The Second International Linked Open Data in Libraries, Archives, and Museums Summit has announced the finalists of the LODLAM Challenge. The finalists were broken into two heats. In the first heat, the finalists are Free Your Metadata, ReLOAD, and Linked Jazz. In the second heat, the finalists are Pundit and Mismuseos.net. The LODLAM team commented, “This rounds out the slate of 5 challenge finalists that will be competing head-to-head at the LODLAM Summit June 19-20, 2013 in Montreal. All finalists have earned travel grants for the trip to Montreal and the chance to win a $2000USD cash prize. A big thank-you to all the teams who submitted entries. It was great to see such creativity and wide range of ideas. The LODLAM community rose to the challenge and amazed us.” Read more

[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

According to a new release out of the group, “The Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA), the principal trade association for the software and digital content industries, today announced the 82 finalists for the 2013 SIIA CODiE Awards in Content categories. These finalists represent the information industry’s best products, technologies, and services created by or for media, publishers, and information services providers. This year there were 25 Content categories, featuring several new and updated ones, to reflect the latest industry trends and business models. New categories include Best Crowd Sourced Solution, Best Press Release Distribution Solution, Best Semantic Technology Solution, and Best Social Media Platform.” Read more

YarcData has announced the finalists of the company’s Graph Analytics Challenge: “The top six entries for the contest, which features $100,000 in prizes including a $70,000 grand prize for the first place winner, were determined to have entered the best submissions for un-partitionable, Big Data graph problems. The top six submissions span a number of diverse categories, such as healthcare, law enforcement, sports, life sciences and social media.” Read more

The International Semantic Web Conference has announced the finalists of its Semantic Web Challenge. According to the contest website, “The central idea of the Semantic Web is to extend the current human-readable web by encoding some of the semantics of resources in a machine-processable form. Moving beyond syntax opens the door to more advanced applications and functionality on the Web. Computers will be better able to search, process, integrate and present the content of these resources in a meaningful, intelligent manner. The core technological building blocks are now in place and widely available: ontology languages, flexible storage and querying facilities, reasoning engines, etc. Standards and guidelines for best practice are being formulated and disseminated by the W3C.” Read more