Semantic Search Beyond RDF – SemTech 2009 Video

MODERATOR:
Wen Ruan, TextWise

PANELISTS:
Ronald M. Kaplan, Powerset division of bing
Christian F. Hempelmann, RiverGlass, Inc.
Riza Berkan, hakia

Semantic Search technology in the Semantic Web community is often understood as retrieval of knowledge from tagged data such as RDF sources, which require substantial formatting and markup to realize. Understanding unstructured query and document text and conducting searches according to their meaning is another approach, exemplified by linguistically rooted semantic matching, ontological knowledge-based semantic interpretation, and statistically based semantic similarity search.

This panel will look at different ways to tackle semantic search as a problem of text understanding. Powerset division of bing’s natural-language processing engine does deep syntactical analysis to determine the meaning of a query or a sentence. Hakia relies on a language-independent ontology model and an ontology-based English lexicon to translate text into a representation of its meaning. RiverGlass has developed an ontological semantic approach to search and text analytics, emphasizing the in-context, linguistic meaning of textual content in order to return truly relevant results in response to information requests. TextWise’s Semantic Signature matching looks for similarities between a query and text at the topic level.

Panel: Venture Capital Outlook – SemTech 2009 Video

MODERATOR:
Steve Bastasini, Cerebra

PANELISTS:
Eghosa Omoigui, Intel Capital
Peter Rip, Crosslink Capital
Michael S. Dunn, Hearst Interactive Media
Shawn Carolan, Menlo Ventures

After a period of caution about the viability of semantic technologies, investors seem more willing to fund semantic start-ups right now. And even with the economy in distress, semantics is managing to create excitement amongst the VCs. Semantic search has been hot for a couple of years – the possibility of finding the next Google being just too enticing – but the focus seems now to be shifting to enterprise and consumer apps where as Jim Hendler famously said "a little semantics goes a long way." Money is going into enterprise software, such as business intelligence tools, and innovative consumer apps based around social networks, smarter information filtering and productivity enhancement.

So what do the VCs want to see in the business plans for semantic start-ups now? Are there still plenty of good opportunities out there for entrepreneurs or have the best ideas already claimed their share of available capital?