Don Clark of the Wall Street Journal writes, “Big data has become one of tech’s biggest buzz phrases, despite varying definitions about what it really is. But the financial bets being placed are pretty substantial, with Skytree emerging as the latest example. The Silicon Valley startup on Tuesday is announcing it has raised $18 million in Series A funding, a fairly hefty amount these days for an early-stage software company with less than 20 employees. U.S. Venture Partners, a venerable name in the venture-capital world, led the round. Scott McNealy, the former chief executive of Sun Microsystems, is also participating.” Read more

TORONTO, April 24, 2013 /PRNewswire/ - Forrester Research Inc. has highlighted Flybits, a Toronto-based startup company, as the number one context-aware tool for its emerging cloud and context-aware middleware solution.

Anthony Mullen’s report, “Emerging Touchpoints Require a Marketing Mind Shift,” encourages marketing professionals to increase corporate investments in innovative practices and procedures in areas such as customer experience, analytics, IT and product design — all of which the Flybits framework addresses. Read more

The preliminary program for the upcoming Semantic Technology & Business Conference (June, 2-5, 2013 in San Francisco) was announced yesterday. Today, we are pleased to add that the second annual “Top Semantic Start-Up Competition” is open for submissions! The contest will take place at the conference venue, the Hilton Union Square in San Francisco, on Monday, June 3, 2013. Start-ups who wish to compete should visit http://semtechbizsf2013.semanticweb.com/start-up-comp.cfm for further details.

“It is a very exciting time for start-ups in the Semantic Technology sector. With organizations like Gartner taking note of the importance of these technologies, and companies of all sizes wanting to glean insight from increasingly available data sources, investors and customers are paying attention. Last year, the judges had a difficult time deciding which company would win the prize. This year, we expect that decision will be even harder,” said contest moderator, our own Eric Franzon.

There will be two phases to the contest. In phase one, companies enter a profile of their start-up in an online form (keep reading for details), and ten finalist companies will be selected to present their pitches in person at the Semantic Technology & Business Conference. In phase 2, those ten companies will each deliver a pitch in front of a panel of judges with experience in entrepreneurship and investment. A single company will be selected as the winner. Prizes will be awarded at the completion of each phase.

Read more

The highly-anticipated program for the Semantic Technology and Business Conference (#SemTechBiz), June 2-5, 2013 in San Francisco has been announced. The conference returns to the Hilton Union Square for four comprehensive days of fresh insight and immersive learning from global experts. #SemTechBiz brings together today’s industry thought leaders and practitioners to explore the challenges and opportunities  impacting both corporate business leaders and technologists.

When asked about the program, Conference Co-Chair Eric Franzon said, “When we launched this conference in 2005, the discussion focused around a question: ‘We have this marvelous set of technologies. How can we use them practically?’ Today, we are in a very different place. With impressive case studies demonstrating cost savings, new revenues, and practical implementations, Semantic Technologies have become an important thing for technologists, executives, marketing experts, data professionals, investors, and other stakeholders to pay very close attention to.”

“In June, we will learn from the experience of those who have leveraged Semantic Technologies to make money, save money, gain more value from existing business assets, shorten development times, and solve very real problems. We will hear about how Semantic Technologies are being used to glean insight from ‘Big Data.’ ”

View the program here

Read more

Image Photo Courtesy Flickr/401(K) 2012

Universities play an important role in advancing the technology ecosystem, semantic technology included. Look for starters at work done at The Tetherless World Constellation at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Wright State University’s Kno.e.sis Ohio Center of Excellence in Knowledge-enabled Computing, MIT, and the Digital Enterprise Research Institute located at the National University of Ireland, Galway.

In addition to driving technology ever forward, institutions like these and others also provide a home for incubating good ideas that could become good businesses. Music discovery service Seevl and the enterprise-focused SindiceTech are two examples of semantic spin-outs from DERI, for instance, while MIT Media Lab gave birth to commercial properties with semantic underpinnings including music intelligence platform The Echo Nest. The Kno.e.sis Center points work it’s doing in the commercial direction, too: Its LinkedIn profile description notes that its “work is predominantly multidisciplinary, and multi-institutional, often involving industry collaborations and significant systems developing, with an eye towards real-world impact, technology licensing, and commercialization.”

Given the projects with commercial prospects underway within their own houses, it would seem there’s opportunity for universities themselves to look for even more ways to contribute to that success. And that’s just what the University of Minnesota is doing: This week it said that it’s launching a $20 million seed fund over a ten-year timeframe to support the innovative ideas to which its campus plays host.

Read more

Anthony Ha of Tech Crunch reports, “We cover a lot of startups using social data, but Eldar Sadikov, co-founder of a company called Jetlore, said whenever someone else wants to build a social app, they have to ‘reinvent the wheel again and again.’ That’s why Jetlore is launching a platform designed to power these kinds of services. Sadikov said he wants his platform to serve as ‘a layer that sits between social networks and consumer Internet companies.’ The company’s specialty is analyzing pieces of text and matching that text with different topics.” Read more

Anthony Ha of TechCrunch recently covered ad targeting company Sensegon: “Adtech companies are trying get better at demographic targeting, especially on mobile, but a startup called Sensegon aims to go a step further — targeting ads based on audience members’ personalities. To illustrate the concept, CEO Omer Efrat talks about going to a car dealership with his co-founder and CTO Tal Yaari. Efrat was more interested in engine power, while Yaari was more interested in gas consumption and safety. The salesman, Efrat says, knew intuitively to direct his pitch differently towards the two men. That’s the kind of intuition that Sensegon is supposed to replicate.” Read more

Jennifer Van Grove of Venture Beat reports, “Gravity is inescapable, especially if we’re talking about the content personalization startup that goes by that name. Three-year-old Gravity has secured $10.6 million in new funding to expand more rapidly and bring its so-cool-it’s-creepy personalization technology to even more publishers. Founded in 2009, Gravity performs semantic analysis on social updates and trending topics in aggregate to automatically identify a person’s interests. That data is then used in tools that help publishers make content recommendations, customize homepages, display viral stories, or serve ads.” Read more

Sarah Perez of Tech Crunch reports, “We’ve just been given a first look at Saga, a new mobile companion emerging from Seattle startup A.R.O. You can think of Saga as Siri’s little sister, perhaps. Instead of asking it questions or giving the app simple tasks (what’s the weather, add meeting calendar, e.g.), Saga is there, quietly tracking your behavior, your location and learning about your preferences, in order to make smarter recommendations about what you should do next. It’s the next evolution of those ‘ambient location’ apps which were all the rage at this year’s SXSW, perhaps.” Read more

Jason Del Rey of Ad Age reports, “DG, a traditional-TV ad delivery company that moved into the online-ad space with last year’s acquisition of MediaMind, has acquired semantic ad-targeting startup Peer39 in a deal that could reach $15.5 million in cash and stock. Peer39, which is based in New York City, will get $10 million up front in addition to approximately 357,000 shares of DG stock. The acquisition also includes a $2.3 million earn out.” Read our previous coverage of Peer39 here. Read more