The Semantic Web journal has issued a special call for surveys on application areas of semantic technologies. According to the article, “Semantic Web technologies are currently in a transition from research to practice. The amount of progress made in different application areas, however, differs significantly, as do the challenges which lie ahead. The Semantic Web journal calls for survey papers on the state of the art in research, development, and deployment of Semantic Web technologies in specific application areas and domains. Surveys should focus on one specific application area and discuss in a comprehensive way (1) its importance, (2) the particular (past, present, and future) challenges faced in applying Semantic technologies in this area, and (3) the state of the art in developing foundational principles and practical solutions related to this area.” 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!

In the dying weeks of Britain’s last government, then-Prime Minister Gordon Brown promised a new Institute of Web Science. But the new government cancelled it. Then, late last month, that same government gave the idea a polish, a new name, and unveiled it once again as the Open Data Institute. W3C’s Sir Tim Berners-Lee and Southampton’s Professor Nigel Shadbolt are still in charge. Semantic stuff, and open data stuff, and government transparency are still the point. Millions of pounds are still on the table. But something has changed. Partly it’s the name, but it’s also a (welcome) shift in emphasis; away from the technology and towards the value. Others could learn the lesson that government appears to have learned, and focus far more on what their technology or product offers and far less on the technical intricacies of how it works. Read more

Elsevier has acquired Ariadne Genomics, a company providing pathway analysis tools and semantic technologies to life science researchers. According to Alexander van Boetzelaer of Elsevier, “Ariadne Genomics’ pathway analysis tools and semantic technologies integrate research findings from across multiple content sources providing a deeper understanding of biological pathways and disease progression. Ariadne’s products improve research productivity and outcomes for life science researchers by delivering new insights for potential interventions, therapies and cures… Ariadne brings to Elsevier an information offering in the biology domain and a passionate and dedicated team of life science professionals. Ariadne’s team and offerings are a powerful complement to our chemistry, pre-clinical and clinical workflow solutions.” Read more

The Cogito team has been working on applying semantic technologies to customer service operations. The team writes, “We’re proud to announce our work with Vodafone, one of the world’s largest mobile communications groups. Working with technology partner Assist, we’re using our Cogito Answers semantic platform to provide SMS based customer service that is now successfully handling more that 500,000 SMS requests each month. When a user sends an SMS to the system—“how much will I pay for calls to London?”—Cogito Answers interprets and categorizes the request and quickly retrieves the answer from the internal knowledge base.” Read more

Inbound Writer is a new social writing application that aligns content with real-time intelligence through NLP and semantic technologies. The article states, “Inbound Writer describes itself as a social writing application and as such makes your content come to life by aligning it with real-time intelligence. Starting a document is easy. First select three words that describe or name your topic. Inbound Writer, using a variety of natural language processing, semantic technologies and custom algorithms, searches the internet for the most relevant keywords.” Read more

A few short years ago, a group of semantic technology companies rode a wave of venture capital and inflated expectation. They were going to change the world. They were going to bring semantic technologies to the mainstream. They were going to make people very rich. They were the must-have keynotes of the conference circuit. And then, one by one, they disappeared. Powerset vanished inside Microsoft, to do something for Bing. Twine vanished inside Evri, amid rumours of a fire sale and investors covering their backs. Freebase vanished inside Google, and bits of Freebase DNA routinely pop up across Google’s sprawling empire. And Siri vanished inside Apple, as we scrambled to understand whether the Cupertino money machine was after semantic smarts or ‘just’ speech recognition technology. Now, though, the rumours suggest that Siri may be back, and that it’s going to be the thing that makes the next iPhone a compelling buy. Read more

A new article comments on the power of the semantic web to shape the future of intelligent transportation systems (ITS). The article states, “Web 3.0 technologies will enable ITS applications to automate data and information exchange and limit the need for human interaction. Context-aware and location-based services data linked to individual travelers will automatically interface with regional operating systems and regional traveler information systems, thus eliminating the need for human support on both the operator and end-users part. Real-time transportation data including vehicle, pedestrian and transit data will be automatically fused and processed with algorithms to establish new, next-gen regional operations platforms.” Read more

The Journal of Web Semantics is set to publish an issue on the topic of evaluation of semantic technologies. The journal has issued a call for papers,
stating, “Semantic technologies have become a well-established field of computer science. However, the field is continuously evolving: the number of semantic technologies is constantly increasing, standards evolve and new ones are defined; and, in this scenario, the problem of how to compare and evaluate the various approaches becomes crucial.” Read more

Semantic technologies of various flavours have the potential to discover connections and enable insights that are powerful, valuable, intriguing, insightful, and surprising. However, as with so many technologies, there’s a flip side. As tools grow more capable and data sets continue to blossom, it becomes ever more likely that the segmented lives of web users — whether public and private, law-abiding and nefarious, or respectable and risqué — will be joined up without our explicit consent. As developers who see the best in people build ever-richer tools, technology companies that cannot — or will not — understand the value of the ageing legal system’s checks and balances continue to use them in pushing the boundaries of what society considers to be acceptable. There are already scare stories, and as the reality becomes more capable, those scare stories will undoubtedly become increasingly terrifying. Some of them may even turn out to be true. But it’s not necessary to believe the full Orwellian horror of a Mountain View search engine (or a Menlo Park social network) that knows everything about you, and acts upon that knowledge. Even in the smaller every-day injections of semantic smarts into business processes, there are things that should perhaps make us sit up and take note. Just because semantic technologies can discover patterns in customer behaviour, doesn’t mean we should necessarily act upon them too soon.

Read more

A recent article discusses many businesses resistance to semantic technology as a result of not fully understanding the risks involved. The article notes, “The use of semantic technologies for automating manual tasks, or for making previously out of reach knowledge more accessible, is (fortunately for us!) an area where companies are still making investments despite the crisis, because they understand the importance of having this strategic advantage. Still, when I suggest an automated solution to replace a manual activity (tagging, categorization, monitoring information flows) to potential customers, I am occasionally met with some resistance. Many times, the customer is not able to properly evaluate the pros and cons, and ends up opting for a very basic solution, and in doing so, loses the opportunity for tremendous cost savings and service improvements.” Read more