Ten years (and change) since the publication of The Semantic Web article in Scientific American, co-author Jim Hendler says he is “very, very happy and optimistic about the state of semantic technologies and the Semantic Web.”

And, he notes, government has been an exciting partner in its progress.

Hendler, professor at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, home of the Tetherless World Constellation, will provide evidence of that in his presentation at the upcoming Semantic Tech & Business Conference in Washington D.C. this month. TWC works on opening and linking government data using Semantic Web technologies, and Hendler also freely provides his expertise to the U.S. data.gov project, through which he’s in contact with many other governments’ open data projects. Those attending Hendler’s keynote at the conference will get a look at TWC’s new International Open Government Dataset Search (IOGDS) app based on metadata extracted from some 400,000 government datasets on catalog websites. These were converted to RDF Linked Data and then republished via TWC’s LOGD SPARQL endpoint. “That proves we can use metadata to help people find the right data when there is so much available,” Hender says, and yield better visualizations of it, too.

Some 25 countries currently are represented, inclusive of datasets from the U.S., U.K., Singapore, Spain, Italy, Brazil, Kenya, and China. “What’s exciting to me is we see this happening all around the world,” Hendler says. “The extent to which the ecosystem is forming around this area is really surprising.” TWC features a few dozen demos here, which provide some insight into how much of a game-changer it is for government to couple open and Linked Data, providingthe ability to do things more quickly and in a more web-friendly way, and at lower costs. Hendler points to TWC’s creating infographic visualizations from several government datasets in hours, not months, and at a cost of pennies, not tens of thousands of dollars.

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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!

Professor James Hendler recently announced the launch of a new federated search service, the International Dataset Catalog Search. This new service is part of the Linking Open Government Data (LOGD) project, a resource that brings together open government data from around the world. According to the site’s homepage, “The Linking Open Government Data project investigates opening and linking government data using Semantic web technologies. We are translating government-related datasets into RDF, linking them to the Web of Data and providing demos and tutorials on mashing up and consuming linked government data.” Read more

Professor Deborah McGuinness of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute has tinkered for years with applications designed to help people pair the right wine with the right food. McGuinness has used her applications, which she has been toying with since the mid 80s, to help her classes understand the basics of web ontologies. Her latest app is “an exceptional example of what the future of the World Wide Web, often called Web 3.0, might in fact look like.” Read more

A pair of data scientists from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute is joining forces with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) to make use of a $2 million grant and see what they can learn about our oceans.

Peter Fox, one of the scientists commented, “A massive amount of data about the oceans is gathered every single day by sensors, cameras, sonar, and other technologies. Maybe three percent of that information is ever even looked at again. Any other valuable knowledge is essentially lost. … What we are doing through this collaboration is integrating and enhancing this data so that it can be more easily consumed and used by other scientists and the public.”

Through this project WHOI expects to learn important information regarding the current and future health of our oceans. Rensselaer’s data technologies might also help uncover “discoveries on everything from underwater geological activity to the impacts of glacial melting.”

Image: Courtesy Flickr/ Mr. Thomas

Photo Courtesy: FlickR/elward-photography

There seems to be growing sentiment that 2011 is the year the Semantic Web really, truly happens (see here and here) – but not blindness to the challenges that exist around making it happen, not just on the web at large but within the enterprise community.

One gap to close: Growing the talent that will ease adoption by those enterprises and help them succeed in their desires to get more out of their data. The economic doldrums have fostered the desire to do just that, says Richard Stanton, a thought-leader and consultant for a number of businesses on the practical application of Semantic Web technologies and former CEO of the semantic web job/volunteer matchmaking site Bintro (which has ceased operations).

“The mission in tough economic times is to polish up assets,” he says, and what asset is more powerful or valuable than the data held by businesses ranging from e-commerce plays to highly specific industries such as health care to hosters of large content repositories of every stripe. “Anytime you have to take stock of your own inventory and use it more wisely is a time that you look for new solutions.”

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Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute professor wins HP Innovation Award Genetic Engineering News (press release) Pattern mining enables advances in a broad variety of applications like the development of the semantic web, proteins-protein interactions, social networks, … and more »

Personally, I believe that the Semantic Web will become mainstream in the next few years (I actually have a bet on this with some college friends). I know that this is a strong statement, but I am confident that it will happen. Mainstream is defined in Wikipedia as “the common current of thought of the majority.” Furthermore it states that something is mainstream if it “is available to the general public” and it “has ties to corporate or commercial entities.” However, how do you evaluate if something is on the verge of becoming mainstream? I propose the following metric:  inclusion at the South by South West (SXSW) Conference!

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Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Launches Nation’s First Undergraduate Web … Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute “Led by professors within our Tetherless World Research Constellation, including one of the inventors of the Semantic Web, James Hendler, as well as a team … and more »

Easy access science Examiner.com Peter Fox and Professor Deborah McGuinness of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute are developing a Semantic Web technology database that promises to make …

Enabling Data Independence for Government Transparency

by Ralph Hodgson, CTO, TopQuadrant, Inc.

Open Government has become a popular theme, both in the U.S. and other countries.  With “Transparency” gaining momentum, increasing categories and amounts of government data are becoming available on the web.  In the U.S., an impetus for this was Barrack Obama’s memorandum to the heads of Executive Departments and Agencies. This included the following statement:

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