Agent Based Semantic Web

The Internet is a vast digital network of computers spreading around the globe. In 2008 the number of people connected to the Internet via servers, desktops and various mobile devices reached 1,463,632,361, which represents 21.9% of population of the world. One could argue that a quarter of all people who populate the Earth live in a global village – they can rapidly communicate with each other, exchange gossip, show photos, trade, provide services and ask each other for help.

Dublin Core and OWL

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.

Breaking into the Semantic Web, Part II

This interview with Eric Miller, President of Zepheira was conducted by Golda Velez. http://zepheira.com

SR: Eric, let me ask your advice. The Semantic Web is interesting, exciting, promising. So say I’m a developer, how do I get involved with it? Or suppose I have a tech company, how do I get work in this field?

Microsoft buying into Semantics – part 1

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. 

How Yahoo! is defining the Semantic Web

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!).

Mother and baby doing well

You know something is up when RDF and the Semantic Web are mentioned on TechCrunch . That’s not one of the ‘new company raises $6m to enable Semantic Web search, but is never heard of again’ kind of mentions. It’s a simple, straightforward, ‘Yahoo! is now starting to index the metadata embedded in our web-pages, and the web is bound to follow’ kind of mentions.

Connecting the Dots

What is commonly understood about the Semantic Web is not what I care to write about. I have a long professional history of looking to the future of business and how things come together in unique and challenging ways. In other words how stuff turns out that most people did not anticipate and thus did not factor into their decision making – sometimes with terrible consequences. This is no doubt true also with the Semantic Web.

Building Effective Relationships in Software

One of the many factors that led to the success of the Web was in how it defined links in a very simple manner, which encouraged cross-referencing. In the last two installments of this column, I’ve discussed the importance of the identifiers of the Web: URIs. The Web’s native document element, HTML, made it easy to connect one URI to another, and so relationships between documents could grow regardless of who controlled the documents. This of course meant that sometimes such links would break, signaled by the infamous 404 “Not Found” code.

A Wiki for Business Knowledge in Executable English

The problem of business-IT alignment is of widespread economic concern, and is largely caused by a semantic disconnect between business people and technologists. The business people speak English, and the techies have to translate that English into something a computer can understand — often a low-level, step-by-step way to complete a task. The margin for error is great. The situation is a bit like the childhood game called Telephone — by the time the message gets to the last person, it has changed dramatically from the original. The problem is made worse by the fact that the business requirements often change during a project.

Moving the Internet Inside with Semantic Technologies

The vast majority of today’s enterprise applications owe their genesis to a period very different from today. Even the most apparently innovative share perhaps unnecessary heritage with their ancestors, preventing them from fully exploiting the potential of an ever-more connected world.