Photo courtesy: Flickr/ The National Guard

Military personnel are likely familiar with The Millennium Cohort study, which began in the late 1990s to evaluate the effect of service on long-term health. In addition to the service that thousands of men and women in uniform already have given their country, many of those who participated in the 2001-2003 and 2004-2006 survey cycles also may contribute to advancing the understanding of qualitative survey results that may further epidemiological research.

Researchers have released the results of their application of latent semantic analysis to an open-ended question found on The Millennium Cohort study. The question asked respondents to discuss their additional health concerns, in as much detail as they like about any health subject that was not otherwise covered. In October the researchers published the report, Application of Latent Semantic Analysis for Open-Ended Responses in a Large, Epidemiologic Study, which found significantly lower self-reported general health among the group of almost 28,000 Millennium Cohort respondents who answered the open-ended question, compared to the nearly 80,000 participants who did not.

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You’ve probably read a couple of hundred remembrances and memorials to Steve Jobs in the last day. Don’t worry – this little blog isn’t going to rehash each of his amazing achievements.

Rather, perhaps the sad news of his passing might provide an opportunity to reflect on what it means to innovate, and what it means to be an innovator. Apple’s well-known mantra – Jobs’ coaxing of his fans to “think different” – isn’t just something we’ve seen played out in the design of that company’s products, or in the sheer genius Jobs had for tapping into the zeitgeist, turning it around, and building a business model out of it.

Certainly those are the most obvious fruits to most people. But the work the Semantic Web community is doing exemplifies the “think different” attitude every day. That’s true of products like Apple’s Siri that bring some (now) in-house semantic smarts to Jobs’ creations, as well as a host of others whose creators hope to harness new opportunities from Jobs’ tablet revolution.

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Photo Courtesy: Flickr/Vironevaeh

As we get ready to celebrate the July 4 holiday here in the States, there’s a lot to cheer for about how the Semantic Web can be a force for good when it comes to creating an informed and empowered populace upon which democracy depends. Examples of this include the work being done by the Tetherless World Constellation at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute to translate open government datasets into RDF and create applications using linked government data (read more here); and work by the Sunlight Foundation, which does things such as make semantic information in its OpenCongress wiki available via an API with the help of the Semantic MediaWiki extension.

The departure of Vivek Kundra as federal CIO that takes effect in August  – together with the planned funding cuts to e-government initiatives, such as the Data.gov open data effort –  may take its toll on the data that’s available to Semantic Web initiatives at the federal level. On the other hand, states themselves are plowing ahead, most recently with the launch of the State of Illinois Open Data site that’s built on Socrata’s platform. Socrata supports a number of different formats for developers, RDF among them, with its Open API. Cities won’t be left out of the mix, either, with New York, San Francisco, and Chicago, to name a few, pursuing this agenda.

But let’s take a moment to look beyond government data.

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Approximately 1200 people attended the 2011 Semantic Technology Conference hosted in San Francisco, CA. At least a large portion – if not the majority – were first-time attendees. Products, technologies and methodologies advancing the Semantic Web (aka Web 3.0) crystallized the vision of the “web of meaning” more than ever. The focus of the community seemed rather sharp: Linked Data. As an individual who has been involved the Semantic Web since about 2001, it was rewarding and encouraging observing the steady progress in the space.

From a competency and expertise perspective, it validated my own company’s focus on developing Linked Data using (W3C) RDF. I liken Linked Data to building a foundation. Concentrating here is appropriate, and an increasing number of tools augment our collective ability and efficiency to create Linked Data. Within the Linked Data construct, the conference provided a large number of examples that highlighted approaches and architectures to design, build and deploy Linked Data.

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Andrew Updegrove recently shared his thoughts on why governments should invest in the semantic web: “Some 40 years ago, the U.S. Advanced Research Projects Agency made what may be the most successful R&D investment in history. The result was the Internet, and the return on ARPA’s funding was incalculably large. After all, how can you value the transformation of everything the world does, sells and says? You can’t. That’s why the U.S. government and governments around the world should fund the next vital step in the advancement of the Internet — the transition to a ‘Semantic Web.’” Read more

RMS Titanic shortly after Former Lord Mayor of Belfast, Viscount Pirrie, launched her at the city's Harland and Wolff ship yard.

Our elected officials just love launching things. It’s almost as much fun as kissing babies on the campaign trail, and current, past, and aspiring political figures fall over themselves to open schools, launch ships, or unveil sculptures. Even in the virtual age, this penchant for cutting ribbons and smashing bottles remains ridiculously strong. If I have to stand through one more ‘opening‘ where some luddite politician has to be shown how to use a mouse before ‘cutting’ the virtual ribbon fluttering before them on a monitor, I may have to scream. And the warm wine served afterward never helps much, either. Read more

A new article from Government Computer News examines the developing role of semantics in government IT, particularly through “a practical-minded government project called the National Information Exchange Model (NIEM).” According to the article, “NIEM pursues intergovernment information exchange standards with the goal of helping agencies more readily circulate suspicious activity reports or issue Amber Alerts, for example. The goal is to create bridges, or exchanges, between otherwise isolated applications and data stores.” 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

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.”

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Back in January the United Kingdom announced plans to create a Public Data Corporation. According to the project’s website, “the Government confirmed it was looking to ‘open up opportunities for innovative developers, businesses and members of the public to generate social and economic growth through the use of data.’ The new concept… will be a global first and will help make government-held data much easier to access and use.” Read more