Archives: June 2010

When Google announced Rich Snippets just over one year ago on May 13 2009, they lit a fuse. A year later we saw the explosion when Facebook and Twitter both made moves to support Semantic Web standards. Who could have forecast that?

We are now seeing the great convergence. The new web looks a lot like a triumvirate – Google, Facebook and Twitter. There are other huge companies doing great stuff, but this triumvirate moves the market and defines standards adoption. All three do social and all three do search. So they all both publish and consume content.

On April 21st, we wrote “Facebook just nailed the semantic web“. (Actually, we quoted Alex Iskold’s tweet on that subject and then tried to figure out and explain why he was right).

Since then, we have seen momentum around Twitter Annotations and Google is now talking about how much traction they are getting with Rich Snippets.

In this post we try to dig below the covers to see how this might play out in the emerging new battle for leadership of the semantic search engine market.

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10 days ago we reported that Facebook Now Publishes RDFa and explained why that was significant. Today we see that support deepen as they get to grips with some of the details of the standards.

This comes via Stéphane Corlosquet and his meeting with David Recordon at Facebook. Stephane is an ex DERI Semantic Web specialist working on Drupal. As we have reported, Drupal 7 has native support for RDFa.

The details are here in a Google Group. What is significant is Facebook’s support for standards. You can see why when the standard is represented by the Drupal community. These developers and webmasters need to be able to publish and subscribe to content in standard formats. Having to learn RDFa is big enough job when this is for hundreds of thousands of webmasters. But having to learn multiple variants would be bad news for everybody.

Good news for RDFa, Facebook and Drupal.

If you want a quick lesson in RDFa, watch this 10 minute video:

AdaptiveBlue is bringing out a new iPhone app – it will sport features that have been added to the web-based GetGlue service, which also is available at some 300 web sites through an add-on. Noteworthy among them is “checking in” your current pursuit into the service, and normalized hash tag output for Twitter, a step to supporting Twitter Annotations.

AdaptiveBlue maintains a semantic database of objects across the web, so it knows that a certain book, for instance, is a specific object wherever it appears on connected web sites, explains vp of business development Fraser Kelton. So, when you check in that you’re involved in a book, movie, or bottle of wine, for that matter, you are checking into that as a singular object on the web. “The hash tag output to Twitter — that makes it easy within the Twitter service to collapse around that object,” says AdaptiveBlue CEO Alex Iskold. “The semantic infrastructure angle is that people can be using different Twitter tools to post about movies, etc. but really none of this is structured in any way. But with GetGlue it’s not ambiguous at all, because when you check in you check into that book. On hundreds of sites we support that’s all connected it’s not fragmented as with other tools.”
The social network player has previously waded into the iPhone app waters with an app that was mainly focused on presenting users’ personal data – books, movies, etc. – to take on the go. But its launch of Getglue.com since then increased the focus both on sharing and rating content you’re consuming as well as getting recommendations and suggestions based on your personal tastes, and this new version based on that service aims at a longer shelf life with such abilities. Check-in seems a good choice to extend to a mobile platform – sitting in front of your TV you can whip out your mobile phone to let your friends know what you’ve just turned on, earn points and stickers as you connect into that content, and push your status about how you’re entertaining yourself or what you’re thinking about out as a structured entry to your Facebook stream. Also it can tap into your Twitter stream, with those automatically output hash tags.

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Pioneering Partners Include Moreover Technologies, Morris Communications, Magus Ltd. and Prefix Technologies

SemTech 2010 – San Francisco, Calif. – June 24, 2010 – Thomson Reuters today cited four innovative companies that are pioneering the large-scale and commercial use of its OpenCalais service to enrich and optimize digital content. They include Moreover Technologies, a world-leading media aggregation and monitoring provider; Morris Communications, a top-tier regional publisher; Magus Ltd., the British pioneer of enterprise website governance, and Prefix, South Africa’s leading Content Management System (CMS).

“Two and a half years in, we are extremely pleased to be part of leading publishing platforms and media monitoring solutions around the world,” said Tom Tague, OpenCalais Initiative lead, Thomson Reuters. “We’re processing five million documents per day and storing 90 billion triples, which may well be the world’s largest collection of structured facts and events. It reflects a growing percentage of the English language news articles, blog posts and social media status updates posted every day.”

Joining CBS Interactive / CNET, Huffington Post, The New Republic, The Nation and more than 50 other publishers, entrepreneurs and service providers using OpenCalais are:

Moreover Technologies. One of the original news aggregators on the Web, Moreover provides companies with “news and views” in a comprehensive solution for business intelligence, mainstream media and social media monitoring. It aggregates, refines and delivers millions of daily articles, blog posts and social media updates from more than a million editorially vetted sources spanning 800 searchable industries in 100-plus countries, and 50-plus languages.

