SAN FRANCISCO, May 1, 2013 /PRNewswire/ — Skimlinks, the leader in content monetization, today announced the launch of two new products aimed at helping publishers earn even more revenue from their content.

Skimlinks Showcases is a near-text unit that populates automatically with products mentioned in content. Leveraging Skimlink’s SkimWords technology to accurately identify product attributes, Showcases provide a visual way to complement publishers’ content with additional revenue-generating potential. Read more

Matthew Syrett of PBS Media Shift recently shared his thoughts on the flaws of Facebook’s graph search. He writes, “With Graph Search, Facebook intends to mine our social networks to unlock knowledge stored among our online friends to create a recommendation search engine. Instead of crawling the Internet to build search indices, Graph Search will use our social media connections, likes, and Check-ins to make search indices to respond to our queries. Using Graph Search, we should be able to find restaurants that have been checked into or liked by our Facebook friends. We can discover movies based upon the likes of our connections, or relevant music. The project strives to be an alternative to everyday search queries we all do to discover things to do or get in our lives — all validated by people we know and trust, and not by unknown reviewers or a faceless algorithm.” Read more

TVTechnology.com reports, “Veveo, a provider of semantic technologies to bridge the usability gap in connected devices and applications with intelligent search, discovery and personalization solutions, has been awarded four new patents by the United States Patent and Trademark Office, bringing its total count of issued patents to 38. The new patents relate to improving search experiences in the context of current usability trends around social, device based universal search, or semantic and intelligent searching capabilities.  The patent entitled ‘User interface methods and systems for selecting and presenting content based on user relationships’ (USPTO number 8,423,583) covers incremental search capabilities based on relationships of users.” Read more

Stuart Dredge of The Guardian writes, “Google has launched its Google Now service for iOS devices, as an update to its existing Google Search app. Accessed by swiping upwards from the bottom of the app’s homescreen, Google Now learns about its user through their activities and their history in various Google services. It then serves up weather forecasts, traffic reports, boarding passes, sports scores and other information when they may be relevant. On iOS, it’s the sole new feature in version 3.0.0 of the Google Search app. Available for Android devices since the Android 4.1 Jelly Bean software was released in 2012, Google Now’s iOS incarnation has been subject to speculation this year.” Read more

Courtesy: Flickr/ Sean MacEntee

Earlier this month word came of a revision to schema.org: Version 1.0a additions, according to this posting from Dan Brickley, include the Datasets vocabulary, and some supporting utility terms for describing schema.org types, properties and their inter-relationships. One of the gems in the update are additions related to the Learning Resource Metadata Initiative (LRMI), an effort led by the Association of Educational Publishers and Creative Commons, which has as its goals making it easier to publish, discover and delivery quality educational resources on the web. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation helped fund the work.

With schema.org serving as a catalyst for its work, the LRMI developed a common metadata framework for tagging online learning resources, with the idea of having that metadata schema incorporated into Schema.org. With that now the case, it’s possible for publishers or curators of educational content to use LRMI markup and have that metadata recognized by the major search engines.

“One of the reasons why education was one of the first extensions of schema.org is that the education industry is going through some very interesting times,” says Madi Weland Solomon, head of Data Architecture Standards at education company Pearson plc, one of the LRMI project launch partners.

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Barbara Starr of Search Engine Land reports, “In a June 2010 Semantic Web Meetup in San Diego, Peter Mika of Yahoo!’s research division gave a presentation entitled, ‘The future face of Search is Semantic for Facebook, Google and Yahoo!’ As the title suggests, the presentation focused on the ever-growing use of semantic markup as a means for helping computers parse and understand content. The talk focused on what was then the current state of the Semantic Web, as well as upcoming formats/technologies in development and the research being done in the field of semantic search.” Read more

Steve O’Hear of TechCrunch reports, “The idea of matching prospective dates based on shared interests is about as old as dating itself. But understanding how one set of interests relate to another, certainly at scale, is arguably something that machines can do a lot more efficiently than humans, so why not harness that capability for match-making purposes. Loveflutter, which soft-launched in New York last month, and gets a UK push today, aims to do just that. Powered by Freebase, the 37-million strong open database of people, places and things acquired by Google in 2010 and now part of the search giant’s Knowledge Graph, the online dating site connects people based on shared interests.” Read more

Raleigh, NC (PRWEB) April 22, 2013 — SEMLogic® (http://www.semlogic.com), a revolutionary online writing tool, has launched its Search Engine Marketing + Logic (SEMLogic®) software to the public. An enterprise solution previously available only to large corporate clients, SEMLogic® is now publicly available online in a Software-as-a-Service platform. It uses high-level semantic analysis of search engine rankings to provide specific SEO guidance for any keyword, in any industry. Created primarily to help create persuasive and informative copy based on SEO recommendations, SEMLogic® also provides a keyword finder, keyword analysis and text editor to ease the entire process of building, launching and maintaining a website that ranks above the competition. Read more

Tommy Landry of Search Engine Journal recently discussed Google’s semantic search endeavors and the state of search in general. He writes, “Semantic Search aims to get at the real intent of the query, rather than simply matching a page to a search string. A good analogy is that of a headhunter or free agent recruiter. Have you ever received an email about an ‘exciting opportunity’ for which you were completely unqualified? Did they say your resume suggested you’re a fit? This is a case of blind matching of keywords with no qualitative overlay. Talk about inexact science! Simple logic suggests that semantic search will be superior to traditional, index-based approaches. Let’s look at some of the ways that Google has implemented Semantic Search.” Read more

Nick Vivion of Tnooz reports, “The company formerly known as Swiftrank comes back with a new name and entirely new concept. The company changed its name to TravelShark in 2011, and followed a $5 million investment back in 2011 with a period of relative quiet. The company now no longer focuses on connecting hotels to travelers – it is on an ambitious mission to redefine reviews. Moving away from the arbitrary nature of the 5-star system, TravelShark distills a place into its most commonly referenced qualities. Called its ‘Essence,’ this is a wordgraph that highlights words most often used to describe a particular place. The genius here is that words are much more qualitative than stars. They deliver a much more comprehensive and descriptive view of a particular place. The star rating system has its limitations, as it is not an objective measurement of a place.” Read more