PowerSearch has announced the release of PowerSearch 5.0: “This release includes predictive search analytics, file exclusion and advanced tagging functionality. Predictive search analytics give the user the ability to analyze a word and view how it is used in the context of the documents in the collection. It also provides a count of document hits and term frequency for the current word and synonyms or related words (and frequency counts of those terms) of the selected word. The ability to see similar words allows the user to modify their existing search criteria resulting in a more accurate document set. By being able to see the word in the context of the documents, further analysis of words near the current word can be performed as well. PowerSearch uses Princeton University’s WordNet lexical database project to suggest words by ‘conceptual-semantic and lexical relations’.” Read more

The University of Colorado, Boulder is looking for a Professional Research Assistant: Database and Semantic Web Developer in Boulder, CO. According to the post, “National Science Foundation funded project called Biological Science Collections Tracker will use semantic web approaches to develop an infrastructure for tagging and tracking scientific collections and all of their derivatives. In order for BiSciCol to fulfill its mission, scientific collections data and downstream data products such as sequences, genomes, images, etc. need to be brought into a semantic web framework, which presents a set of technological and social challenges.” Read more

Ryan Kim of GigaOM reports that Walmart has built its own search engine called Polaris. He writes, “Walmart is deploying a new internally-built search engine to power Walmart.com and ultimately increase sales conversions from searches. The Polaris search engine, developed by @WalmartLabs over the last 10 months, has been in use for the last few months onWalmart.com and has already boosted conversions to sales by 10-15 percent, the company said.” Read more

Courtesy: Flickr/Images of Money

Where is semantic technology better poised to be better commercialized – the U.S. or Europe? With The Semantic Business and Technology conference heading across the ocean to the U.K. next month, it seems a good time to provide some perspective on the question.

At the last SemTech conference in San Francisco, 3RoundStones took first place in the Startup competition with Callimachus Enterprise. During a discussion of some of the product’s winning features, talk turned to some of the differences between how semantic technology has progressed in the States and overseas.

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A-T Solutions is looking for Software Developers in Reston, VA. According to the post, “A-T Solutions delivers a full continuum of innovative solutions that meet critical security challenges in technology, training, maritime operations, intelligence and mission support… A-T Solutions is seeking several people to work on a new database and software development project in Northern Virginia.  The project involves the preparation of large datasets for delivery to a new shared cloud computing and storage environment.  The project will require a team of approximately 25 people and all positions will require a TS/SCI clearance with a polygraph.” Read more

Prisa TV, a leading Spanish pay-TV operator, has partnered with Jinni. According to the article, “Prisa TV, the company behind CANAL+ SPAIN, is the third major European television network to offer its subscribers this unique semantic-based user experience powered by Jinni for TV viewing within the household. Pablo Romero Sulla, Director of Content at CANAL+ YOMVI (the CANAL+ online environment, providing live broadcast and VOD streaming), stated ‘Our goal is to offer our subscribers the best possible experience available. When we decided to further enhance our service by adding new discovery and recommendation capabilities, we decided to offer a whole new entertainment experience, as provided by Jinni’.” Read more

According to a new article, “OCLC and Europeana are collaborating to investigate ways of creating semantic links between the millions of digital objects that are accessible online through Europeana.eu in order to improve ‘similar object’ browsing. Europeana is Europe’s digital library, archive and museum. The Europeana platform and network of experts facilitate research and knowledge exchange between librarians, curators and archivists, and link them with digital innovators and the creative industries. Europeana currently gives people access to over 24 million books, paintings, films, recordings, photographs and archival records from 2,200 partner organizations, through an interface in 29 languages.” Read more

Leading standards organizations are endorsing OpenStand principles that hope to drive innovation and commerce, a recent article reports. It states, “Five leading global organizations — IEEE, Internet Architecture Board (IAB), Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), Internet Society and World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)—today announced that they have signed a statement affirming the importance of a jointly developed set of principles establishing a modern paradigm for global, open standards. The shared ‘OpenStand’ principles—based on the effective and efficient standardization processes that have made the Internet and Web the premiere platforms for innovation and borderless commerce—are proven in their ability to foster competition and cooperation, support innovation and interoperability and drive market success.” Read more

The Semantic Technology and Business Conference (#SemTechBiz) will take place October 15-17 in New York City. In addition to presentations regarding Big Data, open government, and business, the highly anticipated conference will feature a number of presentations discussing the use of Semantic Technologies in the financial and publishing industries.

Two presentations to look forward to include:

Smart Financial Data: How Semantic Technology Can Help Big Data Become Smart Data
David Saul, Chief Scientist, State Street Bank and Alok Prasad, President, Cambridge Semantics will explain how the use of industry standards set by organizations such as the Enterprise Data Management Council (EDM), the Object Management Group (OMG) and their Financial Industry Business Ontology (FIBO) to describe data semantically has the ability to create an intelligent information fabric that overlays key data assets and links across the organization and the financial industry. Not only are semantic technologies a benefit to financial institutions, but they are also critically important to the end user – the business. We see the next step for semantic technologies as the development of end-user-oriented semantic tools that bring data from the information fabric into the hands of the business people thereby irrevocably linking the business to IT.
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Phys.org recently shared an interesting ontology case study in the field of botany, Ontologies as Integrative Tools for Plant Science. The article states, “Botany is plagued by the same problem as the rest of science and society: our ability to generate data quickly and cheaply is surpassing our ability to access and analyze it. In this age of big data, scientists facing too much information rely on computers to search large data sets for patterns that are beyond the capability of humans to recognize—but computers can only interpret data based on the strict set of rules in their programming.”

The article continues, “A new article in this month’s American Journal of Botany by Ramona Walls (New York Botanical Garden) and colleagues describes how scientists build ontologies such as the Plant Ontology (PO) and how these tools can transform plant science by facilitating new ways of gathering and exploring data. Read more