Sears Import is looking for a Senior Software Engineer in Hoffman Estates, IL. According to the post, this position will: “Analyze business requirements and create of technical design documents and technical specifications. Design following Object Oriented Analysis and Design principles, focusing on completion of high quality and documented code. Create designs for feature areas that fully incorporate non-functional concepts such as testability, maintainability, availability, and performance, and that are extensible to other feature areas. Design and implement reusable code for feature areas and/or reuse others’ code as appropriate; optimize designs and code for performance, scalability, and reliability. Advocate team coding standards, ensure feature areas comply with standards, and follow up with individuals and teams when standards are not met.” Read more

According to a new article out of the company, “Instem, a leading provider of IT solutions to the global early development healthcare market, announced today it has released the next version of its OmniViz™ software solution enabling organizations to process larger datasets at greater speeds. OmniViz is a powerful data mining and analytics solution allowing users to analyze and explore critical information through its interactive and intuitive visualization technology. Utilizing sophisticated statistical and clustering algorithms, OmniViz processes and serves data to organizations to help reveal hidden patterns and features, allowing users to discover fresh insight and easily share that information with both colleagues and clients.” Read more

If you are learning about the Semantic Web, one of the things you will hear is that the Semantic Web assumes the Open World. In this post, I will clarify the distinction between the Open World Assumption and the Closed World Assumption.

The Closed World Assumption (CWA) is the assumption that what is not known to be true must be false.

The Open World Assumption (OWA) is the opposite. In other words, it is the assumption that what is not known to be true is simply unknown.

Consider the following statement: “Juan is a citizen of the USA.” Now, what if we were to ask “Is Juan a citizen of Colombia?” Under a CWA, the answer is no. Under the OWA, it is I don’t know.

When do CWA and OWA apply?

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Concept Searching has entered into a partnership with Black Blade, “the information technology product and services company specializing in advisory, architectural, and technological consulting services, providing organizations access to subject matter expertise in Microsoft business software. This arrangement brings together Concept Searching’s expertise in metadata generation, search, auto-classification and taxonomy management, and Black Blade’s experience in designing, implementing, and operating services-oriented, modular, and maintainable enterprise systems that merge seamlessly with their business processes.” Read more

Like lots of other families over the recent Thanksgiving weekend, we made our way to the movies. Our choice: Life of Pi. We’d highly recommend it, and according to the IBM Social Sentiment Index, as applied to Moviegoer Social Sentiment over the holiday weekend, so too would a lot of other folks. It earned a 90 percent positive rating.

IBM has engaged in the social sentiment index pursuit in some other endeavors – using its advanced analytics and natural language processing technologies to analyze large volumes of social media data, it had another recent take on Black Friday, for example. It tallied up that shoppers expressed positive consumer sentiment on promotions, shipping and convenience as well as the retailers themselves at a three to one ratio (see our story here for other takes on semantic tech weighing in on the holiday shopping season).

It’s also applied its social media analysis smarts to studying births of trends (cycle chic is on the rise), and which tennis player was on the hearts and minds of the crowd at the U.S. Open (Novak Djokovic and Laura Robson winning the love, with positive sentiment scores at 90 percent or better).

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The African News Innovation Challenge winners have been announced, and among the victors is openAFRICA, a semantic toolkit for analyzing access to information requests. According to the team behind the project, openAFRICA aims to “Create a standardised digital management toolkit for African freedom-of-information organisations and investigative journalists, on top of a pan-African semantic document repository.”

Asked to describe the real world challenges that their project solves, the creators stated, “Journalists and citizens routinely ‘liberate’ government information when they make successful requests using access to information laws. But, this information immediately disappears again from public consciousness, because it is not digitally captured in a centralised, searchable, public repository. Public knowledge therefore remains fragmented, with media and civic watchdogs constantly ‘reinventing the wheel’.” Read more

A new article out of Datamatics reports that “Datamatics Global Services, the global Information Technology (IT) and Knowledge Process Outsourcing (KPO) organization focused on delivering smart, next-generation business solutions, today announced their strategic alliance with TEMIS, a leading provider of Semantic Content Enrichment Solutions. Datamatics’ Digital Publishing Solutions division offers next generation digital solutions to several top publishing houses globally. Datamatics highly automated solutions of content transformation, eBooks and typesetting, allowing faster and cost effective delivery. This combined with Semantically Enriched Content will allow intelligently archive, manage, analyze, discover and share increasing volumes of information.” Read more

Weill Cornell Medical School is looking for a Web Developer in New York, NY. The post states, “Under direction of the Assistant Director, Research and Digital Services (WCMC Library) and the Manager, Core Applications and Associate Director of Design & Development (ITS), serve as a Developer for systems in support of the Samuel J. Wood Library & C.V. Starr Biomedical Information Center. The Web Developer will be responsible for the analysis, design, development, testing, implementation, and integration of library applications at WCMC, as well as responsibilities in the operation and maintenance of related systems and applications.” Read more

Following successful runs in London and New York City, the Semantic Technology & Business Conference (#SemTechBiz) is returning to San Francisco June 2-5, 2013. Today, we are pleased to announce that the Call For Presentations is open for submissions.

The deadline to enter is January 18, 2013, and we are currently seeking proposals for:

• Conference Sessions – 45 minutes
• Panel Sessions – 45 minutes (must propose moderator and panelists, even if not finalized)
• Tutorials – 3 hours
• Lightning Talks – 5 minutes

What are we looking for?

We are interested in a wide variety of presentations, from business and consumer applications through to fundamental technology discussions.  Over the years, the emphasis of the program has gradually shifted more towards practical experience as Semantic Technologies have matured and gained adoption both on the web and in enterprise systems, so we’re very much looking for semantic case studies and project experience. If you are developing a tool, or using semantics to create an exciting new start-up company, we want to hear from you as well.  Keep in mind that precedence will be given to sessions that offer an interactive element and are designed to provide actionable ideas (get to the heart of the matter!). And having said all that, we still keep time-slots available for cutting edge research and thought-leadership.  So SemTechBiz really is an all-inclusive program for the community.

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According to Charles Arthur of the Guardian, Microsoft has obtained a patent for augmented reality glasses, and the possibilities for semantic technology to be incorporated are endless. Arthur writes, “Microsoft has been given a patent on ‘augmented reality’ (AR) glasses that would enhance sports and other live events with streams of information beamed directly in front of the user – even including action replays and lyrics of songs. The move means that it could soon join Google in offering AR systems for widespread use, after the search giant unveiled its own Google Glass project earlier this year, intended to be used all the time as the user goes about their daily life.” Read more