Dragon Go!, the free speech recognition app that lets you talk to your Apple devices, is getting an upgrade. The update “adds many more options, including the ability to launch popular movie and TV streaming services; get direct access to more of the most popular names in mobile content, like Spotify; get answers to the toughest of questions from Wolfram|Alpha and Ask.com; and, find friends on Google+.” 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 !

Wolfram recently launched “the Wolfram Genealogy & History Research Assistant and the Wolfram Personal Finance Assistant Apps for iOS! These new additions to Wolfram’s wide offering of specialized apps are the first in our series of Personal Assistant Apps, which use Wolfram’s vast knowledge base to enrich topics that matter most to you. Explore the world of your ancestors with the Wolfram Genealogy & History Research Assistant, the only tool that lets you discover what was going on while they lived. Map family relations and expand on what you already know about any of your ancestors with a simple, easy-to-use interface. It’s as if you’re traveling through time with the tips of your fingers.” Read more

Microsoft and Wolfram|Alpha both announced today (via their blogs) that Microsoft’s Bing decision engine is one of the first Wolfram|Alpha Webservice API customers.
 
From Wolfram’s site…"Starting today, Wolfram|Alpha’s knowledge, computed from expertly curated data, will enrich Bing’s results in select areas across nutrition, health, and advanced mathematics."  The full post can be found here:

Wolfram Blog Post

From Microsoft’s site…"we‘ll be providing access to Wolfram|Alpha’s advanced algorithms and expertly curated data within the Bing experience. This new and exciting work is completely aligned with our broader goal of enabling faster, more informed decisions. Specifically, we will bring nutritional information and tools into Bing’s search results, as well as some straight up hard math and homework help." The full post can be found here:

Microsoft Blog Post

I haven’t been formally trained on WolframAlpha nor have I thoroughly investigated it. In fact, I’ve spent more time reading the hype about it than I have actually kicking the tires. But from the time I’ve spent, some things are already obvious. First and prominently, WolframAlpha does not rely on semantic technology, neither Semantic Web nor Linked Data concepts, and it possesses no underlying ontology driving its structure or information. Having said that, I may be mistaken when I said “no underlying ontology” as there may be elements of ontology that I’m not aware of, but overall, it is not an application based on semantics. There does not appear to be a taxonomy of terms linking them across knowledge domains.

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