Hopefully by now you have come to realize (or at least starting to ) what Semantic Universe is and what we intend it to be. For the small confused percentage of you that found us looking for The Semantic Universe of Raja Rao you probably have NO idea how you got here so thankfully our publisher Tony Shaw,  has listed out some of our many goals we hope to attain. In addition to that you can read our press release for more info!

So even though we’ve had the site open for a few days (testing, tweaking, etc) let this be my offical “welcome” to the new Semantic Universe site.  I’m delighted you’ve stopped by to take a look and I hope we can exceed your expectations while you’re here.

We have many goals for the Semantic Universe site, including:

We’ve known about the Dublin Core (www.dublincore.org ) pretty much forever. We know it has a following in Library Science, and content management systems, and Adobe uses their tags as the basis for the XMP (www.adobe.com/products/xmp/). And we knew that at least one of the original architects for the Dublin Core, Eric Miller (www.w3.org/People/EM/ ) is now deeply invested in the Semantic Web.

I’ve read some articles again this week explaining that the promise or potential of Semantic Integration is still a bit far off from being able to engender significant impact to the enterprise. Perhaps, it is worth examining the subject more as a practice approach rather than a standards or technology dependent facilitation medium.

Someone asked me recently whether or not there some type of tangible relationship between Semantic Integration and governance – it was an excellent question and the answer is a resounding “Yes.”

As noted in a previous post, the current set of methodologies employed in the day to day IT operations of a typical enterprise is poised for perhaps its most significant paradigm shift in several decades. This evolutionary shift is not the introduction of Semantic technology or standards per se, but rather the complete re-visioning of how IT works in the context of Semantic Interoperability. Semantic IT provides us with two crucial capabilities that we simply never had before:

In many ways the practice of information technology has changed little over the past 30 years or so. It may not seem so on first appearance – but the premises upon which our current technologies are still operating are largely based on philosophical constructs that date back 30 years or more.

The JavaOne presentations are out! I don’t think you have to sign up to see them. They did a pretty good job of looping the soundtrack back to the video capture of the screen. There are a few places where the animation is pretty tightly coupled to the speech where you can see the looping errors, but for the most part, it is pretty good.

You can see my presentation about the Working Ontologist here .

The news yesterday that Microsoft is likely buying semantic search provider Powerset had those of us in the community buzzing.  Besides the valuation per se this event provides several thoughts about the maturity of our technology, its value and its future. 

What will Google do now?  This is the first question that comes to mind.  They are on record as saying they “explore all technologies that can provide users a better experience”.  But they also say that it is unlikely users can ever be re-trained to type out full sentences in the form of questions as Powerset requires you to do. 

Yahoo! has entered the Semantic Web with the announcement of RDF support in SearchMonkey . And leave it to a semantic web veteran like Peter Mika to be the one to make it happen.

SearchMonkey has become the inspiration for my latest cocktail-party answer to the question, “What is the Semantic Web?” (yes, I seem to spend a lot of time at cocktail parties. Well, in bars, anyway). A cocktail party answer has to be understandable and even engaging to someone who has already had two (or more!) drinks (not to mention comprehensible after I’ve had two or more drinks!).