web2express.org

June 17, 2009

semantic technology conference 2009

Filed under: events, news, semantic search engine, web intelligence — aj @ 8:59 pm

I have attended the semantic technology conference again this year – the largest gathering for semantic tech companies. Several things stand out:

Google gave a session on semantics – amazing change of altitude from the past. They support mircoformat and RDFa in documents and use metadata to make search results more relevant.  Great turning point.

Several companies have opened their NLP/semantic analysis core through api service, and they are free at least for developers. This is great news for the developer community because more tools are avaliable for creating new semantic web applications. In addition to OpenCalais and Zemanta, which I have tried before, the new semantic apis come from Ontos, AdaptiveBlue, Dapper, and Expert Systems.

Tom Gruber announced virtual personal assitant from his new company Siri. It works on mobil phone and provides a speech input interace for intelligent search. Cool product!

I moderated a panel discussion on web intelligence. Four companies on the panel (Siri, Zemanta, Expert Systems, Overtone) have different tricks to bring some levels of intelligence to the web or customers.  There were lots of questions from the audience. My opening remarks tried to convey the following messages:

1. Web intelligence is becoming the hallmark of the web as social networking connects people closer. The impact is showing up in many application ares:

  • Smarter Social Networking
    • connect to people you like and sources you trust
    • assisted by consumer intelligent agents
    • Twine, Siri
  • Semantic Search answering your questions
    • Google, Microsoft Bing, Wolfram Alpha
  • Semantic Publishing
    • Reuters, Freebase, Zemanta
  • Web-scale Market Intelligence
    • understand customer needs in real time
    • having intelligent dialog with customers  (branding)
    • Overtone, Attensity, ScoutLabs
  • Semantic Online Advertising
    • targeted by content semantics
    • Google, Peer39, TextWise

2. Plenty of open/free tools and data are available for developers to start creating web apps with intelligence.

Lots of free/open tools available to play with:

  • semantic analysis API: Open Calais, Zemanta
  • NLP: OpenNLP, Stanford NLP tools
  • knowledge management: Protege, Jena
  • search: Lucene, Solr
  • social networking: Orkut,


Lots of data available:

  • Twitter stream
  • News feeds, blog feeds, …
  • Wikipedia, Freebase, DBPedia, …

3. Latest trend:  real time data + intelligence. Semantic Web SIG will focus on twitter stream and applications on the next event on July 1.  TechCrunch will devote a full-day conference for this topic if real time data stream on July 10.

Overrall, the semantic technolgy is getting more steam now and we’ll see what killer apps will emerge in the next year or so.

aj chen

September 2, 2008

Emerging Semantic Ad Platforms

Filed under: events — aj @ 2:39 am

[::Subject::]

online ad platform, semantic analysis

[::Category::]

semantic technology

[::Description::]

Here in the summer of 2008 the Semantic Web is still waiting for a killer app. Proponents have looked everywhere, but they may have overlooked one big opportunity – the true money-making machines on the Web are the online ad serving platforms that power Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and the like. Recently a host of new startup companies (Peer39, BuzzLogic, etc) have popped up to fill this gap. These startups are spending VC money to try to make smarter money machines themselves, and the large companies are not sitting on the sideline either (Microsoft, Adobe etc).

During this Semantic Web SDForum event, we will focus on how semantics can make ad-serving smarter. Walter Chang from Adobe will present a new semantic ad platform that leverages the billions of pdf documents out there. And since natural language processing (NLP) is one of the primary techniques used to understand Web semantics, we will be joined by Tom Tague from Thomson Reuters to showcase the new Calais initiative (OpenCalais.com) which supplies a free Web-based platform for generating Semantic Web data that can be used to produce computable semantics from any text and feed them into any new search service, Semantic Web application or semantic ad platform.

If you go home with a big new idea after this event, please don’t forget to say “Go semantics!” 