Moreover Technologies uses OpenCalais to categorize and tag news and blog content as well as social media status updates to provide superior mainstream and social media monitoring services to clients of all kinds.

"Equally important to quantity of information is quality," said Paul Farrell, President of Moreover Technologies. “It’s imperative to be able to retrieve rapidly the most relevant and pinpointed results possible from vast repositories of business intelligence. Our partnership with OpenCalais substantially enhances our ability to make sure clients get the right results at the right time.”

Morris Communications. A leading southeastern media company, Morris Communications has newspaper, magazine, outdoor advertising, radio, book publishing and online properties. Its digital arm, Morris DigitalWorks, turned to OpenCalais while digitizing the archives of its 13 daily newspapers, including the Augusta Chronicle; the Florida Times-Union; the Savannah Morning News; the noted local Journalism experiment Bluffton Today and more.

"We strive to be unrivaled in the delivery of local news and information to our readership in every possible medium. So it is essential to be able to repurpose our content for any number of uses – including digital distribution on the Web, mobile, etc.,” said Michael Romaner, President, Morris DigitalWorks. “OpenCalais has helped us achieve that mission in two ways. By improving the relevancy of our content for Web searches, we have increased both our overall page-views from search engines, and our retention of those readers once they arrive. We look forward to expanding on this successful alliance."

Magus Ltd.Magus Ltd.  Magus is the pioneering UK company behind ActiveStandards™: the market-leading SaaS platform for enterprise website governance used by Unilever, Shell, Philips, ING and more. ActiveStandards takes web content governance to a new level by enabling companies to coordinate the policies, processes and people that underpin their web presence within a single integrated framework, and monitor and manage compliance.

Magus uses OpenCalais to power ActiveStandards’ “Content Insight Reports” – a suite of powerful semantic reports which extend the reach of online governance by providing visibility and control over unstructured content.

“Semantic Web technologies are revolutionizing the way people find and use information online,” said Simon Lande, CEO, Magus Ltd. “Our alliance with OpenCalais enables us to leverage this technology to bring about a step-change in the way that companies monitor and manage their online content. We see it as a revolution in content governance.”

Prefix Technologies. Provider of South Africa’s most popular off- and online CMS, Prefix is a trusted Web-applications development company. Prefix solutions enable magazine, newspaper and online publishers to collect, store, share and monetize content in new ways that increase competitive advantage while improving efficiency and reducing costs.

Prefix uses OpenCalais as a processing layer for Preditor’s Semantic Tagging Engine. With a powerful tagging rules toolkit on a per-magazine basis, Preditor customers with multiple magazines on Preditor are able to draw content out of their archives and build smart links across a the network for their readers. In one case study, they’ve scanned through and linked over 10 years of archives.

“We’ve seen significant increases in archive monetization for our customers with our OpenCalais implementation. Equally, it’s been incredible to explore new ideas in both the print and digital worlds to create content packages through semantic discovery,” said Josh Adler, CEO, Prefix. “We feel we’ve interpreted the semantic opportunity in a unique way for traditional media and OpenCalais opened that door for us."

About the OpenCalais Initiative
The OpenCalais initiative supports the interoperability of content and advances Thomson Reuters mission to deliver intelligent information by connecting all the world’s business-relevant content. It offers free metadata generation services, developer tools and an automatic connection to the Linked Data cloud.  Found at OpenCalais.com (http://www.OpenCalais.com), OpenCalais is the fastest, easiest and most accurate way to tag the people, places, companies, facts and events in content to increase its value, accessibility and interoperability on the Web.  For a quick and easy demo of how OpenCalais can add intelligence to your content, visit http://viewer.opencalsis.com, paste in a news story and hit submit."

About Thomson Reuters
Thomson Reuters is the world's leading source of intelligent information for businesses and professionals. We combine industry expertise with innovative technology to deliver critical information to leading decision makers in the financial, legal, tax and accounting, healthcare and science and media markets, powered by the world's most trusted news organization. With headquarters in New York and major operations in London and Eagan, Minnesota, Thomson Reuters employs 55,000 people and operates in over 100 countries. For more information, go to thomsonreuters.com.

This is part 3 of our investigation into the impact of semantic web technology on accounting, financial reporting and business intelligence. Here are Posts 1 and 2. This is one of the markets we look at in our Creative Destruction 7 Act Play series.

Image coutesy Flickr and Bill Sheridan

Specifically we look at XBRL adoption as the driver. There are some companies working on applying broader semantic web to enterprise financial systems. However the traction here looks limited, for reasons that we will explore in this post.

