Great article
by Ellie Behling explaining wht publishers would want to use semantics:
Better SEO
Flexible content for mobile
Better site functions
Improved efficiencies
And I guess the other key point made by Ellie is that this is not just for the bug players. There are open source solutions available to be used by individuals publisging their own blogs.
Interesting and not that surprising. Semantics are here to stay. Freebase provides quality information which enables improved search across the web – and correlation of data on the web. Makes sense that the leading search company would want this type of data. Will be interesting to see how google leverages the data and what the attitude of contributors to freebase will be post the google acquisition. Obviously with google behind freebase there should be no problems in terms of expansion/development/ improved user responses. Presumably all of this will somehow feed into more targeted online advertising?
The guys at Talis have done a good job of evengelising linked data as a concept, the basic tools and their platform. If you are new to the space then the presentation by Rob Styles (44 mins) (from the Linked Data and Libraries event on 21st July 2010) is worth watching. In particular he does a good job of explaining what RDF is (a graph data model) – as against the different ways in which you can write it down e.g. Turtle, RDFa and RDF/XML. His whiz through SPARQL gives a useful intorduction to how RDF data can be queried.
It’s already been quite a year on the semantic web front. Clearly RDFa is a big winner. And just when we thought we were getting a handle on the standards and protocols now we have RIF to learn.
When you see facebook adopting a version of RDFa then you can assume you are onto something. And now we’ve seen this.
Have to say that I think Hatem Mahmoud has done a great job in contextualising and explaining web 3.0/ semantic web in this presentation.
Takes you through web 1.0, through to 2.0 and on to 3.0. Explains why web 3.0 is required and gives some current examples.
Worth spending 15 minutes – for anyone new to semantic web.
This 6 minute video is also an excellent introduction to the semantic web.
ReadWriteWeb sets out its Top 10 Semantic Web Products of 2009.
Was I excited?
On a personal level I have found a number of these products useful e.g. feedly. And they do represent some interesting development and practical examples of various elements of the semantic toolbox.
But not that exciting.
Working with business executives looking to uderstand the relevance of semantic web to them not sure that this range of products will excite them. In fact don’t think it will.
I am beginning to think that we should think of semantics in terms of a set of tools and standards designed to enable us to get more from the web. Web 3.0 seems to me to suggest a new web – I don’t see that at present.
Three different examples recently reported of use of semantic web technologies to improve online advertising efforts.
OpenAmplify is a web service developed by Hapax that brings human understanding to content. Using patented Natural Language Processing technology, OpenAmplify reads and understands every word used in text. It identifies the significant topics, brands, people, perspectives, emotions, actions and timescales and presents the findings in an actionable XML structure.
NEW YORK – ad pepper media, the international online advertising network and semantic advertising technology solutions provider, launched the SiteScreen for Agencies platform, enabling advertising agencies to apply its ground-breaking SiteScreen semantic brand protection technology across their entire range of online media buys to effectively prevent ad misplacements.
Read more: http://www.adoperationsonline.com/2009/11/12/ad-pepper-media-launches-sitescreen-for-agencies/#ixzz0XL2vwtcR
Jennifer Zaino
SemanticWeb.com Contributor
In Italy, Quattroruote is a leading online magazine for car aficionados and buyers, with its reputation built on testing and evaluating models and its own blue book-like price estimates for vehicles. Now it’s a leading-edge user of semantic web technology, too.
It has deployed Expert System’s Cogito semantic solution to help add value to user searches for used cars in its portal to the world of classified car sales.
Find myself being asked more regularly to explain ‘the semantic web’. I think it’s a combination of a growing awareness in the business community of the semantic web and a greater focus on this topic by myself.
Read a piece this morning on the hypios web site – a web 2.0 based problem solving site. In the first page of this essay the author offers an excellent introduction to the semantic web (and the requirement for a semantic web).
The only reservation I would have would be the ‘plea’ to business to make more data available publicly as linked open data. I agree with the sentiment – but not sure that business on such sentiment.
Excellent presentation (to undergrads I presume) outlining background to semiotics and semantics.
Great start – asks the participants in 15 seconds to define ‘forward’.
Works through the basics of symbols, icons and indices. This in turn leads on to the importance of context (more important for symbols e.g. language than for icons).
Follows on from this to explain the need for rules and agreed terminologies – leading to Ontologies.
I think Paul Walk’s analysis in his recent posting is clear and to the point.
To some extent I think Tim Berners Lee may almost be a victim of his own success. Seems to me his initial guidance to government (and others) was to get on with making the data available (at that time he was not stressing the need to provide the data in RDF format). Now that data.Gov has provided data TBL and others are understandably pushing that the data be in RDF format – to enable linking of the data.
Obviously we,promoting things semantic, want the data to be published and easily linkable. But sometimes, as per Paul’s posting, I think we make it all look a little more confusing than necessary, by ‘mashing’ (apols for pun) the terminology.
109 | Unique Visitors |