Panelists:
• Walter Chang, Senior Computer Scientist, Adobe Systems
• Tom Tague, Thomson Reuters Calais initiative

[::Start Time::]

6:30pm 9/3/2008

[::End Time::]

9pm 9/3/2008

[::Location::]

Cubberley Community Center
4000 Middlefield Rd., RM H-1
Palo Alto, CA

[::Organizer::]

SDForum Semantic Web SIG

[::Event Link::]

http://www.sdforum.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=Calendar.eventDetail&eventID=13210

[::Presentation::]

Agenda:

6:30pm-7:00pm
Registration / Networking / Refreshments / Pizza

7:00pm-7:10pm
Introduction / Community announcement

7:10pm-7:50pm
Walter Chang: Adobe’s New Semantic Ad Platform

7:50pm-8:30pm
Tom Tague: Calais – The Calais Semantic Web Service and Free API

8:30pm-9:00pm(+)
Dedicated Q&A period

[::Presenter::]

Walter Chang is a Senior Computer Scientist at the Advanced Technology Labs of Adobe Systems. His current research focus includes text mining, semantic metadata, automatic document analysis, knowledge representation, machine inferencing, and content ontologies. Previously, he was a Managing Director and Systems Architect at Scient (now SBI.Razorfish), an Engineering Manager at Oracle Corporation, and an Advisory Programmer in the Extensible Database group at the IBM Almaden Research Center. He has served as an Adobe W3C representative and contributor to RDF-Schema and has also published works in the areas of extensible database systems, document indexing methods, and automatic semantic metadata extraction. He holds patents in the areas of signature coding, persistent object storage, ontology-based classification and policy recommendation systems, and automatic document analysis. Walter received MS and BS degrees in electrical engineering and computer sciences from Santa Clara University and U.C. Berkeley.

Thomas (“Tom”) Tague leads Thomson Reuters Calais initiative, spearheading strategy, product development and partner relations. He also oversees the Calais developer community at OpenCalais.com, evangelizing the Calais Web service and its free and open API while working closely with commercial and non-commercial developers alike. Previous positions include EVP, Client Solutions for Darwin Partners and co-founder and COO for Tessera Enterprise Systems, as well as senior roles at Epsilon and Electronic Data Systems (EDS).
[::Contact Person::]

AJ Chen

[::Alternative Web Page::]

January 9, 2008

NLP finding mass audience

Filed under: events, news — aj @ 3:08 am

I just came back from our semantic web SIG event- another exciting session on cool technology and potential killer application. This time, it’s the “old” NLP, natural language processing. Barney Pell, CEO of Powerset gave an overview on how NLP is solving the chicken and egg problem facing the semantic web. Powerset’s CSO Ron Kaplan then showed what their not-yet released search engine can do. I’m very impressed by their ambitious plan to build deep semantic index of public web pages. What’s more exciting to me, according to Barney, is that they may make their semantic data available to developers. That will enable developers to explore the power of semantic web.

In addition, Rion Snow from Stanford University presented his Ph.D. work on expanding WordNet by NLP trick.

It seems to me search engine may be the vehicle that can deliver mass audience to NLP technology

-aj

December 6, 2007

more intelligence coming to the web – 2007-12-13 event

Filed under: Uncategorized, events, news — aj @ 1:19 am

[::Subject::]

semantic web, intelligence, interface

[::Category::]

news

[::Content::]

Last month, our semantic web SIG had an interesting event focusing on Intelligence at the Interface. More than 100 attendees were amazed by the new intelligent devices and applications being developed at Yahoo, PARC, SRI and Radar Networks. Given such a high level interest from the community, we are going to repeat the same event in San Francisco next Thursday, Dec. 13th.  Please note that pre-registration is required for this special event since seating is limited. For more info and registration (free for SDforum member), go to SDforum semantic web SIG’s event page.
[::Author::]

AJ

[::Contact Person::]

AJ

[::Alternative Web Page::]

http://sdforum.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=Page.viewPage&pageId=656&parentID=483&nodeID=1

October 31, 2007

2007/11/07 event: Intelligence at the Interface

Filed under: events, news — aj @ 10:07 am

[::Subject::]

web interface, intelligence, semantic web

[::Category::]

web interface, intelligence, semantic web[::Description::]

The interfaces we use to interact with the world’s information are getting smarter. First we had web portals, which give us someone else’s idea of the content we should see. Then came search engines, which let us tell the system what we want. We are about to see the next wave — intelligence at the interface — which will know a lot more about us, our interests, our information, and our environment. This SD Forum event will showcase four exciting new examples of intelligence at the interface developed by Bay Area companies.

  • SRI will demonstrate an intelligent assistant system that came out of an ambitious AI research program. It learns about your documents, email, people, schedules, and meetings, and learns even more as you use it. It helps you organize your information world, prepare for meetings, create presentations, and find information in the context of your work.
  • Yahoo! Research Berkeley will demo ZoneTag and Zurfer, mobile-phone photo-driven applications that use your social, spatial, and temporal context to support and enhance key user tasks on the mobile device. They intelligently help you capture, upload, tag, view and search for photos on your mobile device, minimizing requirements on explicit input and user attention.
  • PARC will demonstrate a mobile leisure guide, codenamed Magitti, which recommends places to visit in an urban environment. It pays attention to your time, location, past behavior and preferences and it also infers your current and future activity type to better target its recommendations.
  • Radar Networks will demonstrate a new online service based on their Semantic Web platform that helps people organize, find, and share their information more intelligently. It knows about the semantic content of information of all sorts, from web content to email.