As we outlined in our earlier post on the XBRL Triple Play, the driver for XBRL is simple – regulatory pressure. You have to use XBRL to keep regulators around the world happy. It is just a “cost of doing business”.

This is part 3 of our investigation into the impact of semantic web technology on accounting, financial reporting and business intelligence. Here are Posts 1 and 2. This is one of the markets we look at in our Creative Destruction 7 Act Play series.

Image coutesy Flickr and Bill Sheridan

Specifically we look at XBRL adoption as the driver. There are some companies working on applying broader semantic web to enterprise financial systems. However the traction here looks limited, for reasons that we will explore in this post.

As we outlined in our earlier post on the XBRL Triple Play, the driver for XBRL is simple – regulatory pressure. You have to use XBRL to keep regulators around the world happy. It is just a “cost of doing business”.

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David Recordon, Senior Open Programs Manager of Facebook and best-selling Author, David Siegel will keynote the conference.

San Francisco, CA (June 24, 2010) — SemTech 2010 is currently taking place at the San Francisco Hilton in Union Square. Web Day 3.0 will be held Thursday, June 24, and will include a number of informative presentations by industry experts. Attendees can expect to see demos of leading semantic search engines and products, hear experts discuss the technology and its impact in the industry, meet the world’s leading developers of Web 3.0, and understand how Web 3.0 technologies are changing web development.

Presented by co-chairs Tony Shaw and Dave McComb, this year’s program is the most extensive to date. Over 1,200 attendees are expected, including industry experts, researchers, analysts, content providers, developers, and technology enthusiasts.

"Interest in semantic technology is on the rise," Shaw said. "Early numbers indicate a 30% increase in conference attendance. The world wants to understand where the Web is going and semantics play an imperative role in that."

Highlights of Web Day 3.0 will include:

• Keynote by David Siegel, author of Power of Pull, Pull: The Business Shift Behind the Web
• Keynote by David Recordon of Facebook on their new Open Graph protocol
• Real-Time SemanticWeb with Twitter Annotations, Joshua Shinaview of RPI – Tetherless World Constellation and Jans Aasman of Franz
• Building Web 3.0 Web Sites, Mark Windholtz of AgileDNA, John Walker of Semantic Clarity, and Mark Birbeck of Backplane, Ltd.
• Applying Semantic Extensions and New Service to Drupal, Daniel Hladky of Ontos AG
• Comprehensive Validation: Pragmatically Joing the “Web of Data”, the Easy Supported Way, Giovanni Tummarello of Digital Enterprise Research Institute (DERI)
• Drupal and the Semantic Web: from RDF to Whitehouse.gov, Jeff Walpole of Phase2 Technology
• Semantic Web Tools for Video and Social Change, Hannah Eaves of ViewChange.org
• Google Rich Snippets, Kavi Goel and Pravir Gupta of Google
• The Personal Data Locker, David Boardman of Atigeo, David Siegel author of The Power of Pull, Von Wright of AT&T, Drummond Reed of International Card Foundation & Open Identity Exchange, Chris Messina of Google, and Kaliya Hamlin of Identity Commons
• Search Day – featuring a dozen search sessions
• PitchSlam – Startups pitch their ideas to VCs and analysts
• Mergers and Acquisitions panel with VCs, acquirers, and acquired companies
• Exhibits open all day

SemTech represents a full spectrum of business, government, and consumer activity taking place within the field of semantic technology and brings together the most practical and advanced solutions in the industry.

To register for the conference and to see a full schedule, visit http://semtech2010.semanticuniverse.com To register for press credentials, visit http://semtech2010.semanticuniverse.com/press.htm

About SemTech
SemTech is the world's largest conference on semantic technologies. It is the only event focused on the commercialization of semantic technologies, bringing the most recognized names, knowledge, leadership, and innovation in the semantic community together at one location. SemTech is owned and operated by Semantic Universe–the semantic community’s trusted information resource. For more information please visit SemanticUniverse.com, email info@semanticuniverse.com, or call (310) 337-2616.

Boulder, Colorado, June 23, 2010 –The NBJ Summit (www.nbjsummit.com) announced it will play host to eight-time Olympic medalist Apolo Ohno at the 2010 NBJ Summit. The American short track speed skating competitor will give the closing keynote speech at the 2010 event on July 23rd. Apolo is the most decorated American Winter Olympic athlete of all time and one of only four Americans who have won three medals in a single Winter Olympic games. In addition, Ohno is a principal with 8 Zone, a dietary supplement company.

Friday’s line-up will also include a morning keynote address by Kevin Harrington, a pioneer in the direct response television industry and a panel discussion with experts from leading non-retail channels which account for over $22 billion of nutrition industry sales. The executive retreat occurs July 20-23 at the St. Regis Monarch Beach Resort.

