David S. Read of Information Week recently discussed the benefits of semantic databases. He writes, “Don’t buy into the idea that semantic database technologies are just for consumer-facing services such as BBC Online or the semantic Web initiatives embraced by the likes of Best Buy and Cisco. In much the same way that consumerization drives innovation in end user computing, semantic database technologies deliver benefits that businesses of all stripes should be exploiting. At a high level, semantic databases offer five main benefits: They work with your existing relational databases. They align with Web technologies. Their underlying technology speeds integration of multiple databases. They’re based on data structures that are flexible by design. And thus they can help enterprises tackle big data challenges.” Read more

Jeff Bertolucci of Information Week recently discussed how the evolution of Big Data may be just what the Semantic Web needs to reach its full potential. He writes, “In a phone interview with InformationWeek, Cambridge Semantics CTO Sean Martin summed up the Semantic Web in a nutshell: ‘In essence, all you’re doing is tagging data and giving it a description of what it is… If you can put more information in — more metadata with the data — then the software can interrogate the data to find out what the data is, and what it’s capable of,’ added Martin, who believes the rise of big data could help spur the adoption of Semantic Web technologies.” Read more

Arnaud Le Hors and Steve Speicher of IBM recently composed a case study: “Open Services Lifecycle Collaboration framework based on Linked Data.” In the introduction they write, “The Rational group in IBM has for several years been employing a read/write usage of Linked Data as an architectural style for integrating a suite of applications, and we have shipped commercial products using this technology. We have found that this read/write usage of Linked Data has helped us solve several perennial problems that we had been unable to successfully solve with other application integration architectural styles that we have explored in the past.” Read more

Guo of OpenEconomics.net recently discussed the benefits of open data for economic research. He writes, “There used to be a time when data was costly: There was not much data around. Comparable GDP data, for example, has only been collected starting in the early mid 20^th Century. Computing power was expensive and costly: Data and commands were stored on punch cards, and researchers only had limited hours to run their statistical analyses at the few computers available at hand.” Read more

Janice Lawrence of Semantic Arts recently shared a list of five business benefits — and truly, public benefits — of semantic technology solutions. Here are the benefits that she came up with along with links to some of our own articles underscoring each point. First, semantic technology helps us “Find more relevant and useful information because it enables us to search information from disparate sources (federated search) and automatically refine our searches (faceted search).” See Introducing International Dataset Catalog Search for more on federated search. Read more

Anwen Robinson has written a new article regarding the value of linked data and the route to taking data from “linked” to “open.” Robinson states, “We live in a connected society, where devices and data are being pulled together to profoundly change business, our personal lives, society and even nations. In this introduction to this PublicTechnology.net Agenda, I want to try to outline, in non-technical terms, some of the benefits to the sector (and ultimately the taxpayer) of extracting and linking data. I say ‘some of the benefits’ because, like Twitter, Facebook and the internet itself, this technology will provide visibility and intelligence that will profoundly change the world in unpredictable ways.” Read more

A recent article takes a fresh perspective on Google+, “one of the more interesting social concepts to come along in a long time.” The author writes, “Google+ is headed
for 20 million members by this weekend, and, depending on who you talk to, it’s either an epic success or an epic failure. But I think many of my esteemed colleagues are looking at Google+ from the wrong point of view. Everyone is writing about circles, privacy, hangouts, and whether people will switch from Facebook to Google+. But much more interesting stuff is and has been going on behind the scenes. Brands, publishers and agencies should take note and prepare to participate.” Read more

Rachel Frick recently shared her thoughts on the expanding reach of linked data in the library community as part of the latest issue of the Council on Library and Information Resources journal. Frick writes, “Efforts and interest surrounding linked data and the semantic web are growing rapidly in the digital library community. I am often asked, ‘What is [the Digital Library Foundation] DLF doing in relation to linked data?’ As a community-driven organization, we need to identify where it makes the most sense for the DLF to engage, and where we can contribute for the greatest benefit. Linked data is about ‘using the Web to connect related data that wasn’t previously linked, or using the Web to lower the barriers to linking data currently linked using other methods,’ according to Linkeddata.org.” Read more

Jack Krupansky recently wrote about the benefits of a rich semantic infrastructure: “Making intelligent software agents both powerful and easy to construct, manage, and maintain will require a very rich semantic infrastructure. Without such a rich semantic infrastructure, the bulk of the intelligence would have to be inside the individual agents, or very cleverly encoded by the designer, or even more cleverly encoded in an armada of relatively dumb distributed agents that offer collective intelligence, but all of those approaches would put intelligent software agents far beyond the reach of average users or even average software professionals or average computer scientists.” Read more

A recent article discusses many businesses resistance to semantic technology as a result of not fully understanding the risks involved. The article notes, “The use of semantic technologies for automating manual tasks, or for making previously out of reach knowledge more accessible, is (fortunately for us!) an area where companies are still making investments despite the crisis, because they understand the importance of having this strategic advantage. Still, when I suggest an automated solution to replace a manual activity (tagging, categorization, monitoring information flows) to potential customers, I am occasionally met with some resistance. Many times, the customer is not able to properly evaluate the pros and cons, and ends up opting for a very basic solution, and in doing so, loses the opportunity for tremendous cost savings and service improvements.” Read more