[::Start Time::]

2007/11/7 6:30pm

[::End Time::]

2007/11/7 9:00pm

[::Location::]

Cubberley Community Center, 4000 Middlefield Rd., Room H-1, Palo Alto, CA. Directions[::Organizer::]

SDForum Semantic Web SIG

[::Event Link::]

http://www.sdforum.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=Calendar.eventDetail&eventID=12956[::Presentation::]

[::Presenter::]

Panelist Bios:

Adam Cheyer, SRI

Adam Cheyer is currently a Program Director in SRI’s Artificial Intelligence Center, where he serves as Chief Architect of the CALO/PAL project. Previously, Mr. Cheyer was VP of Engineering at Dejima, a mobile solutions company, and before that, VP of Engineering at Verticalnet, an enterprise software provider. As Senior Scientist and Co-Director of the Computer Human Interaction Center (CHIC) at SRI International, Mr. Cheyer led a multidisciplinary team of researchers exploring web services, distributed knowledge, and pervasive computing.

Dr. Mor Naaman, Yahoo! Research Berkeley

Mor Naaman is a research team lead at Yahoo! Research Berkeley (Yahoo! Advanced Development Research). His research focuses on context-based tools and algorithms for interacting with media. Mor has a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Stanford University. His research in the Stanford Infolab also focused on management of digital photographs, thereby allowing (and requiring!) him to take photos throughout his working life. In previous careers, Mor was a professional basketball player as well as a software developer and a college radio DJ.

Kurt Partridge, PARC

Kurt Partridge is a researcher in the Ubiquitous Computing Area in the Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). His research spans a variety of areas, including context awareness, activity modeling, location modeling, mobile device interaction, and wearable computing. He is particularly interested in systems and devices that blend naturally with people’s everyday activities. Kurt received a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Washington in 2005.

Victoria Bellotti, PARC

Victoria Bellotti is a Principal Scientist and manager of the Socio-Technical and Interaction Research (STIR) group at PARC. She studies people to understand their practices, problems and requirements for future technology. She also designs and analyzes systems, focusing on user needs and experience and is an inventor on multiple patents and pending patent applications. Her past work encompasses domains such as transportation, process control, computer-mediated communication, collaboration and ubiquitous computing. Victoria is best known for her research on personal information management and task management. However, more recently, she has been focusing on user-centered design of context- and activity-aware computing systems.

Nova Spivack, Radar Networks

Nova Spivack is one of the leading voices of the emerging Semantic Web, often referred to as Web3.0. Nova founded Radar Networks to develop semantic social software.
In 1994, Nova co-founded EarthWeb (IPO 1998). Nova has worked at Individual, Xerox/Kurzweil, Thinking Machines, and also with SRI International on the DARPA CALO program and nVention. Nova founded Lucid Ventures, and co-founded the San Francisco Web Innovators Network. As a grandson of management guru Peter F. Drucker, Nova shares his grandfather’s interests in the evolution of knowledge work. In 1999 Nova flew to the edge of space in Russia with Space Adventures.

Moderator Bio:

 

 

Tom Gruber is an innovator in technologies that augment human intelligence, individually and collectively. At Stanford University he did foundational work in Ontology Engineering and the precursors of Semantic Web technology to enable knowledge sharing and coordination among heterogeneous, distributed systems. During Web 0.1, he built the first public library for sharing ontologies on the Web; led the team that deployed the first virtual document applications on the Web that generate natural language explanations in response to questions; and invented the first widely-used open source application that turns email conversations into collective memories on the Web. During Web 1.0, he led technology development at Intraspect, an enterprise software company that pioneered the space of Collaborative Knowledge Management — software that helps large, distributed communities of professional people contribute to and learn from a collective body of knowledge. During Web 2.0, he led technology development at RealTravel.com, a popular user-contributed content site where travelers from around the world find and share their travel experiences. During Web 3.0, he is working on technologies that will bring intelligence to the interface.[::Contact Person::]

SIG co-chair AJ Chen (ajchen-at-web2express.org) or Jeff Pollock (jeff.pollock-at-oracle.com)[::Alternative Web Page::]

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