"I am especially proud of this year’s line-up of speakers and panelists" said Patrick Rea, Co-Chair of The NBJ Summit and Publisher of Nutrition Business Journal. "This year’s NBJ Summit will deliver on our theme – Investing Today to Ensure our Tomorrow – and offer our executive attendees an unparalled opportunity to network with industry leaders one-on-one."

To register, CEOs and leading executives are encouraged to go to www.nbjsummit.com/register immediately.  Less than 20 seats remain for attendees at The NBJ Summit.

Friday’s agenda will include the following sessions:

Opening Keynote: Kevin Harrington, CEO, TVGoods.com

Thriving Beyond the Shelf: Non-Retail Channel Strategies – Risks & Rewards
Speakers:
Joe Chang, President, Pharmanex
Kevin Harrington, CEO, TVGoods.com
Edward Hauck, President, Healthy Directions
Elizabeth Francis, CMO, Intelligent Beauty
Patrick Rea, Publisher and Editorial Director – Nutrition Business Journal
Closing Keynote: Apolo Ohno, American Winter Olympic Athlete & Eight-time Olympic Medalist

The full agenda, speaker list and speaker bios can be viewed at www.nbjsummit.com/agenda.

The NBJ Summit is produced by New Hope Natural Media, a division of Penton Media, and Nutrition Business Journal. New Hope Natural Media (www.newhope.com), a division of the Penton Media, Inc., is the leading media resource and information provider for the natural, organic and healthy products industry with print, in-person/event, and e-business products and services. Penton Media, Inc. is the largest independent business-to-business media company in the U.S., serving more than six million business professionals every month. The company's market-leading brands are focused on 30 industries and include 113 trade magazines, 145 Web sites, 150 industry trade shows and conferences, and more than 500 information data products. Headquartered in New York City, the privately held company is owned by MidOcean Partners and U.S. Equity Partners II, an investment fund sponsored by Wasserstein & Co., LP, and its co-investors. For additional information on the company and its businesses, visit www.penton.com.

Nutrition Business Journal (www.nutritionbusinessjournal.com) is an executive newsletter for decision-makers in the natural, nutrition and complementary & alternative health industries.  The singular focus of NBJ's research and editorial team to the strategic issues of the nutrition industry has made NBJ the leading business intelligence resource for subscribers since 1996.

SAN FRANCISCO, CA–(Marketwire – June 23, 2010) –  Expert System, leading provider of semantic software that searches, discovers, classifies and interprets text information, today announces the official debut of the Semantic Valley Consortium…

SAN FRANCISCO, CA–(Marketwire – June 23, 2010) -Expert System announced its COGITO Monitor product is available as a platform. CRIBIS, a CRIF financial company in Europe, is partnering with Expert System to offer COGITO Monitor platform to businesses looking to flag and identify consumer sentiment during economically tumultuous times…

At around 1.10 in this excellent 14 minute introduction to the Semantic Web, Clay Shirky makes a provocative point:

“If I was going to start a news business tomorrow, I would start a business that was not designed to produce one new bit of news.”

Web 3.0 from Kate Ray on Vimeo.

That is heresy for publishers. It sounds like aggregation and for goodness sake we have enough of that already! In fact Clay goes on to mention aggregation. But before we dismiss aggregation, imagine aggregation that is actually useful as a filter. Imagine in other words a startup that delivers on the mission:

“Aggregation that does not suck”

I don’t like the term aggregation. Filter is more positive. We just need better filters.

No, sadly I have not yet discovered that magic aggregation/filter service. But this post will explore:

• why publishers hate aggregators,

• why Clay Shirky is right,

• what the new publishing stack looks like,

• what role the Semantic Web can play in this.

At around 1.10 in this excellent 14 minute introduction to the Semantic Web, Clay Shirky makes a provocative point:

“If I was going to start a news business tomorrow, I would start a business that was not designed to produce one new bit of news.”

Web 3.0 from Kate Ray on Vimeo.

That is heresy for publishers. It sounds like aggregation and for goodness sake we have enough of that already! In fact Clay goes on to mention aggregation. But before we dismiss aggregation, imagine aggregation that is actually useful as a filter. Imagine in other words a startup that delivers on the mission:

“Aggregation that does not suck”

I don’t like the term aggregation. Filter is more positive. We just need better filters.

No, sadly I have not yet discovered that magic aggregation/filter service. But this post will explore:

• why publishers hate aggregators,

• why Clay Shirky is right,

• what the new publishing stack looks like,

• what role the Semantic Web can play in this.

Read more