Anthony Ha of TechCrunch reports that the latest venture from Powerset founder Steve Newcomb has raised $4 million in Series A funding. Ha writes, “Famo.us, which offers a JavaScript framework that’s designed to power HTML5 apps that are faster and better-looking than what’s currently possible, has raised $4 million in Series A funding. The round was led by previous investor Javelin Venture Partners, with participation from ‘one or more’ hardware vendors (whose name or names aren’t being shared publicly). The company is led by Steve Newcomb, who previously co-founded Powerset, the semantic search startup acquired by Microsoft for $100 million. It actually launched at our Disrupt conference in San Francisco last fall. When I spoke to him about the funding, Newcomb admitted that his Disrupt presentation wasn’t exactly an overwhelming success, and that he faced some skepticism and confusing from the judges.” Read more

In a recent interview with the BBC, Sir Tim Berners-Lee described what he believes will be the dynamic future of the web. The article states, “Sir Tim Berners Lee, the man credited with inventing the world wide web, has said that he sees the internet becoming more dynamic with web pages able to do “more amazing things” as technology advances. He spoke to the BBC’s Jon Sopel from Davos, Switzerland, where political and business leaders have gathered for the World Economic Forum.” Read more

First Draft of HTML 5.1 Offers Glimpse at Next Round of Standardization

(Press Release) 17 December 2012 — The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) published today the complete definition of the HTML5 and Canvas 2D specifications. Though not yet W3C standards, these specifications are now feature complete, meaning businesses and developers have a stable target for implementation and planning. HTML5 is the cornerstone of the Open Web Platform, a full programming environment for cross-platform applications with access to device capabilities; video and animations; graphics; style, typography, and other tools for digital publishing; extensive network capabilities; and more.

“The broader the reach of Web technology, the more our stakeholders demand a stable standard,” said W3C CEO Jeff Jaffe. “As of today, businesses know what they can rely on for HTML5 in the coming years, and what their customers will demand. Likewise, developers will know what skills to cultivate to reach smart phones, cars, televisions, ebooks, digital signs, and devices not yet known.”

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Manu Sporny has published an interesting article regarding HTML5 and RDFa 1.1. He writes, “The newly re-chartered RDFa Working Group at the W3C published a First Public Working Draft ofHTML5+RDFa 1.1 today. This might be confusing to those of you that have been following the RDFa specifications. Keep in mind that HTML5+RDFa 1.1 is different from XHTML+RDFa 1.1, RDFa Core 1.1, and RDFa Lite 1.1 (which are official specs at this point). This is specifically about HTML5 and RDFa 1.1. The HTML5+RDFa 1.1 spec reached Last Call (aka: almost done) status at W3C via the HTML Working Group last year. So, why are we doing this now and what does it mean for the future of RDFa in HTML5?” Read more

Jeff Jaffe of the W3C reports, “HTML5 is the cornerstone of the Open Web Platform that the web community is building. This week saw two significant events in W3C that bolster our efforts… First, we announced that Adobe, Google, and Microsoft have provided significant funds to sponsor more complete W3C staff coverage to achieve Recommendation Status for HTML5 for 2014.”

He continues, “Second, the chairs announced people from the community chosen to participate in the editorial team to complete HTML5: Travis Leithead, Erika Doyle Navara, Ted O’Connor, and Silvia Pfeiffer; more names will follow. With these contributions of time and money from our Membership, we are confident that HTML5 is resourced to move forward. And we are pleased that the Working Group, in collaboration with others in the community, is also focused on what will come next – as web technology continues to be a living technology.” Read more

Q: What do Google, Microsoft, Yahoo!, Yandex, the New York Times, and The Walt Disney Company have in common?

A: schema.org

On June 2, 2011, schema.org was launched with little fanfare, but it quickly received a lot of attention. Now, almost exactly one year later, we have assembled a panel of experts from the organizations listed above to discuss what has happened since and what we have to look forward to as the vocabulary continues to grow and evolve, including up-to-the-minute news and announcements. The panel will take place at the upcoming Semantic Technology and Business Conference in San Francisco.

