take a further look back in search engine history with the assumption (for you history and strategy lovers,) that a successful strategy used once, may well be used again in similar circumstances.” Read more

Ivan Herman of the W3C reports, “The W3C RDF Working Group has published a Working Draft of RDF 1.1 Concepts and Abstract Syntax. RDF 1.1 Concepts and Abstract Syntax defines an abstract syntax (a data model) which serves to link all RDF-based languages and specifications. The abstract syntax has two key data structures: RDF graphs are sets of subject-predicate-object triples, where the elements may be IRIs, blank nodes, or datatyped literals. They are used to express descriptions of resources. RDF datasets are used to organize collections of RDF graphs, and comprise a default graph and zero or more named graphs. This document also introduces key concepts and terminology, and discusses datatyping and the handling of fragment identifiers in IRIs within RDF graphs.” Read more

Anders Gustafsson, CEO of Zebra Technologies recently posed the question, is the Internet of Things all hype, or is it a reality? He writes, “The discussion around [the Internet of Things] typically has been about the possibilities — the big ‘what ifs,’ particularly as it relates to consumers. There are many interesting ideas that will offer new conveniences and life-changing applications. We talk about ‘what if’ we could connect the Internet to the things in our everyday life. At the 2013 International CES last week, we heard a lot about Internet-connected crockpots, washing machines and other home appliances. In a nutshell, it’s about using data to make objects smarter and more responsive to our needs.” Read more

Dara Karr of Cnet.com reports that the Wikimedia Foundation is set to launch a new ad-free travel website, Wikivoyage. Karr writes, “Want to know more about the German spa city called Baden Baden, or ‘Bathing Bathing?’ Or how to get to Khajuraho — an Indian town known for its ancient erotic rock carvings? All this and more will be in the Wikimedia Foundation’s new travel site, called Wikivoyage. A bare-bones version of the site has already been up and running since September, but the official launch of the filled-out site is tentatively scheduled for January 15, according to Skift.” Read more

Goutam Das of Business Today India recently discussed the fascinating steps that Balaji Lakshmanan, founder of Geeky Technology & Consulting is taking with machine-to-machine computing. Das writes, “Men double his age could easily get an inferiority complex looking at 34-year-old Balaji Lakshmanan’s resume. He has written and reviewed international papers on robotics, taught 5,000 students through workshops and has two provisional international patents. He has been ‘robotic consultant’ for a Tamil film featuring a superhero, Mugamoodi, and has delivered robots to the Indian Army. He also runs Geeky Technology & Consulting, whose domain name, www.imakerobots.com, once again underlines his specialisation.” Read more

Karen Coyle recently analyzed a new release of OCLC metadata records. She writes, “OCLC recently released a file of 1.2 million metadata records for the most widely held items in its catalog. These are all items with 250 library holdings or more. I created a list on WorldCat of the top 50, mostly out of curiosity. I was quite surprised at the results, however. Here’s how it breaks down: 16 periodicals, with Time and Newsweek being numbers 1 and 2, respectively; 29 kid and YA books, four of which (and very high even in this small list) from the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series; 5 adult books.”

Coyle goes on, “The five adult books are: (1) McCullough, D. G. (1992). Truman. New York: Simon & Schuster. (2) Brown, D. (2003). The Da Vinci code: A novel. New York: Doubleday. (3) Johnson, S. (1998). Who moved my cheese?: An a-mazing way to deal with change in your work and in your life. New York: Putnam.  (4) Haley, A. (1976). Roots. Garden City, N.Y: Doubleday.  (5) Peters, T. J., & Waterman, R. H. (1982). In search of excellence: Lessons from America’s best-run companies. New York: Harper & Row. This small set gives me many ideas of things to investigate in the full set.”

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Image: Courtesy OCLC

Aron Kramer of The Guardian recently predicted long-term changes to the world that will occur in 2013. He writes, “A healthy dose of scepticism is in order whenever one attempts to foresee the future. Events usually make great sense in retrospect, but are difficult to predict at the time. The daily hum of headlines, breaking news and Twitterfeeds may distract us from the underlying changes taking place. With this in mind, the best way to think about 2013 is to consider the long-term changes that are reshaping our world – some with visible effect, and some under the radar.” Read more