An experimental application from Safelayer, dubbed FOAF Manager, is intended to provide trust to the wealth of information on social networks – identity information in particular. Safelayer, a well-known name in the European ICT security market, develops technology for m anaging digital identification and trust in information and communication networks, with authentication, electronic signature and data protection solutions in its portfolio.

The Semantic Web Blog, which recently looked at the evolution of WebID for identity and login management, had a chance to exchange email with Helena Pujol, research project leader at Safelayer, on the company’s work in the trust arena:

Semantic Web Blog: How did the Semantic Web come to Safelayer’s attention around security/trust issues?

Pujol: Our success is based on investing heavily in R&D in order to bolster our strategy of differentiation through technology and innovation. One of our research focuses has been the Semantic Web, and in particular, how ontologies and semantic standards and tools can contribute to improve our products, conferring on them properties of intelligent inference, application interoperability and information integration.

FOAF Manager is one of the experimental applications resulting from these research activities.

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!

Jive Software recently unveiled Jive 5, “the most advanced and powerful Social Business platform in the industry. With this launch, Jive sets a new standard of Social Business excellence, further extending its market leadership. Jive 5 helps organizations harness the power of their most powerful asset, the social network. Businesses are driven by ideas, conversations, expertise, knowledge and connections created in the networks of their employees, customers and partners. Jive 5 captures this knowledge into a collaborative, social platform that transforms the way people work.” Read more

Paul Miller, The Cloud of Data
Nova Spivack, Radar Networks (Twine.com)
Daniela Barbosa, DataPortability Project/ Dow Jones
Fraser Kelton, AdaptiveBlue Inc
Stephen A. Leicht, Collexis Holdings Inc.
Amit Sheth, Kno.e.sis Center, Wright State U

Social networking continues to grow and evolve, expanding beyond the early adopters to attract usage in a wide variety of social, business and educational contexts. Community innovations such as the Twitter ‘hash tag’ demonstrate users’ desire to bring structure to their interactions with these networks, and a plethora of mashups make use of APIs to demonstrate the value of this structure. As yet more structure is added, and as the semantic richness grows, do these networks continue to become more powerful or does increased complexity run counter to the ways in which they are actually used?

This panel will explore some of the issues raised when users and third parties invest effort in bringing structure to their social networks, and will ask what the mainstream social networking sites might learn from – or teach – the likes of Twine and BomedExperts.

Attachment: Semantifying Social Networks.mp3 (52.45 MB)

Presenters:

Paul Miller
The Cloud of Data

Stephen Leicht
Collexis Holdings Inc.

Stephen A. Leicht is the Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of Collexis Holdings Inc, (Ticker Symbol: CLXS). Along with the regional operations leadership, Mr. Leicht manages the Collexis business units, along with their sales and support organizations.

Prior to joining Collexis, Mr. Leicht served in roles of increasing responsibility with IBM Corporation in sales, business development, emerging technology, and general management. Prior to IBM, Mr. Leicht started, ran, and sold International Telecommunications Distributors, Inc and served as Chairman and CEO of the company.

Mr. Leicht has a Masters in Business Administration from Pennsylvania State University’s Smeal College of Business. He received his Bachelors from Bucknell University.

Mr. Leicht is known in Collexis affectionately as the "whiz kid" or "the professor." He serves on boards and advisory committees for several companies and industry groups and is a regular speaker at industry events. He lives with his wife and two children in Columbia, South Carolina.

Amit Sheth
Kno.e.sis Center, Wright State U

Amit Sheth is the LexisNexis Ohio Eminent Scholar and director of Knowledge enabled Information and Services Science (Kno.e.sis) Center (http://knoesis.wright.edu) at Wright State University. He is an IEEE fellow. He initiated WSDL-S that led to SAWSDL and co-chaired
W3C SWS XG that discussed SA-REST. He is one of the best cited authors in Computer Science, has chaired 45+ conferences/workshops (including PC Chair of 2008 ISWC), is EIC of
Intl Journal on Semantic Web & Information Systems and co-EIC of Distributed & Parallel Databases, and series co-editor of two Springer Book Series (incl. Semantic Web & Beyond). His contact information is at: http://knoesis.wright.edu/amit.

Please see http://knoesis.wright.edu/amit/publications for a complete list of publications.

Nova Spivack
Radar Networks (Twine.com)

Nova Spivack is one of the leading voices of the emerging Semantic Web, often referred to as Web3.0. Nova founded Radar Networks to develop semantic social software. Radar’s first product, Twine.com, was announced at the Web2.0 summit on October 19th, 2007. In 1994, Nova co-founded EarthWeb (IPO 1998). Nova has worked at Individual, Xerox/Kurzweil, Thinking Machines, and also with SRI International on the DARPA CALO program and nVention. Nova founded Lucid Ventures, and co-founded the San Francisco Web Innovators Network. As a grandson of management guru Peter F. Drucker, Nova shares his grandfather’s interests in the evolution of knowledge work. In 1999 Nova flew to the edge of space in Russia with Space Adventures.

Daniela Barbosa
Synaptica Dow Jones Taxonomy Services

An information junkie fascinated by trends in information delivery and helping companies and users achieve successful information delivery and search strategies including collaboration with social software and other web 2.0 applications, Daniela is part of the Client Solutions group within the Dow Jones Enterprise Media Group based in San Francisco. She works with large corporations in deploying information strategies through various parts of the enterprise and has worked with many Fortune 500 clients in the High Tech, Consumer Products, Consulting, Telecommunications, Pharmaceutical and Financial industries as well as many B2C customers. As a co-founder of the DataPortability Project, she has worked on evangelizing data portability principles for users, vendors and developers.

Fraser Kelton
AdaptiveBlue Inc

Fraser has spent his career bringing emerging technologies to market. Currently Fraser is the VP, Business Development at AdaptiveBlue, a leading consumer-facing semantic web company. Previously to joining AdaptiveBlue, Fraser was a member of Trivaris, a seed stage investment firm specializing in the commercialization of new technology. Fraser has spoken at O’Reilly’s Web 2.0 Expo, DowJones VentureOne Summit, Add-on-Con and other national technology conferences.