Today, May 9, 2012 is Global Accessibility Awareness Day (#GAAD). What started with a simple blog-post by Los Angeles Web Developer, Joe Devon, has grown to include events around the world designed to increase awareness about web accessibility issues. To read more about the day and these various activities, see the official GAAD Website and Facebook page.

According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “Today, about 50 million Americans, or 1 in 5 people, are living with at least one disability, and most Americans will experience a disability some time during the course of their lives.” In other parts of the world, this number may be significantly higher.

In the interest of full disclosure, Joe Devon is a personal friend of mine, and I must admit that if he were not, I likely wouldn’t have seen his blog post or explored the issues of accessibility as deeply as I have in recent weeks. But I have been exploring, and I’ve been surprised at what I’ve found. In my opinion, Semantic Technology and Assistive Technology are a natural fit for one another, but there seems to be very little discussion or work around the intersection of the two. I have looked, but have not found much collaboration between the two communities. I have also found few individuals who possess much knowledge about both Semantic Tech and Assistive Tech. Of course, if I’ve missed something, please let me know in the comments!

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SemTechBiz is Less Than 2 Weeks Away

The Semantic Tech & Business Conference (SemTechBiz) is coming to San Francisco on June 3-7! Join us for case studies, innovative panels, tutorials, and keynotes that will provide you with practical advice, hands-on guidance, and breakthrough approaches to solving business problems with semantic technology. Passes go up $200 at the door. Sign up now and save !

Luca Scagliarini recently shared his insight into why he believes semantics will play an important role in the future of technology. He writes, “As a kid growing up in Milan I was obsessed with two things:  sports and the future… While other kids probably dreamed about having superpowers, my dreams were about a future that was more grounded in possibility than fantasy, about inventions that, with the right combination of genius and determination, were possible. Having my own personal television, one small enough to take anywhere and where I could watch anything I wanted, anytime, was something I knew would come eventually. And while the mini TV was an encouraging sign, the technology was still many years away.” Read more

SemanticWeb.com and parent company WebMediaBrands recently announced a contest to earn the title of  “Top Semantic Technology Start-Up.” Today, we have two exciting announcements to make about the contest.

Deadline Extension

We have had several requests to extend the deadline, and are announcing today that we will now accept applications for the contest until April 30, 2012. We also learned of some applicants who encountered technical problems when trying to submit in the early days of the contest. We have fixed the code that caused these problems, and encourage all who experienced difficulties to try again.

Judges

We are also pleased to announce the panel of judges that will be at SemTechBiz evaluating the companies. It’s a great group, and we’re looking forward to a lively afternoon!

Left to Right, they are: Read more

SemanticWeb.com and parent company WebMediaBrands recently announced that a competition will be held at the upcoming Semantic Technology and Business Conference (SemTechBiz) in San Francisco to select the “Top Semantic Technology Start-Up.” The contest begins with an online application process. Out of that pool of applicants, ten companies will be selected to compete in person and on stage at SemTechBiz San Francisco. There is no charge to apply. The ten finalist companies will need to register one individual, but for already registered attendees, there is no additional fee.

Requirements

SemanticWeb.com is currently accepting entrants from now until April 23, 2012. Companies encouraged to apply are those who meet the following conditions:

1. have a demonstrable product (at least in “beta” stage) in the SemTech and or SemWeb space
2. have received no more than a Series A round of financing

Companies can be located anywhere but must have the financial means to attend SemTech 2012. Ten Finalist companies will be selected to compete in a “Pitch Slam” before a panel of expert judges at the Conference. These finalists will be listed in an article at SemanticWeb.com.

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Eric Knorr recently interviewed Sanjiva Nath about the rise of semantic technology. Knorr writes, “In an interview with the Wall Street Journal earlier this month, Google Fellow Amit Singhal revealed that Google was infusing its search engine with semantic search technology to dramatically improve the contextual accuracy of Google search results. That same essential technology, based on the Semantic Web model Tim Berners-Lee pioneered over a decade ago, was the inspiration for zAgile, an ALM (application lifecycle management) software company that entrepreneur Sanjiva Nath founded in 2006.” Read more

A new release reports, “Helvetia Seguros has decided to take advantage of the new possibilities offered by semantic technology in the optimisation of customer, employee and provider relationship processes. To do so they placed their trust in the semantic search engine of the semantic web and artificial intelligence firm iSOCO, with the aim of improving the insurance company’s current incident management system.” Read more

Bryan Yurcan interviewed David Saul of State Street regarding how semantic technologies can be used to tame big data. He writes, “Financial institutions are accumulating data at a rapid pace. Between massive amounts of internal information and an ever-growing pool of unstructured data to deal with, banks’ data management and storage capabilities are being stretched thin. But relief may come in the form of semantic databases, which could be the next evolution in how banks manage big data, says David Saul, Chief Scientist for Boston-based State Street Corp. The semantic data model associates a meaning to each piece of data to allow for better evaluation and analysis, Saul notes, adding that given their ability to analyze relationships, semantic databases are particularly well-suited for the financial services industry.” Read more

SemanticWeb.com and parent company WebMediaBrands are pleased to announce that a competition will be held at the upcoming Semantic Technology and Business Conference (SemTechBiz) in San Francisco. The contest begins with an online application process. Out of that pool of applicants, ten companies will be selected to compete in person and on stage at SemTechBiz San Francisco. At the conference, a single winner will be awarded the prize as “Top Semantic Technology Start-Up.”

Dramatic growth in semantics-based products and applications released over the past years is on the rise. Semantic technologies are no longer a discovery of the future. Organizations such as Google, Yahoo!, LinkedIn, The New York Times, Facebook, Apple, Oracle, IBM, the Library of Congress, Amdocs, Volkwagen & the BBC use them today.

Requirements

SemanticWeb.com is currently accepting entrants from now until April 23, 2012. Companies encouraged to apply are those who meet the following conditions:

1. have a demonstrable product (at least in “beta” stage) in the SemTech and or SemWeb space
2. have received no more than a Series A round of financing

Companies can be located anywhere but must have the financial means to attend SemTech 2012.  Ten Finalist companies will be selected to compete in a “Pitch Slam” before a panel of expert judges at the Conference. These finalists will be listed in an article at SemanticWeb.com.

Read more

James Hendler was recently interviewed regarding the state of the World Wide Web and advances in semantic technology. Asked about the proliferation of the web, Hendler commented, “The Web is changing very fast and it has a very rapid effect on our economy. Consider something like aeroplanes which, as a subject, has been studied all along. On the contrary, the Web has happened so fast and hit so many places that we never really had time to understand it. Many of the periodical works on the Web are being done on the data collected in 1999. In 1999 Facebook didn’t exist. Twitter didn’t exist. A lot of people study Twitter. But again that is just one thing. Wikipedia has been successful, while most ‘wikis’ have failed. Online, we are now discovering the power of the (individual’s) voice and governments do not know how to deal with it.” Read more

On Tuesday the E&P Information Management Association (EPIM) launched EPIM ReportingHub (ERH), an interesting semantic technology project in the field of oil and gas. According to the project website, ERH is “a very flexible knowledgebase for receiving, validating (using NPD’s Fact Pages and PCA RDL), storing, analysing, and transmitting reports. The operators shall send XML schemas for DDR, DPR and MPR to ERH and ERH sends DDR and MPR as XML schemas to the NPD/PSA and all three reports as PDF to EPIM’s License2Share (L2S). The partners may download all three reports and/or any data from one or more reports through flexible queries. Some parts of ERH will be in operation already in November 2011 and the rest as soon as the authorities and the industry are ready for it. ERH is owned and operated by EPIM.” Read more