Google Analytics gives web site owners good information about what’s clicking with visitors to their site, how those users got there, and more. But, attaining that insight can be somewhat laborious for those not well-versed in the tool and its interface, says Nick Cassimatis, associate professor in the Department of Cognitive Science at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. He’s the founder of natural language processing technology startup SkyPhrase. His take: Apply SkyPhrase to the task, and things get a lot easier.

The startup in February began private beta testing of its NLP interface to Google Analytics. “Google Analytics lets you ask things like how many people from California visited the site last month, or which of your pages were most visited on mobile devices,” says Cassimatis. “Our system lets you ask these questions in natural language and get answers to them” more seamlessly than using Google Analytics alone.

Previous to bringing its NLP help to Google Analytics, SkyPhrase had a public site that let users run natural language searches of their Gmail or Twitter accounts, as well as flights and music.

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James Hendler recently discussed what the arrival of Watson at RPI will mean  for the growing technology. He writes, “The Watson program is already a breakthrough technology in AI. For many years it had been largely assumed that for a computer to go beyond search and really be able to perform complex human language tasks it needed to do one of two things: either it would “understand” the texts using some kind of deep ‘knowledge representation,’ or it would have a complex statistical model based on millions of texts.” Read more

Friend of SemanticWeb.com Dr. James Hendler recently shared his perspective on the arrival of Watson at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute: “Every single student in the Department of Computer Science here at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute has the potential to revolutionize computing. But with the arrival of Watson at Rensselaer, they’re even better positioned to do so. Watson has caused the researchers in my field of artificial intelligence (AI) to rethink some of our basic assumptions. Watson’s cognitive computing is a breakthrough technology, and it’s really amazing to be here at Rensselaer, where we will be the first university to get our hands on this amazing system.” Read more

IBM will provide Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute with a modified version of Watson, making RPI the first university to receive the technology. The article states, “The arrival of the Watson system will enable new leading-edge research at Rensselaer, and afford faculty and students an opportunity to find new uses for Watson and deepen the systems’ cognitive capabilities. The firsthand experience of working on the system will also better position Rensselaer students as future leaders in the areas of Big Data, analytics, and cognitive computing.” Read more

It’s probably safe to say that people want their firefighters, EMT, law enforcement and other emergency responders to be as best-equipped for their jobs as possible, so that they can be successful and well-protected, too.

Semantic technology can have a hand in making sure that happens. Deborah McGuinness, Tetherless World Senior Constellation Professor and Director of Web Science Operations John Erickson. both of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) , are spearheading an effort, thanks to some funding from the National Institute of Standards and Technology(NIST) under program manager William G. Billotte, to use semantic technology and social media to help that organization better understand what requirements should be for these heroes.

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Allison Hornery of gov2.0radio reports that Jim Hendler has shared his insights into the Semantic Web in a new audio interview. Hornery writes, “In 2001 Professor Jim Hendler jointly conceptualised the semantic web along with Tim Berners-Lee and Ora Lassila. When he invented the World Wide Web, Berners-Lee always envisaged it as highly linked, and the idea of the semantic web – a web of linked data with meaning – is now emerging as a reality. Jim Hendler takes us on a journey into this semantic web, unpacking related terms such as Web 3.0, and exploring its potential for government. He emphasises the importance of linked open government data, and points to some useful tools and demos of how linked data can be used to create new insights.” Read more

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute is looking for two Department of Computer Science faculty members in Troy, NY. The post states, “The Department of Computer Science at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, N.Y. seeks to hire two faculty members to join a strong and growing faculty. The first opening, the Hamilton Development Chair in Computer Science, is intended for an associate or exceptional assistant professor in the area of “cyber risk,” including but not limited to information/data security, privacy, accountability, trust, and forensics for computers, networks and cyber-physical systems. Applicants for this chaired position must demonstrate an outstanding record of research accomplishments as well as a strong commitment to teaching.” Read more

A call for comments is out for a proposal for a ‘Datasets‘ addition to schema.org, via the W3C’s Web Schemas task force group that is used by the schema.org project to collaborate with the wider community.

The proposal extending schema.org for describing datasets and data catalogs introduces three new types, with associated properties, as follows:

Writing at the Schema.org blog, Dan Brickley calls it a “small but useful vocabulary,” with particular relevance to open government and public sector data.

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World wide web expert and frequent SemTechBiz speaker Professor Jim Hendler has become the new head of the Department of Computer Science at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. The school reports, “Hendler is currently a senior constellation professor in the Tetherless World Constellation and program director of the Information Technology and Web Science (ITWS) program at Rensselaer. He will be stepping down from his leadership of the ITWS Program to assume the department head post.” Read more

The business side of the Semantic Tech and Business Conference was on display at the closing session today. Panelists shared their own takeaways, pointers, advice, observations and predictions about a number of semantic web issues about bringing semantic technology to the enterprise.

The panelists included  Craig D Hanson, Director, Innovation and Architecture Amdocs.; James Hendler, Professor, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute; Arnaud Le Hors, software standards architect at IBM; Dave McComb, President, Semantic Arts Inc; Marie Wallace
Social Analytics Strategist, IBM; Joe Devon, web developer and consultant; Christine Connors, Principal TriviumRLG LLC; and David Booth, an independent contractor and senior software architect at PanGenX.

Here’s an overview of what they had to say to – and for — the enterprise community:

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