A new article reports, “eBay is the latest tech giant to embrace Drupal, the open source content management system that now runs an estimated 2 percent of all websites on the planet. As eBay formally launched its new X.commerce business unit — a sweeping effort to bridge the worlds of online and offline payments — the company revealed it had moved the unit’s X.com website to Drupal, dropping the proprietary Jive Software platform the site previously used. ‘We found that Drupal offers more tools and does so faster,’ Neal Sample, chief technology officer of open commerce at eBay” stated. Read more

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!

The publishing industry is an interesting beast: Its front-end moves rapidly to get content out to readers, but its back-end processes to deliver that information are so tightly packed that there’s not a lot of drive to make sweeping changes in those technologies or processes.

“They have to be on this schedule, so traditionally they have been slow to change their operations,” says Rachel Lovinger, associate experience director at interactive agency Razorfish.  At next week’s Semantic Web Media Summit taking place in New York City, Lovinger will be among the speakers discussing topics such as whether the industry’s tolerance for change is growing, given its need to find more innovative ways both to reach audiences and be more profitable.

Read more

Semantic Web and Drupal expert Lin Clark has created some excellent screencasts that demonstrate how to harness the power of open data in your own Drupal site. Clark’s article notes, “There are a lot of data providers who publish their data openly for reuse. Surprisingly, the CIA is one of them. Because of this, data geeks can take it and turn it into something that’s easy for others to reuse, using open data formats. And because it’s available in an open data format, platforms like Kasabi can load it on to their big servers and provide ways for other sites to access and query it, like a SPARQL endpoint. And because it is provided in a SPARQL endpoint, it is easy to reuse it in your Drupal site using Views. Read more

A new article clarifies the two meanings of the word “semantic” as it applies to HTML5. The author writes, “At DrupalCon, questions always come up about HTML5’s semantic markup vs. RDFa. As I always try to explain, it isn’t a ‘versus’ kind of situation. The trouble is the word semantics. The word means ‘meaning’. Unfortunately, in the way it is used, its own meaning is often unclear. HTML5 adds a whole bunch of new semantic elements. These are meant to help browsers understand how to present your content better, whether it is being presented on a screen or by some other kind of device, such as a screenreader. Example elements are video, nav for menus, and mark for highlighted text. That is the meaning of your document structure, not the meaning of your content itself.” Read more

Phase2 – a company that has been in our headlines recently – yesterday announced the public demo and beta release of OpenPublic, “a Drupal platform that enables government to publish content and engage constituents more easily and securely online.” Jeff Walpole, CEO of Phase2 Technology, stated, “We designed, built, and released OpenPublic to help government and other public-policy groups to more easily support their mission-critical content and interact with citizens… We wanted to do our part to encourage technology innovation, further the nation’s participation in civic endeavors, and generate new open source tools that can propel our nation forward.” Read more

A new article by Kevin Anderson asks the question, does journalism really need another open-source CMS? Anderson writes in response to the Knight Foundation’s choice of giving a $975,000 grant to the Texas Tribune and Bay Citizen: “The goal is to create a nimble open-source content management system. I guess WordPress or Drupal, just to name two open-source content management systems, didn’t fit the bill.” Read more

Last week Phase2 Technology announced its purchase of Open Atrium and Managing News, “two open source products based upon Drupal developed by Washington, DC-based Development Seed.” Phase2 specializes in the development of Drupal-based distributions for the government and publishing sectors.

According to the release, “The purchase of Open Atrium complements the suite of products Phase2 has developed internally and services it provides to enterprise level clients in government, publishing and non-profit communities.” Phase2’s products include OpenPublic and OpenPublish. Read more

We recently reported on semantic technology’s potential role in national security. A new article shows progress on the front of semantic technology in government, but there are still some roadblocks. As the article puts it, “Using open source software in the federal government is challenging, but the problem is not due to the technology. The problem lies with old procurement models and regulations that are better suited for buying file cabinets and missiles than negotiating licenses for ‘free’ open source software.”

Read more

On Friday, January 14, a group of Semantic thought leaders from around the globe met with their host and colleague, Paul Miller, for the second installment of the Semantic Link, a monthly podcast covering the world of Semantic Technologies. Music by Kevin MacLeod.

• Play the Podcast (1 hour)
• Subscribe to the Monthly Podcast
• See All Semantic Link Podcasts

We hope you enjoy it, follow @TheSemanticLink on Twitter, and join us here each month for a new hour-long episode.

And please do leave your comments below. We want to hear from you!

Eric Franzon
VP Community, SemanticWeb.com

Drupal 7 has formally hit the stage. The parties start tomorrow (you can find out about one almost anywhere in the world).

The key aspect of Drupal 7 for The Semantic Web Blog readers, of course, is native RDFa support. “There lot of people excited about Drupal 7 shipping with RDFa,” Drupal creator Dries Buytaert told The Semantic Web Blog a few months ago, during a conversation focused on the Drupal Gardens SaaS offering from the company he co-founded, Acquia.

“Ever since I stood up on stage in Boston in 2008 [at Drupalcon] we saw more and more momentum for Semantic Web technologies in Drupal,” he said. Given the mojo search engines such as Google and Bing are putting behind relying on machine-readable structured data from web sites, embedding semantic metadata is becoming more and more attractive for webmasters. More than a half-million web sites use Drupal today. “We spent a lot of effort in this release cycle on Semantic Web,” he said, “but I acknowledge it’s only a first step.”

One next step, perhaps, could be about consuming RDF data. That said, Buytaert noted that, with the Semantic Web still generally being in the ramp-up stages and getting more traction, “I think Drupal is a little ahead of the markets in terms of adopting the Semantic Web, so we’re okay as long as we stay ahead. We don’t need to be miles and miles ahead.”

Last month, SIOC creator and NUI Galway lecturer and researcher John Breslin put Drupal 7 at the top of his Christmas list of tips and tools for friends to try out “and get the metadata out there.”

Party on, and get moving with metadata.