Moderated by Ivan Herman, the Semantic Web Activity Lead for the World Wide Web Consortium, the panel includes representatives from each of the core search engines involved in schema.org, and two of the largest early implementers: The New York Times and Disney. Among the topics we will discuss will be the value proposition of using schema.org markup, publishing techniques and syntaxes, vocabularies that have been mapped to schema.org, current tools and applications, existing implementations, and a look forward at what is planned and what is needed to encourage adoption and consumption.

Panelists:

	Moderator: Ivan Herman Semantic Web Activity Lead, World Wide Web Consortium		Dan Brickley Contractor, schema.org at Google
	John Giannandrea Director Engineering, Google		Peter Mika Senior Researcher, Yahoo!
	Alexander Shubin Product Manager, Head of Strategic Direction, Yandex		Mike Van Snellenberg Principal Program Manager, Microsoft/Bing
	Evan Sandhaus Semantic Technologist, New York Times Company		Jeffrey W. Preston SEO Manager, Disney Interactive Media Group

These panelists, along with the rest of the more than 120 speakers from SemTechBiz, will be on-hand to answer audience questions and discuss the latest work in Semantic Technologies. You can join the discussion by registering for SemTechBiz – San Francisco today (and save $200 off the onsite price)

Are you wondering why your product pages don’t stand out in search results like those from Amazon (shown below) or other competing e-commerce websites? These expanded results are commonly known as Rich Snippets (as named by Google) and are the result of having your HTML structured correctly with semantic markup. Whether you’re savvy to HTML5 and the latest design trends, or you haven’t updated your website code in years, this is article will explain why it’s important you structure your data properly utilizing semantic standards.

There are a number of ways to structure your data to make it more relevant to search engines, as well as social media sites. As an e-commerce retailer it is important to understand which of these standards you should consider including in your website. You should take some time to ensure you are implementing semantic markup, and doing it correctly. It has the power to better inform potential customers with upfront knowledge prior to landing on your site. Customers can see product reviews, pricing and stock information, and even images before clicking through to your website. This can lead to increased click-through rates, improve conversions, and generally enhance your SEO objectives.

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In 2005, I started learning about the so-called Semantic Web. It wasn’t till 2008, the same year I started my PhD, that I finally understood what the Semantic Web was really about. At the time, I made a $1000 bet with 3 college buddies that the Semantic Web would be mainstream by the time I finished my PhD. I know I’m going to win! In this post, I will argue why.

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Simply put, RDFa is another syntax for RDF. The interesting aspect of RDFa is that it is embedded in HTML. This means that you can state what things on your HTML page actually mean. For example, you can specify that a certain text is the title of a blog post or it’s the name of a product or it’s the price for a certain product. This is starting to be commonly known as “adding semantic markup”.

Historically, RDFa was specified only for XHTML. Currently, RDFa 1.1 is specified for XHTML and HTML5. Additionally, RDFa 1.1 works for any XML-based language such as SVG. Recently, RDFa Lite was introduced as “a small subset of RDFa consisting of a few attributes that may be applied to most simple to moderate structured data markup tasks.” It is important to note that RDFa is not the only way to add semantics to your webpages. Microdata and Microformats are other options, and I will discuss this later on. As a reminder, you can publish your data as Linked Data through RDFa. Inside your markup, you can link to other URIs or others can link to your HTML+RDFa webpages.

Why publish RDFa? Read more

In a post that touts the value of adding semantic markup using HTML 5 microdata for SEO benefits, Ben Truyman explains, “Microdata is a component of HTML5 aimed at adding more semantics and contextual information to existing content on a page. By doing so, Microdata provides others, like search engines or browsers, with more information about the contents of a page. This allows them to handle data in new and interesting ways. For example, a product detail page may list out a product’s SKU, pricing, reviews and availability — but there’s no real way for Google’s search engine crawlers to know exactly what that information means. With Microdata, we can explicitly tell Google how much our products cost and what rating our users gave it.” Read more