semanticweb.com

The Right Data at the Right Time

Angela Guess — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 18:00:52 +0000

Jeff Stamen of Cambridge Semantics has questioned whether Big Data is worth the hype or if the tech headlines should actually be touting Right Data. Stamen writes, “One look at all the IT headlines these days would suggest that Big Data is the most important data issue today. After all, with lots of computing power and better database storage techniques it is now practical to analyze petabytes of data. However, is that really the most compelling need that end users have? I don’t think so. Instead, I would claim that the issue most end users have is getting together the right data to help them do their jobs better, not analyzing billions of individual transactions.” continued…

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Semantic Web Jobs: Reed Elsevier

Angela Guess — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 16:30:33 +0000

Reed Elsevier is searching for a Technical Project Manager of eContent in Missouri. According to the post, this position will “Provide business transformation leadership in the design, development, implementation, and maintenance of structured XML content strategies for various electronic product platforms in support of NHP e-education strategy. Experience with content package design, including object-based metadata, taxonomy selection and implementation, XML standards, and asset management/relationships. Engage with internal stakeholders to gather, document, organize, and prioritize technical business requirements for content architecture and conversion efforts. Communicate clearly and concisely with third-party vendors and internal departments.” continued…

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Semantics, the BBC, & the Summer Olympics

Angela Guess — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 13:00:06 +0000

Cait O’Riordan recently explained the many changes to the BBC Sport Website. O’Riordan writes, “This redesign is the first major launch of many this year as we get ready to cover the Olympic Games this summer. We are working on some really exciting developments, which will be showcased on the new BBC Sport website. This redesign has concentrated on doing four main things: (1) Creating a fresh website that better showcases the range of content we offer. (2) Prominent promotion of our fantastic live coverage from across the BBC. (3) Making it easier for our users to talk about our sport coverage. (4) Making it faster for our users to find our great content. We have tried to do this in a way that makes the site easier to use for the millions of people from across the UK and around the world who use the site every week and are confident it will. But we know that, initially at least, the site will take a bit of getting used to.” continued…

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Registration Still Open for #SemTechBiz Berlin

Angela Guess — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 10:49:36 +0000

The Semantic Technology and Business Conference (#SemTechBiz) in Berlin, Germany, is just around the corner, but it’s still not too late to register! The conference takes place February 6-7 and will feature a number of highly anticipated sessions, panels, product demonstrations, networking opportunities, and more. The registration fee will go up at the door, so be sure to register in advance for this groundbreaking event.

Featured Sessions

Wikipedia’s Next Big Thing: The Wikidata Projectwith Denny Vrandecic, Project Director - Wikimedia Deutschland e.V.

Wikidata is a new Wikimedia project, supporting the goal of the Wikimedia Foundation to develop and maintain open content, wiki-based projects over the sum of human knowledge, and provide the full contents of those projects to the public free of charge. Wikidata will provide an infrastructure and stable URLs to store and access data for use in Wikipedia articles, as well as for any other use. (Read more about this session…)

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JWS Special Issue: Reasoning with Context in the Semantic Web

Angela Guess — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 18:00:31 +0000

The Journal of Web Semantics has another new publication this week, a special issue on reasoning with context in the Semantic Web. This issue was edited by Los Lehmann, Ivan Jose Varzinczak and Alan Bundy: “Its ten articles shed direct or indirect light on the role of context in Semantic Web theories and applications. Preprints of the papers are now available on the Journal of Web Semantics preprint server.”

Some of the articles currently available online include the following: “ Representing and Querying Validity Time in RDF and OWL: A Logic-Based Approach by Boris Motik continued…

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Semantic Web Jobs: Senior Software Development Engineer

Angela Guess — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 16:30:21 +0000

Bing is looking for a new Senior Software Development Engineer in Bellevue, WA. The post states, “We are looking for a technical lead to design and implement the infrastructure to combine the semantics, social network and recommendation engines. We offer fast paced environment where quick and iterative development and deployment of services is expected. This position offers and requires working with senior researchers and bringing machine learning algorithms to the web.” Responsibilities include: “Design and develop scalable infrastructure for knowledge web backend. Build next generation recommendation engines. Build and enhance the graph store and graph algorithms, integrate with social graph. Automation of the backend processes. Working with researchers and translate them into engineering solutions for algorithms that plug-in to the backend processes.” continued…

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PureDiscovery Introduces Focus, Semantic Search Visualization

Angela Guess — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 14:30:49 +0000

PureDiscovery has announced a new version of PureDiscovery Legal Suite which includes ‘Focus,’ a semantic search visualization tool. According to the article, “The release includes significant changes to the products workflow through a more intuitive user interface and the addition of several compelling product features suggested by the rapidly growing PureDiscovery user community. The most frequently suggested and significant upgrade to PDLS is the addition of a visual search capability the company calls ‘Focus’.” continued…

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OKF Software Chosen to Power Open Data Portal

Angela Guess — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 13:00:47 +0000

The Open Knowledge Foundation’s CKAN software has been chosen to power the European Commission’s new open data portal. The article reports, “The European Commission (EC) has awarded a contract to create an open data portal website, where data produced by European Commission services will be freely available. Belgian company TenForce will lead the project to deliver the portal, supported by Leipzig University’s Institute for Applied Computer Science (InfAI), and UK-based non-profit the Open Knowledge Foundation. Users will be able to search for information in a flexible range of ways, for example by subject area, country, and region, and to visualise the data or download it for re-use in research, campaigns or commercial applications. The EC and the contracted partners will run workshops and other outreach activities, to raise awareness of and interest in the data among companies, researchers, journalists and policy groups.” continued…

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Federated Media Adds Zemanta’s Technology To Its ToolSet For Publishers

Jennifer Zaino — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 11:05:05 +0000

Zemanta’s inked a deal with Federated Media that could make brand advertising via blogosphere contributions scale higher, faster. Federated Media lets independent bloggers participate as partner-publishers in programs to build brand engagement. For example, for Dockers, Federated Media had publishers with a strong male following write articles around the theme of men crafting lifetime legacies, which were used to increase page-views and clicks to, and reader interaction with, Dockers.

