Hal Hodson recently covered the “semantic evolution” of Talis culminating in Kasabi. He writes, “In 1969, a group of libraries in Birmingham decided they needed to become more efficient. Calling themselves the Birmingham Libraries Cooperative Mechanisation Project (BLCMP), the group built a centralised database of ‘machine-readable’ bibliographic records, first using microfilm to store book data then, from 1982, using IBM mainframes with terminals at each library. BLCMP went on to become Talis, named after its integrated library system, and for many years it was leader in the automated library management software market. But that is a mature market, and last year Talis divested its library division to focus on the company’s other passion: semantic technology.” Read more

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 !

Richard Wallis is founder of Data Liberate.  A Technology Evangelist and Consultant,  he is at the forefront in promoting, explaining, and applying new and emerging Web and Semantic Web technologies in the wider information domain.  Richard is well known on the conference platform in the Semantic Web, Library, and Information Management sectors.  He is also an active blogger and regular podcaster.

2012 will be the year that Semantic Web and Linked Data technologies could go mainstream, but yet will get talked about less.  I believe this is inevitable, for a technology that is about to turn the corner, or kick up the adoption curve – choose your favourite phrase.  Like the Web itself, already adopted by technology laggards, and now recognised only as a service that facilitates being ‘in Facebook’ or streaming movies to your tablet.

To support this theory, it is interesting look at some of the recent moves taking place in my own backyard, the UK.   A couple of significant ones are coming out of the Talis stable.  Talis have been at the leading edge of Semantic Web development for much of the last decade, with a reputation for promoting the practical benefits of applying Linked Data techniques and technologies, whilst evolving their cloud-based Linked Data platform to deliver and demonstrate these benefits in their own products and services. Read more

Attendees at the fast-approaching Semantic Tech & Business Conference in Berlin will find one of the opening conference sessions, The Simple Power of the Link, to provide a good introduction to the value proposition of Linked Data.

Presenter Richard J. Wallis is happy to be on the docket early, so that those in the audience who aren’t coming from a died-in-the-wool semantic web background will get a sense of the big-picture benefits to be realized, and incented enough to explore the possibilities that they won’t be scared off by the more technical discussions later in the program. “Later on, when presenters start talking about graph models and SPARQL endpoint performance, hopefully they can harken back to the simple basic benefits I’ll be discussing,” says Wallis, who will be conducting the session as an independent associate on behalf of Kasabi, the Linked Data marketplace from Talis Systems Ltd. Wallis, currently Kasabi technology evangelist, is launching his own semantic web consultancy this month.

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Talis is looking for a Senior Technical Lead for their education department in Birmingham, UK, “who will not only provide hands on leadership to the development team, but make a significant contribution to the development and evolution of the business as a whole. This role will have full technical responsibility for the entire division – including the offshore team in India – and would suit an already experienced technical lead looking to step up to a more strategic role over the medium term.” Read more

A new article reports that the British Library has announced “a significant contribution to the development, application, and sharing of bibliographic data using Linked Data techniques and technologies, with a preview of a new approach to publishing the British National Bibliography. Chief Executive Dame Lynne Brindley announced the initiative in her Keynote at Linked Data and Libraries 2011, hosted by Talis at the British Library (BL) in London.” Read more

What got Talis going on its Linked Data marketplace that launched in public beta in June, dubbed Kasabi? The recognition that there had to be a business model in making RDF data as easy to use as possible – from publishing it to querying it, all in a well-supported and sustainable fashion for providers and consumers alike.

“We felt we had a good understanding of the challenges people faced taking their first steps with publishing Linked Data, and also with development communities trying to use that data in their applications,” says Leigh Dodds, the product lead for Kasabi and program manager for the Talis Platform, a role that led him to become quite familiar with what organizations face in hosting and publishing Semantic Web data. “We wanted to make it simpler and easier for both sides, so we began looking at a marketplace environment.”

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Kasabi, Talis’s linked data marketplace is now in public beta. Leigh Dodds, who will be presenting Kasabi at SemTech, wrote on the project blog, “This morning we’ve rolled out a new openly accessible version of the site which is at beta.kasabi.com. As a key milestone for the public beta, we’ve added the ability to create and publish your own datasets. Any registered user can now create and publish new datasets and APIs. Signing up to use an API on any dataset is a really simple click-through process.” Read more

Talis will be on hand at next week’s Semantic Technology Conference to present their latest semantic web application, Kasabi – a Linked Data Marketplace. According to Talis, “Kasabi is a new web application that aims to support organisations in the publishing and monetization of data on the web. The benefits of ready access to high quality data sets to support the creation of innovative new web and mobile applications is well-documented, and there is growing demand from developers for new data sources.” Read more

Talis recently shared some insight into what its working on with regard to travel: “Imagine you’ve just arrived in an unfamiliar place, perhaps on a business trip (or recently beamed down from the Starship Enterprise). One of the first things you’ll probably want to do is find out what things are nearby. Google Maps provides a great “search nearby” function (try entering just a * to get everything), but this is geared more towards businesses, and the data isn’t exactly open, making it hard to reuse in other applications. We wanted to try something similar, using the growing range of liberally-licensed Linked Data sets with a geographic component.” Read more

Talis is looking for a Semantic Web Technical Consultant in Birmingham. According to the description, “We are developing consulting services focused on the Semantic Web, Linked Data and the Talis Platform. We are currently offering a range of professional services that cover everything from training on Semantic Web technologies, through to data modeling, conversions, and bespoke application and prototype development. We are looking for talented individuals to join our team to help expand our capabilities in the areas of data transformation and visualization.” Read more