Tim Berners-Lee Says the Time for the Semantic Web is Now In an hour long interview posted today about the Semantic Web, W3C Director Tim Berners-Lee says all the pieces are in place to move full steam ahead and realize the potential of a world of structured, machine readable data. Available as a part of the Talking with Talis semantic web podcast series, the interview (listen here) is summarized on interviewer Paul Miller's new ZDNet blog dedicated to the semantic web. A full transcript is available here. It's an important conversation and a good introduction to what the semantic web is. My standard explanation of the value of the Semantic Web is this: Once our software is capable of deriving meaning from web pages it looks at for us, then there's a whole lot of work that will already be done, allowing our human, creative minds to reach new heights. In the interview with Miller, however, Berners-Lee emphasized that it's not just about web pages. On the topic of challenges still faced, Berners-Lee said: Theres an awful lot of data out there.
People in Tech: Andraz Tori, CTO/Co-Founder of Zemanta Zemanta is a an interesting European startup that is applying semantic technologies to blogging. Sarah Perez covered the company's launch in March. One can think of Zemanta as an auto-complete function for blogging. As you are typing up a new post, Zemanta's browser plugin fetches related content - images, articles, videos, links - and provides a simple and friendly UI for inserting the related content into your blog. We caught up with Andraz Tori, CTO and co-founder of Zemanta, at the SemTech conference at San Jose last week for an interview. Just because Zemanta's product looks simple does not mean that it is not sophisticated. All of these algorithms are running on a scalable, distributed grid, powered by Amazon Web Services. RWW: What is your background? Andraz Tori: I started programming at age of 10 and have been successful at international programming competitions in high school. What is it like to be a tech startup in Europe? It's fun. How did Zemanta get started?
Grassroots Programs - Annual2009 In addition to programs sponsored by divisions, round tables and committees, this year's Annual Conference features 10 "Grassroots Programs" selected by a jury of library school students and practitioners from 118 proposals. These Grassroots Programs are part of ALA president Jim Rettig's presidential initiative to increase opportunities for members to participate in, contribute to and benefit from their association. The purpose of this initiative has been to broaden opportunities for ALA members to present programs at the Annual Conference and to compress the planning schedule to accommodate programs on very current issues. View the list of Grassroots Program (goes to the ALA website) From Legacy Data to Linked Data: Preparing Libraries for Web 3.0 Presentations from this program are available below: Eric Miller (Zepheira), "Linked Data and Libraries" [1] Diane Hillmann (Information Institute of Syracuse; Metadata Management Associates), "Are Libraries Ready for Linked Data?"
What Happens When You Deactivate Your Facebook Account Facebook is a big part of millions and millions of peoples' lives, but what happens when you pull the plug? Last night I met a man who walked to the edge of the cliff and nearly deactivated his Facebook account. He took a screenshot of what he saw after clicking the "deactivate my account" link on his account page - and it is pretty far-out. That man considered quitting Facebook because it was having an adverse emotional impact on him and I'll spare him and his contacts from posting the screenshot he shared with me. Can you believe that? Apparently my wife's good friend and one of my co-workers are really going to miss me if I leave, though. Admittedly, this is also kind of funny at the same time. This is just loaded with obnoxiousness. Just below the text box where departing users are asked to provide further explanation why they are leaving is a button you can click to select this option:
Secrets of the LinkedIn Data Scientists I suffer from severe data envy when it comes to LinkedIn. They have detailed information on millions of people who are motivated to keep their profiles up-to-date, collect a rich network of connections and have a strong desire from their users for more tools to help them in their professional lives. Over the past couple of years Chief Scientist DJ Patil has put together an impressive team of data scientists to deliver new services based around all that information. One of my favorites is their career explorer, using the accumulated employment histories of millions of professionals to help students understand where their academic and early job choices might lead them. Ali Imam's connection network, via Russell Jurney Their work also shows up in some more subtle ways too, like the Groups you may like service that relies on their analyses and the SNA team's work to recommend groups that seem connected to your interests. Twitter users by location, thanks to Mechanical Turk matching
tripfs: linked data for filesystems - Digital Curation | Google-grupper Dies kann nur von begrenztem Interesse sein, aber die Linked Data im Web Workshop [1] geht jetzt an WWW2010 hat einen kurzen Aufsatz von Bernhard Schandl darum Dateisysteme als verknüpfte Daten: Heben File Systems in die Linked Data Cloud mit TripFS [2] Es gibt auch eine Demo verfügbar [3], surfen Sie einige Verzeichnisse von Video-und Audio-Inhalte. / / Ed [1] ldow2010/ [2] ldow2010/papers/ldow2010_ paper02.pdf [3] at:9876 [4] [5] Papier uc/item/8525r8cn [6] video - Sie erhalten diese Nachricht, weil Sie der Google Groups "Digital Curation" Gruppe abonniert haben.