Zemanta’s technology has its roots in helping bloggers with suggestions of tags, links, photos, related articles, and more to add contextual relevance to their content. It analyzes posts using proprietary natural language processing and semantic algorithms, and statistically comparing its contextual framework to its pre-indexed database of content to supply its recommendations. Zemanta content sources include Wikipedia, IMDb, Amazon, Flickr, Crunchbase, Rotten Tomatoes and Freebase, among many others.

Zemanta CTO Andraz Tori says that the big advantage Zemanta brings to the relationship is that it has lots of engaged bloggers as well as the technologies to ‘understand’ what they are writing about. “FM usually worked just with couple of hundred bloggers and we’ll be able to scale that to many more,” he says.

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Cry Me A River, But First Let’s Agree About What A River Is

Jennifer Zaino — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 08:00:11 +0000

How do you define a forest? How about deforestation? It sounds like it would be fairly easy to get agreement on those terms. But beyond the basics – that a definition for the first would reflect that a forest is a place with lots of trees and the second would reflect that it’s a place where there used to be lots of trees – it’s not so simple.

And that has consequences for everything from academic and scientific research to government programs. As explained by Krzysztof Janowicz, perfectly valid definitions for these and other geographic terms exist by the hundreds, in legal texts and government documents and elsewhere, and most of them don’t agree with each other. So, how can one draw good conclusions or make important decisions when the data informing those is all over the map, so to speak.

“You cannot ask to show me a map of the forests in North America because the definition of forest differs between not just the U.S. and Canada but also between U.S. member states,” says Janowicz, Assistant Professor for geographic information science at UC Santa Barbara who’s one of the organizers of this week’s GeoVoCamp focusing on geo-ontology design patterns and bottom-up, data-driven semantics.

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SWJ Call for Surveys on Semantic Technologies

Angela Guess — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 18:00:33 +0000

The Semantic Web journal has issued a special call for surveys on application areas of semantic technologies. According to the article, “Semantic Web technologies are currently in a transition from research to practice. The amount of progress made in different application areas, however, differs significantly, as do the challenges which lie ahead. The Semantic Web journal calls for survey papers on the state of the art in research, development, and deployment of Semantic Web technologies in specific application areas and domains. Surveys should focus on one specific application area and discuss in a comprehensive way (1) its importance, (2) the particular (past, present, and future) challenges faced in applying Semantic technologies in this area, and (3) the state of the art in developing foundational principles and practical solutions related to this area.” continued…

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Semantic Web Jobs: Sears

Angela Guess — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 16:30:00 +0000

Sears Holdings is looking for an Architect of Development in Hoffman Estates, IL. According to the post the company is looking for “an energetic and talented developer to deliver innovative customer facing solutions for several eCommerce initiatives. We are looking for a Java Developer for the development and design of web components and services to introduce new capabilities and services for our online customers on a highly scalable eCommerce platform. As a member of the team, you will have the chance to work in a fun environment on unique and innovative solutions on a multi-tiered open source platform.” continued…

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Cambridge Semantics Ups Staff by 30%, Moves to Boston

Angela Guess — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 14:30:39 +0000

Cambridge Semantics is flourishing. The company recently announced “that due to demand for its enterprise semantic data management offering, the company has increased headcount by 30 percent and has relocated to new office space on the Boston Common. In the heart of downtown Boston, the new 5,500 square foot office will provide the organization with room to grow as they focus on R&D and marketing activities for the company’s flagship Anzo software suite.” continued…

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Open Source Software Weave Liberates Data for Journalists

Angela Guess — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 13:00:24 +0000

Andrew Phelps reports, “Data nerds from government and academia gathered Friday at Northeastern University to show off the latest version of Weave, an open-source, web-based platform designed to visualize ‘any available data by anyone for any purpose.’ The software has a lot of potential for journalists. Weave is supported by the Open Indicators Consortium, an unusual partnership of planning agencies and universities who wanted better tools to inform public policy and community decision-making. The groups organized and agreed to share data and code in 2008, well before Gov 2.0 was hot.” continued…

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SemTech Berlin 2012 Conference Explorer App Gives a Taste of Linked-Data-As-A-Service

Jennifer Zaino — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 11:53:26 +0000

Want to have a peek into the semantic applications that can result when the cloud and Linked -Data-as-a-service join up? Start with a trip here, where you’ll find the SemTech Berlin 2012 Conference Explorer (among other event explorers). It lets attendees browse through conference metadata – and more – to help them plan for next week’s event.

The application was built with fluid Operations’ Information Workbench, which is a platform for building self-service Linked Data cloud apps; the company also provides the eCloudManager Product Suite, for public and private cloud management. With Information Workbench, users can get over some of the challenges of making Linked Data useable, such as automatically discovering and integrating data sources, dealing with heterogeneity in data sets and access, and planning end-user oriented interfaces and interaction paradigms, says Peter Haase, a senior architect at fluid Operations, who will be speaking about Linked Data-as-a-service at SemTech Berlin.

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