Joe McKendrick recently reported on Wal-Mart’s growing influence, not as a retailer, but as a data business. McKendrick writes, “Already, the lines have blurred between traditionally non-information technology companies and IT companies to the point where you can’t tell the two apart. But what’s really of value is not the software that’s being produced and shared, it’s the data that’s being generated and analyzed. This represents the future of many businesses — again, traditionally non-IT businesses — as they seek competitive advantage in a hyper-competitive global marketplace.” 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!

World Wide Web inventor Sir Tim Berners-Lee declared the Semantic Web ‘open for business’ in 2008, celebrating the ratification of the SPARQL query specification by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C); the organisation of which he is Director. “I think we’ve got all the pieces to be able to go ahead and do pretty much everything,” he stated in an interview. “You should be able to implement a huge amount of the dream, we should be able to get huge benefits from interoperability using what we’ve got. So, people are realising it’s time to just go do it.”

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