How Best Buy is Using The Semantic Web Yesterday we wrote about the increasing usage of Semantic Web technologies by large commercial companies like Facebook, Google and Best Buy. The Semantic Web is a Web of added meaning, which ultimately enables smarter and more personalized web apps to be built. In this post we explore how a leading U.S. retailer, Best Buy, is using a Semantic Web markup language called RDFa to add semantics to its webpages. This is not just an academic exercise for Best Buy. ReadWriteWeb's Guide to The Semantic Web: Myers told us that the primary goal of using semantic technologies was to increase the visibility of its products and services. A quick refresher on the terminology: just as the lingua franca of the Web is HTML (Hypertext Markup Language), RDF (Resource Description Framework) is commonly thought of as the primary language of the Semantic Web. To solve this dilemma, Best Buy gave each store its own blog. That seems like a distinct competitive advantage for Best Buy.
Top 10 Semantic Web Products of 2010 Every year ReadWriteWeb selects the top 10 products or developments across a range of categories. We kick off the 2010 'Best Of' series with our selection of the top 10 Semantic Web products and implementations of the year. This year we've chosen 5 products by semantically charged startups and 5 implementations by large organizations. The startups represent the cutting edge of Semantic Web. Each has made an impact on the Internet this year, with user growth and innovation. ReadWriteWeb's 2010 In Review: A note on terminology:we are using 'Semantic Web' and 'Semantic technology' somewhat interchangeably, although many people believe that the term Semantic Web (upper case) should only be applied to W3C-approved technologies such as RDF and SPARQL. Here then is our list of the top 10 Semantic Web products or implementations of 2010 (in no particular order). Freebase In July Google acquired one of the leading Semantic Web companies, Metaweb. GetGlue The changes have been good for GetGlue. Hunch
How to publish Linked Data on the Web This document provides a tutorial on how to publish Linked Data on the Web. After a general overview of the concept of Linked Data, we describe several practical recipes for publishing information as Linked Data on the Web. This tutorial has been superseeded by the book Linked Data: Evolving the Web into a Global Data Space written by Tom Heath and Christian Bizer. This tutorial was published in 2007 and is still online for historical reasons. The Linked Data book was published in 2011 and provides a more detailed and up-to-date introduction into Linked Data. The goal of Linked Data is to enable people to share structured data on the Web as easily as they can share documents today. The term Linked Data was coined by Tim Berners-Lee in his Linked Data Web architecture note. Applying both principles leads to the creation of a data commons on the Web, a space where people and organizations can post and consume data about anything. This chapter describes the basic principles of Linked Data.
"The Internet of Things is Already Here" - Dispatches From Internetome Internetome, the U.K.'s first full day conference dedicated to the Internet of Things was held on Nov 10 in London. In front of a full attendance, with representatives from academia, government, and enterprise, a wide range of speakers illustrated the promise and the challenges of the complex systems based on smart sensor networks. The Economist magazine featured in its current issue a special report on Smart Systems, underlining how rich, and important these ICT solutions have become, and how they will in the future sustain value added services for a wide set of vertical application areas. Guest author David Orban is the Chairman of Humanity+, an organization dedicated to promoting understanding, interest, and participation in fields of emerging innovation. "We do not know how these tiny chips will transform our lives, and that is the beauty of it." John Woodget, Global Director for the Telecommunications sector, Intel Next on stage was myself. View more presentations from David Orban.