Europe wants in. No wonder, when you see stats like the one from ABI Research this year that point to the combined app revenue from tablets and smartphones being projected to reach $92 billion by 2018, and to the app economy growing at 44.6 percent on average annually. But the continent needs some data to help it get its spot in the limelight, which is where Eurapp comes in.

The newly launched venture, Eurapp, was birthed by the European Commission, and is being run by the Digital Enterprise Research Institute at NUI Galway in conjunction with tech industry analyst firm GigaOM Research. It’s part of the Startup Europe initiative of the European Commission’s Digital Agenda, which aims to help tech entrepreneurs start, maintain and grow their businesses in Europe.  NUI Galway’s Dr John Breslin, SIOC creator and co-founder of iPad news and social reader app StreamGlider (see our story here) is leading the Eurapp project at DERI.

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Photo Courtesy: Flickr/Lars Plougmann

In recent blogs we’ve discussed where semantic technologies have gone in 2012, and a bit about where they will go this year (see here, here and here).

Here are some final thoughts from our panel of semantic web experts on what to expect to see as the New Year rings in:

John Breslin,lecturer at NUI Galway, researcher and unit leader at DERI, creator of SIOC, and co-founder of Technology Voice and StreamGlider

Broader deployment of the schema.org terms is likely. In the study by Muehlisen and Bizer in July this year, we saw Open Graph Protocol, DC, FOAF, RSS, SIOC and Creative Commons still topping the ranks of top semantic vocabularies being used. In 2013 and beyond, I expect to see schema.org jump to the top of that list.

Christine Connors, Chief Ontologist, Knowledgent:

I think we will see an uptick in the job market for semantic technologists in the enterprise; primarily in the Fortune 2000. I expect to see some M&A activity as well from systems providers and integrators who recognize the desire to have a semantic component in their product suite. (No, I have no direct knowledge; it is my hunch!)

We will see increased competition from data analytics vendors who try to add RDF, OWL or graphstores to their existing platforms. I anticipate saying, at the end of 2013, that many of these immature deployments will leave some project teams disappointed. The mature vendors will need to put resources into sales and business development, with the right partners for consulting and systems integration, to be ready to respond to calls for proposals and assistance.

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Courtesy: Flickr/zoetnet

As we close out 2012, we’ve asked some semantic tech experts to give us their take on the year that was. Was Big Data a boon for the semantic web, or is the opportunity to capitalize on the connection still pending? Is structured data on the web not just the future but the present? What sector is taking a strong lead in the semantic web space?

We begin with Part 1, with our experts listed in alphabetical order:

John Breslin, lecturer at NUI Galway, researcher and unit leader at DERI, creator of SIOC, and co-founder of Technology Voice and StreamGlider:
I think the schema.org initiative really gaining community support and a broader range of terms has been fantastic. It’s been great to see an easily understandable set of terms for describing the objects in web pages, but also leveraging the experience of work like GoodRelations rather than ignoring what has gone before. It’s also been encouraging to see the growth of Drupal 7 (which produces RDFa data) in the government sector: Estimates are that 24 percent of .gov CMS sites are now powered by Drupal.

Martin Böhringer, CEO & Co-Founder Hojoki:

For us it was very important to see Jena, our Semantic Web framework, becoming an Apache top-level project in April 2012. We see a lot of development pace in this project recently and see a chance to build an open source Semantic Web foundation which can handle cutting-edge requirements.

Still disappointing is the missing link between Semantic Web and the “cool” technologies and buzzwords. From what we see Semantic Web gives answers to some of the industry’s most challenging problems, but it still doesn’t seem to really find its place in relation to the cloud or big data (Hadoop).

Christine Connors, Chief Ontologist, Knowledgent:

One trend that I have seen is increased interest in the broader spectrum of semantic technologies in the enterprise. Graph stores, NoSQL, schema-less and more flexible systems, ontologies (& ontologists!) and integration with legacy systems. I believe the Big Data movement has had a positive impact on this field. We are hearing more and more about “Big Data Analytics” from our clients, partners and friends. The analytical power brought to bear by the semantic technology stack is sparking curiosity – what is it really? How can these models help me mitigate risk, more accurately predict outcomes, identify hidden intellectual assets, and streamline business processes? Real questions, tough questions: fun challenges!

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That’s something that DERI and Cisco, as part of the multi-party Lion2: Enabling Networked Knowledge project funded by Science Foundation Ireland, are exploring. The idea is to “bring more granularity and more meaning to presence than state,” says Cisco lead architect Keith Griffin – that is, an indication that you are available or away. After all, just because you’re sitting at your desk doesn’t necessarily mean you are fully or even partially available, and just because you are on the phone doesn’t necessarily mean you aren’t free to respond to instant messages. “The Semantic Web provides more intelligence to that.”

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Image Courtesy: Flickr/Lori Greig

It doesn’t matter whether this month you celebrate Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, the Winter Solstice, or anything else. In December, most everyone’s thoughts turn to presents. So, what makes it to the top of some semantic web and data experts’ holiday gift lists for their friends, family, colleagues – the world?

We asked, and their (mostly) semantic-web inspired holiday lists include some real and some imagined – not to mention imaginative – ideas. Read on:

John Breslin, Lecturer and researcher at NUI Galway, Creator of SIOC

If I could give out some Christmas tools or tips to colleagues or friends, the first would be to try out Drupal 7 on their own website, and get the metadata out there. I’d also ask that my friends show their friends some of the cool semantically-powered tools like Siri or Sig.ma to show the power of linking things together with semantics. Finally, in terms of useful non-semantic free programs, I’d give out Evernote, Dropbox, Inkscape, the Gimp, and TweetDeck (great for multiple keyword searches like “semantic web” OR semanticweb OR “sem web” OR semweb). Oh, and an online backup program of your choice, like Mozy or CrashPlan!

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