On the way from Infochimps: Its Geo APIs that bring to developers data from open sources such as GeoNames and The National Climate Data Center, as well as licensed sources such as Locationary and Foursquare.  Now for the twist: The data marketplace is semantifying the geo data with a schema.org approach. This is just the first step in a broader plan to format all data to which its new and existing APIs provide access to in a unified way.

As CTO Flip Kromer explains it, Infochimps takes from schema.org the collection of types it defines. “That was designed for microformat markup in web pages. And we say why not take this tastefully done collection of types and make it so that it can be used by mobile phone and web developers,” he says, so that they can easily and in a unified way build on the databases to which Infochimps provides access. “That if we map that back to a JSON HTTP API world, that’s a really good thing that unlocks a lot of power for developers.”

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The Bosch Research and Technology Center is looking for a Research Engineer – Internet Technologies in Pittsburgh, PA. Responsibilities of the position include: “Identify new trends in internet technologies and evaluate their significance for BOSCH. Adapt and develop IT technologies to build up new internet enabled products and services for BOSCH. Work with BOSCH business units to elicit application- and domain-specific requirements and trends as well as develop and transfer technical solutions. Actively participate in projects underway at US and international Bosch locations.” Read more

If you missed last week’s excellent introduction to SPARQL by Bob DuCharme of TopQuadrant and the recently released Learning SPARQL, the recorded webcast is now available.  In this presentation, Bob shows how to create and run SPARQL queries. He also talks about the role that the query language can play in application development. Lastly, he looks at the range of uses people are finding for SPARQL above and beyond querying of RDF data, such as querying relational data, defining rules to enhance data quality, and more…

Watch the webcast here:

http://mediabistro.adobeconnect.com/p8mwns7kdgx/

There were some questions we did not get to during the hour, and Bob has been kind enough to answer these offline.

BONUS Q&A with Bob DuCharme:

Q: Can sparql engines integrate reasoners and reason over the data on the fly? Read more

A recent article reminds businesses that the semantic web is here and asks what they’re going to do about it. The article states, “Web 3.0 has enabled people and machines to connect, evolve, share and use knowledge. Looking even further ahead, with Web 4.0 wherein we have a self-learning intelligence, the distinctive advantage will come from the combination of semantic technologies, like text analytics, along with other analytical models that extend semantic interoperability. In other words, having feedback loops for improving models – utilizing both semantic representations along with those from areas such as data mining, forecasting, optimization, simulations, and alike. Using these technologies, organizations will create that higher-order learning that did not exist using any one of those methods in isolation.” Read more

The media industry has had a complicated relationship with the Web, and that’s putting it kindly. While other sectors pretty quickly realized ways to take advantage of that new thing called the Internet – to sell goods, accelerate supply chains, and build deeper customer relationships – established content providers spent years trying to figure it out. And many still are tussling with big issues, such as whether or not to charge for access to content.

Given the Web’s impact on their business model and their revenues, you can forgive publishers if they might prefer if the darn Internet just stood still for a few minutes and let them catch their breaths and catch up.  Since that isn’t about to happen, the thing to do is to make peace with those changes, many of them thanks to Semantic Web technologies – and figure out fast how they’re going to profit from them.

They’ll have an opportunity to do just that at the upcoming Semantic Web Media Summit in New York City, whose speakers will include Michael Dunn, VP and CTO at Hearst Interactive Media on the topic of why media companies should be interested in this critical part of the Web 3.0 world.

Dunn sees a number of reasons for using Semantic Web technologies as the means for structuring the wealth of content that publishers produce. There’s improving its discoverability by the world via search and social, of course, but it matters for internal operations, too. And add to that the relationship with online advertising so that content can be better monetized.

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Mitchell Shults commented on the significance of Franz’s recent success loading one trillion triplestores. Shults writes, “Triplestores are perfect for making sense out of extremely complex data. However, a triplestore is only useful if massive quantities of information can be loaded, updated and effectively queried in a reasonable amount of time. That is why Franz Technology’s announcement is so interesting.” Read more

Sensinode recently launched its NanoService Platform for semantic application delivery and management. According to the release, “Sensinode‘s NanoServices feature high efficiency, resource discovery, caching and management, eventing, semantic naming, semantic search and end-to-end security, providing the basis for comprehensive web services optimized for the unique constraints of machine-to-machine (M2M) applications. Key to this strategy is the new NanoService™ Platform, Sensinode’s web service application development environment and network management solution for efficient, secure, reliable and scalable delivery of M2M applications.” Read more

The Forschungszentrum Telekommunikation Wien is looking for a Web and Semantic Technology Developer in Vienna, Austria. According to the post, “We are seeking for a developer for a highly knowledge-intensive webportal in the field of energy efficiency and smart homes. The portal is to receive, process and deliver information from and to different channels, including sensors, mobile phones, third-party data sources from the Web, and direct user interaction.” Read more

Pearson has created a semantically powered tool to help students assess their reading abilities. The article explains that the Pearson Reading Maturity Metric is “a new and more accurate measure of the reading difficulty of texts. Developed by scientists at Pearson’s Knowledge Technologies group, the new computer-based technology measures how close an individual student’s reading abilities are to what they will need to succeed in college and careers.” Read more

A new article reports, “Semantic recipe search engine Yummly is tuning its search features to include a new way to search specifically for recipes that are ‘spicy’ just as it’s hitting a major milestone. After coming out of beta in June 2010, the company says it’s now doing half the unique visitors of Epicurious.com, the popular search engine for Bon Appetit, Gourmet and Self magazine recipes. In July, year-old Yummly reached 2 million unique visitors in a month for the first time, the company is set to announce Wednesday.” Read more