Chris Lamb has written an article discussing how semantic web technology is helping with the problem of too much news, not enough meaning. Lamb writes, “News volume has moved from infoscarcity to infobesity. For the last hundred years, news in print was delivered in a container, called a newspaper, periodically, typically every twenty-four hours. The container constrained the product. The biggest constraints of the old paradigm were periodic delivery and limitations of column inches. Now information continually bursts through our Google Readers, our cell phones, our tablets, display screens in elevators and grocery stores. Do we really need to read all 88,731 articles on the Bernie Madoff trial? Probably not. And that’s the dilemma for news organizations. In the old metaphor, column-inches was the constraint. In the new metaphor, reader attention span becomes the constraint.” 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!

Cobham Analytic Solutions is looking for a Software Engineer of Semantic Technology in Rosslyn, VA. According to the post, “The Software Engineer will perform hands-on research, analysis, systems engineering, design, development, testing, and integration of software applications. The selected candidate will work with a small team to research, design, develop, test, and integrate software spanning the following disciplines: Information Extraction, Natural Language Processing, Semantic Engineering, Data Fusion, and Scalable and Distributed Systems.” Read more

A recent article reports, “As publishers, consumers and law enforcement get more sophisticated, so will the bad guys. It is doubtful fake reviews can ever be fully eradicated. The problem is that even amateur FROs realize that encouraging positive review posts about an establishment only goes so far… Those electing to go negative on competitors can be problematic.” Read more

Steve Hamby recently attested that semantic technology is one of the three main solutions that has shown success at taming Big Data, the other two being cloud computing and natural language processing. Hamby writes, “The May 2001 Scientific American article ‘The Semantic Web’ by Tim Berners-Lee, Jim Hendler, and Ora Lassila described the Semantic Web as agents that query ontologies representing human knowledge to find information requested by a human. OWL ontology is based on Description Logics, which are both expressive and decidable, and provide a foundation for developing precise models about various domains of knowledge.” Read more

Lynda Moulton recently commented that over the last year the semantic web marketplace “has been increasingly active; new products emerge and discussion about what semantics might mean for the enterprise is constant. One thing that continues to strike me is the difficulty of explaining the meaning of, applications for, and context of semantic technologies. Those who embrace some concept of semantics are believers that search will benefit from ‘semantic technologies.’ What is less clear is how evangelists, developers, searchers and the average technology user can coalesce around the applications that will semantically enable enterprise search.” Read more

Several months ago we reported on the development of the Open PHACTS consortium, a project aimed at reducing the barriers to drug discovery through the utilization of semantic technologies. A video has been released demonstrating a lashup of Open PHACTS preliminary results over the last six months. The ten minute presentation can be viewed above – it demonstrates pharmalogical queries over a number of different publically available datasets using multiple user interfaces. Currently the project uses only existing semantic technologies. Read more

iSOCO, an international leader in semantic technology and artificial intelligence, has “updated the application in its iQuotes purchasing management suite that supports the entire negotiation process for the acquisition of goods and services, designed to bring up to date the purchasing function in companies and thereby improve business productivity. The best release of this solution, aimed at responding to the growing need for business efficiency, was launched a few weeks ago to boost the potential of this tool, which enables a purchasing department to negotiate with the supply market in a structured and optimal way.” Read more

Janus Boye recently shared a presentation on how semantic technologies can help content management system customers better benefit from their data. Boye states, “Today there are probably 1,000+ content management systems in use in the European Union. Very few of these are using semantics-based technologies, which holds the promise to substantially improve employee productivity and how we use our skills online.” Read more

A few months ago FeirceBiotechIT named five biotech IT firms to watch, and they haven’t been disappointed with what they’ve seen: “This report gives FierceBiotechIT a chance to feature 5 software groups that are addressing a range of different needs for biotechs and other life sciences firms. Here you’ll find a Silicon Valley upstart taking on big competitors with new technology for integrating data from disparate sources and providing developers with insights about their clinical trials. There’s a Boston-area company using advanced analytics to spot biomarkers and other tantalizing details about health with the aid of supercomputing technology. And another group based in the U.K. has been quietly growing with R&D software originally licensed from Merck.” Learn more about the five companies here. Read more

A recent article takes a look at three IT trends that are driving information security evolution. One of these trends is semantic security: “Like IT, humans network to exchange information. However, information security works at a syntactic level, while humans work at a semantic level. Commonly implemented security controls can detect individual words or terms and can block entire traffic for certain ports or addresses. These security controls currently do not work at the semantic level. I may accept and trust news from a friend that ‘the Dow dropped 500 points today.’ However, I would not trust the same friend with the statement that ‘today’s 500 point Dow drop proves the financial collapse of the United States will initiate Armageddon.’” Read more