[Editor's Note: This article originally included an incorrect link. The correct link to view the 2013 "Top Semantic Start-Up Competition" is http://semtechbizsf2013.semanticweb.com/sessionPop.cfm?confid=70&proposalid=5265".]

The finalists of the 2013 “Top Semantic Start-Up Competition” have been announced. This year’s finalists represent a broad spectrum of entrepreneurship within the world of semantic technology. The announcement states, “At the 2013 Semantic Technology & Business Conference, SemanticWeb.com and WebMediaBrands will award one company the prize as ‘Top Semantic Technology Start-Up.’ At 12:30 pm Monday, June 3^rd, companies will have the opportunity to compete on stage as they deliver their pitches before a panel of expert judges! The companies competing will have met the following conditions: (1) Have a demonstrable product (at least in ‘beta’ stage) in the SemTech and or SemWeb space, (2) Have received no more than a Series B round of financing.”

The finalists are: Read more

This year’s SemTechBiz Conference in San Francisco is already drawing experts using and developing semantic technologies in business, health care, the financial sector, public services, and beyond. But even if you’re completely new to Semantic Technologies, The Semantic Technology & Business Conference has sessions for you including an excellent tutorial by Lee Feigenbaum, co-creator of Semantic University.

Lee Feigenbaum is a leading expert in Semantic Web technologies and their applicability to enterprise IT challenges. As VP of Marketing & Technology at Cambridge Semantics, Lee helps ensure that the Anzo product suite continues to address customers’ ever-changing and diverse data challenges. Lee is an active member of the W3C Semantic Web standards community, currently serving as the Co-Chair of the W3C’s SPARQL Working Group, leading the design of SPARQL, the Semantic Web query language. Lee authored “The Semantic Web in Action,” a 2007 article in Scientific American. Read more

The 2013 Semantic Technology and Business Conference in San Francisco is fast approaching. The conference, which will run June 2-5, will combine innovative panels, case studies, tutorials, roundtables, keynotes, and lightning sessions that will give you an unparalleled interactive experience. Starting things off with a splash, the opening keynotes will feature speakers from WalmartLabs and Viacom.

Opening Keynotes:

How to Connect People and Products Using Big, Fast, and Heterogeneous Data with Abhishek Gattani, Senior Director, Distinguished Architect – WalmartLabs

With over 200 million people walking into stores each week, 43+ million unique visitors per month online, and access to the full twitter fire-hose (i.e. 200 million tweets per day), WalmartLabs is processing large amounts of data to help connect people to products and also provide unexpected insights to merchants. How do we turn this data into insights? How do we combine data internal to an enterprise with social data such as tweets and data from the “traditional” Web such as Wikipedia? When is social and web data useful? These are key questions when building any Big Data system. In this talk, Abhishek will discuss WalmartLabs’ work in this area and give examples of where social and web data was used to solve some key challenges faced when building the eCommerce search engine of the world’s largest retailer. Read more

Earlier this month Gartner named semantic technologies to its top ten trends list (see our story here). Recently, we caught up with Gartner vp and distinguished analyst Debra Logan, the lead author on the semantic technologies section of the Top 10 Technology Trends Impacting Information Infrastructure, 2013, to learn more about sem tech’s earning a place on the list.

One interesting point Logan made is that the top ten trends list actually is a reflection of inquiries Gartner sees from its end-user clients. So, semantic technologies’ spot on the list would seem to indicate a bubbling-up of real-world, enterprise interest. As Logan sees it, it’s very much about information overload, about minimizing the risk and maximizing the value of the data on their hands, and about the availability now from providers like Amazon and Google of infrastructures for analyzing Big Data sets.

“If we could get the same meaning from data, we might actually know what is going on, because we sure don’t now,” says Logan, of the quandary facing enterprise IT leaders. “They are struggling with definition issues and reconciliation because of the proliferation of different IT systems.”

Read more

There are just two weeks left to apply for the SemTechBiz Start-Up Competition. Entry is free, so hurry and get your submission in! The competition page states, “At the 2013 Semantic Technology & Business Conference, SemanticWeb.com and WebMediaBrands will award one company the prize as ‘Top Semantic Technology Start-Up.’ At 12:30 pm Monday, June 3rd, companies will have the opportunity to compete on stage as they deliver their pitches before a panel of expert judges! The companies competing will have met the following conditions: (1) Have a demonstrable product (at least in “beta” stage) in the SemTech and or SemWeb space. (2) Have received no more than a Series B round of financing. To apply, go to http://wmb.skyworld.com/semtechbizsf2013-su. Please note, that the application deadline is April 1.” Read more

Aron Kramer of The Guardian recently predicted long-term changes to the world that will occur in 2013. He writes, “A healthy dose of scepticism is in order whenever one attempts to foresee the future. Events usually make great sense in retrospect, but are difficult to predict at the time. The daily hum of headlines, breaking news and Twitterfeeds may distract us from the underlying changes taking place. With this in mind, the best way to think about 2013 is to consider the long-term changes that are reshaping our world – some with visible effect, and some under the radar.” Read more

Alex Howard recently shared 14 trends to watch for in 2013. He writes, “The idea of ‘lean government‘ gained some traction in 2012, as cities and agencies experimented with applying the lean startup approach to the public sector. With GOV.UK, the British government both redefined the online government platform and showed how citizen-centric design can be done right. In 2013, the worth of a lean government approach will be put to the test when the work of the White House Innovation Fellows is released.” Similarly, “Gartner analyst Andrea DiMaio is now looking at the intersection of government and technology through the lens of ‘smart government.’ In 2013, I expect to hear much more about that, from smartphones to smarter cities to smart disclosure.” Read more

Marjorie Teresa R. Perez of the Business Mirror recently questioned what data will look like in 2013. She writes, “There are many, many people who talk about this issue. For instance, Director, Market Insight and Strategy at Amdocs Michal Harris—who is awesome, by the way—says that we’re going to see a move away from service providers just worrying about the operational challenge of managing data to operators beginning to realize the business opportunity that big data brings. And if you look at the trends toward data and video traffic, you can see that the number of people enjoying LTE coverage is going to skyrocket in the next couple of years. Unlike the Web today, the semantic Web won’t just reside within computers, laptops and mobile devices. Instead, it will be part of electronics like refrigerators, cars and televisions.” Read more

Martin White of CMS Wire recently predicted that search, semantic and otherwise, will be a business critical application in 2013. He writes, “Looking back, 2012 has been quite a year for search. From a business perspective Lexmark acquired Isys-Search, Lucid Imagination changed its name, Attivio gained a US$ 37 million investment, Coveo followed with an US$ 18 million investment, Apache Lucene and Solr moved to Release 4, ElasticSearch set up a commercial arm and Microsoft announced a seriously well-featured SharePoint 2013 search application. Gradually a picture of search implementation is beginning to emerge, thanks to surveys from Findwise, MarkLogic, Oracle and AIIM. The picture is not a pretty one. All agree that information is a business-critical asset but companies have failed to understand the urgent need to provide technology and support for search.” Read more

Jamillah Knowles of The Next Web recently explained why 2013 will be the year of the Internet of Things. Knowles writes, “This year’s Le Web event in Paris was based around the theme of the Internet of Things (IoT); the way in which objects around us will gather data and connect to controls or other machines via the Internet… There are still issues that need to be bashed out of course, proprietary technologies and closed data systems don’t do much to help things along. Privacy, security and networks are also in need of further consideration. However, products like the Fitbit or Fuelband are already becoming commonplace and makers are experimenting with remote systems like Lockitron for front doors and Growerbot for watering house plants.” Read more