Wikimeta, the semantic tagging and annotation architecture for incorporating semantic knowledge within documents, websites, content management systems, blogs and applications, this month is incorporating itself as a company called Wikimeta Technologies.  Wikimeta, which has a heritage linked with the NLGbAse project, last year was provided as its own web service.

Dr. Eric Charton, Ph.D, MSc at École Polytechnique de Montréal, is project leader and author of the Wikimeta code. The NLGbAse project was conducted by Charton at the University of Avignon as part of his Ph.D. Thesis.  The Semantic Web Blog recently hosted an email discussion with him to learn more about the Wikimeta architecture and its evolution.

 

The Semantic Web Blog: Tell us about the NLGBase project and Wikimeta’s relationship to it.

Charton: NLGbAse is an ontology extracted from Wikipedia. It is used in Wikimeta as a resource for semantic disambiguation. For each Wikipedia document (aka Semantic Concept), NLGbAse provides various ways of word-writing (for example, “General Motors” can be written “GM Company”, “GM”, “General Motors Corp” and so on), used for detection.

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!

Want to have a peek into the semantic applications that can result when the cloud and Linked -Data-as-a-service join up? Start with a trip here, where you’ll find the SemTech Berlin 2012 Conference Explorer (among other event explorers). It lets attendees browse through conference metadata – and more – to help them plan for next week’s event.

The application was built with fluid Operations’ Information Workbench, which is a platform for building self-service Linked Data cloud apps; the company also provides the eCloudManager Product Suite, for public and private cloud management. With Information Workbench, users can get over some of the challenges of making Linked Data useable, such as automatically discovering and integrating data sources, dealing with heterogeneity in data sets and access, and planning end-user oriented interfaces and interaction paradigms, says Peter Haase,  a senior architect at fluid Operations, who will be speaking about Linked Data-as-a-service at SemTech Berlin.

Read more

I often read blogs and watch conference presentations extolling the virtues and benefits of adopting Semantic Web and Linked Data techniques & technologies. It makes me wonder how those new to the field ever get through the blizzard of acronyms and techno-speak, to understand what is being promoted and how it might be relevant to them and their business.  In this post I will attempt to demystify and identify the core benefits of Linked Data without burying you in LD-speak!

Let me start with the web itself.  Imagine if you will that you have just returned from desert island exile for the last decade and a half. You are introduced to the web and start using Google searching to find out what this web thing is all about. You are assailed with an overwhelming array of acronyms terms and concepts – Ajax, Javascript, HTML, CSS, HTTP, XML, DOM, URL, Flash, RDFa, JSON, Microformats, SEO – argh! where do you begin?  However after some digging it becomes clear that there is a blindingly simple concept at the core that only uses three of them: HTML – a simple markup language to describe how a web page should be laid out, URL – a globally unique way to address a page on the Internet, HTTP – a simple way to request and receive a page across the Internet. Read more

Anwen Robinson has written a new article regarding the value of linked data and the route to taking data from “linked” to “open.” Robinson states, “We live in a connected society, where devices and data are being pulled together to profoundly change business, our personal lives, society and even nations. In this introduction to this PublicTechnology.net Agenda, I want to try to outline, in non-technical terms, some of the benefits to the sector (and ultimately the taxpayer) of extracting and linking data. I say ‘some of the benefits’ because, like Twitter, Facebook and the internet itself, this technology will provide visibility and intelligence that will profoundly change the world in unpredictable ways.” Read more

Matthew Ingram reports, “Twitter made an interesting acquisition on Thursday, when it bought a young Canadian startup called Summify, a company whose service (as its name implies) was designed to cut through the noise of all those social-media streams and summarize the content that matters. More than anything, this is perhaps the single biggest hole that exists not just in Twitter but Facebook and other services as well: the need to give users more ways of filtering the massive amounts of information that keep flooding their activity streams and other social-media inboxes. There are so many ways of producing and sharing content but so few good ways of filtering.” Read more

Andy Oram recently commented on Massachusetts’ newest open government venture, Open Checkbook. Oram writes, “On December 5, Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick joined with state treasurer Steven Grossman to create an open government initiative with the promising moniker Open Checkbook. The site launched to some acclaim and has received over 220,000 hits. I decided to take a look at what’s offered and what’s missing from this site, and to ask someone in the government here in Massachusetts to describe their thinking in creating the site. The results can give us some insight into the effort it takes at each stage to release government data–and even more significantly, what it takes to increase the data’s value.” Read more

The Semantic Web Company has released a new book in conjunction with the Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Partnership (REEEP) entitled Linked Open Data: The Essentials. Martin Kaltenbock reports, “Linked Open Data: The Essentials – is a a quick start guide for decision makers who need to quickly get up to speed with the Linked Open Data (LOD) concept and who want to make their organisation a part of this movement.” Read more

Karen Coyle recently commented on the growing number of RDF and linked data projects in the field of library data. Coyle writes, “With the newly developed enthusiasm for RDF as the basis for library bibliographic data we are seeing a number of efforts to transform library data into this modern, web-friendly format. This is a positive development in many ways, but we need to be careful to make this transition cleanly without bringing along baggage from our past. Recent efforts have focused on translating library record formats into RDF with the result that we now have: ISBD in RDF, FRBR in RDF, [and] RDA in RDF, and will soon have MODS in RDF.” Read more

Editor’s Update Jan. 19: DBpedia, Wikipedia and company are all back online, while some lawmakers have taken their support for SOPA and PIPA offline. Republican Senators Roy Blunt and Marco Rubio have withdrawn their support for the Protect IP Act, and Representative Lee Terry (R-Neb.), an original co-sponsor of SOPA, also has asked to have his name removed from the bill.

 

It’s Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) day. At 8 a.m. EST  OpenLink Software began a 12-hour blackout of the following sites it controls in support of Wikipedia, Reddit and others spearheading the online protest against the legislation:

• http://dbpedia.org
• http://dbpedia-live.openlinksw.com
• http://lod.openlinksw.com
• http://uriburner.com

Founder and CEO of OpenLink Software Kingsley Idehen yesterday directed interested parties to a Linked Data-driven poll for the opportunity to vote on taking this step, and the ayes, so to speak, had it.

Turn to any of the above sites and you’ll see:

Read more

A new linked data event will be happening this spring in New York. According to the event website, “New York University’s Institute for the Study of the Ancient World (ISAW) will host the Linked Ancient World Data Institute (LAWDI) from May 31st to June 2nd, 2012 in New York City. ‘Linked Open Data’ is an approach to the creation of digital resources that emphasizes connections between diverse information on the basis of published and stable web addresses (URIs) that identify common concepts and individual items. LAWDI, funded by the Office of Digital Humanities of the National Endowment for Humanities, will bring together an international faculty of practitioners working in the field of Linked Data with twenty attendees who are implementing or planning the creation of digital resources.” Read more