The Semantic Web has enormous potential to change the way we receive, understand and use information. The Web as we know it today connects pages of information one dimension at a time to each other based on some simple things you ask it to perform (e.g. keywords like “dog” & “food”). Of course you get some pages that talk about dog food. But many others that simply happen to have the words dog and food somewhere on the page yet talk about all kinds of things other than “dog food.” A Semantic Web makes sure the concept of dog food is present first, and then identifies other facts, experts, types, uses, recipes, ingredients, etc., about dog food. A Semantic Web is smart in that it presents a better set of results, in context and is ready to solve problems, answer questions directly, infer, resolve, discover and analyze in ways that the current web was never designed to do.    

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Semantic Tech & Business Conference Returns to San Francisco

Semantic Tech & Business Conference returns to San Francisco in June! Join us from June 3-7 for complete coverage of Big Data, Linked Data, Extreme Information Management, and Semantic Web. From breakthrough approaches to solving business problems to the big data implications of fast–evolving technologies, SemTechBiz provides you with an unparalleled interactive experience and delivers tangible business value. We're offering a special early rate when you register by February 17. Sign up now!

In the final installment of this two-part series, Dean Allemang and Scott Henninger look into how the insights about semantic web education have an impact on the adoption of semantic web technologies.

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Executive Summary

Within the past few months, the Semantic Web has become something any Webmaster must take serious, because the key components are ready for production usage, and there are tangible benefits: With GoodRelations, there is now a standard vocabulary for e-commerce, RDFa provides a stable syntax for embedding such data in existing Web pages, and Yahoo Searchmonkey creates a direct business incentive for companies of any size to care.

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The digital revolution is responsible for igniting hundreds of smaller revolutions which have ultimately transformed technology and communications, creating one of the most influential and life changing events that humanity has experienced in current times, and possibly throughout its history. These revolutions continue to reshape our cell phones, computers, cars, even the Internet, profoundly changing the way we view ourselves and the world.

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Brian Pleet is the classic business professional.  He runs a small Canadian sales consultancy business called the Strategico Marketing Group.  Brian’s lifeblood is being able to accurately bill his clients for his time and costs and to manage the time he spends on each project.  Brian is well organized; his emails and documents are all nicely filed by category, his favourite online content is bookmarked, and his contact database can be sorted by type of contact, location, etc.  It could be argued that he is a real-life proponent of semantics.  However Brian spends a lot of his time on the road, and this is where his system lets him down.  Unlike his desktop world, his mobile world is represented by a wireless phone bill that is page after page of numbers, and an inability to categorize the time that he is spending on his clients while he is out and about or working on his mobile phone.

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Back when I was an industry analyst (VP, E-Business Strategies at the META Group, since acquired by Gartner), I often had to critique emerging markets.  Unlike venture capitalists, industry analysts are privy to product roadmaps from publicly-traded companies, including the industry giants (Oracle, SAP, Microsoft, IBM).  And unlike i-bankers, they are privy to product roadmaps from start-ups.  And as a kicker, some analysts (actually, only those with the largest firms; back then, primarily limited to those analysts with Gartner, Forrester, META and Giga) get a lot of great feedback from CIOs and other end users.

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