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By Javier Carbonell, September 14, 2010 3:50 pm

One of the most important consequences of Information Society’s development in the late years is the almost exponential growth of digital information. Growth in the number of ICT users, the fact that it is so easy to digitise information, the new trends such as Web 2.0  where each user adopts the role of content Publisher, … have taken us to a situation where information has ceased to be a precious scarce resource.

Semantic technologies have an important say to try to put some light into this situation. Undoubtely Information Management has been pointed in Value-it as a main driver of semantic technologies within the companies. The IT magazines  Upgrade (The European Journal for the Informatic Professional), and Novática (The spanish version) has published one article carried out  by value-it team. These results come from 700 interviews to IT specialists from different industrial sectors, both face to face and by telephone and the experiment done for Value-it with Telefónica bank of ideas.

You can get the piece in pdf format in this links

Upgrade

Novática

I hope you enjoy it, and please comments are wellcome

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By Javier Carbonell, June 1, 2010 5:31 pm

More activity related to semantic technologies continued during May month. In the field of new usages of Semantic Technologies we can hightlight some relevant  facts, as Jini is building a smart ‘Taste Engine’ for Google TV,  U.S. Defense intelligence Agency selected Inttensity software for text extraction solution for mission related work, Thomson Reuters has added financial video service, or the semantic application to take notes: Springpad

There were too some curious applications that added the funny point to the utilization of semantic technologies, for instance, Semantic Experts from EffectiveSoft analyzed lyrics of Eurovision song contest 2010,or that IdolStats successfully predicted american idol cast off through social media monitoring.
As in prior months, search applications continued playing an important role in Semantic developments, in this area Exalead has adviced travel websites about the huge possibilities of semantic technologies to offer personalized services to users.
The Data.gov, as happens with other Open Data innitiatives  is seen as a source of possibilities for semantic technologies as depicted in this article, and SemTech as it ocurred in previous years , is raising a lot of interest and lots of mentions in media as its date is getting closer.

Other aspect to catch the level of  Semantic Technologies interest, is that VC continue fundraising companies in Semantic Technologies areas , for example Saplo has  raisen 500K$ for semantic text analsyis from VC, and Similar Changes has shifted its name to Similar Groups and raised more funding.
Other movements in Semantic sectors are that CEO Matt Zelesko (former Joost CEO) joined Inform Technologies as CTO, OpenAmplify bolstered leadership position in semantic web with additional patents, and Evri, that absorbed Twine, went Mobile for tech news on Android Phones.
Finally an interesting article  to read about Enterprise 3.0

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By Javier Carbonell, April 22, 2010 11:12 am

Value-it preliminary results

In this and the few next posts we are going to  show data obtained in Value-it project. These results have been got from a market research that includes 50 in-depth interviews and a poll carried out at the end of 2009 to 625 directors, managers and people involved in the process of IT decision making. The analysis covers different vertical sectors and different countries in Europe.

In general, it has been detected a big necessity of IT applications more intelligent in order to face the new challenges to come: cloud computing, social networks…

Nevertheless, semantic technologies are not expected to be commercialized in a standalone way. They will be bundled enriching traditional applications giving them a kind of intelligence. For this reason a killer application is not waited, nor an exponential increase of Semantic Technologies market in Europe.

As showed in the next figure, a continuos increment it is expected for the next 5 years, surpassing the 700 Millions of euros in the year 2014 in Europe.

Source: Provisional estimate of product market potential. OVUM. Datamonitor

About the functions more feasible to adopt these technologies, CRM and Enterprise Management are the main two areas enhancing Semantic Technologies market. On the other side, Supply Chain Management and process integration will play a residual role in all this evolution.

Source: Provisional estimate of product market potential. OVUM. Datamonitor

Though this data are not as spectacular are others showed in IT market (cloud computing…) what it is clear is that there is an important market that IT companies should consider.

For more information you can visit value-it site

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By Javier Carbonell, April 13, 2010 3:13 pm

Semantic Technologies can be useful to manage ideas, improving the performance of trends as Open Innovation.  As commented in previous posts (Taxonomies vs Semantic Technologies to improve open innovation: Some data, Taxonomies vs Semantic Technologies to manage internal information: Some data), we carried out some tests to measure the impact of semantic technologies in the bank of ideas of  Telefónica. Though results will be published in Value-it deliverables, and we have given some advance in those posts, here goes a presentation about the results we obtained. These results show how  Semantic Technoology improve the performance offered by traditional taxonomical systems, and this is more clear  as the environment is getting more open. For this reason Open Innovation can be a field suitable to implement Semantic Technologies.

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By Javier Carbonell, March 4, 2010 11:45 am

A new month, shorter than others in length but no in news intensity, at least referred to semantics. Related to Knowledge Management, we find several pieces of news about Companies that work with semantic technologies. For instance, Empolis an Attensity group company and leading provider in business user applications that generate value from unstructured data has been recognized as one of the world’s most important companies in the field of knowledge management by the prestigious list of “KMWorld’s 100.

But the most commented movement in this area has been the Open Text  acquisition of NStein, the Canadian company that offers some pretty nifty semantic technology, which helps generate semantic metadata for FT.com’s Newsift site. So, Open Text a Canadian company too, that is specialized in content management joins the semantic wave.
Continue reading 'Semantic Technologies Monthly Review. February 2010'»

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By Jose Manuel Cantera, February 25, 2010 1:49 pm

Author: José Manuel Cantera Fonseca, Telefónica I+D

HTML4, the language of the Web, is intended to define the content of a web page from an structural and presentational point of view but not from a semantic point of view. For instance, in HTML4 a <table> element can be used to present information about different entities such as cars, hotels or others. However there is no a machine-readable format that allows to indicate unambiguously the semantics of the information or contents presented. In addition HTML4 relies on the usage of the semantically-neutral <div> tag which is used to group  content.

HTML5 is the next major version of HTML. Initially developed by the WHATWG, now is in process of standardization by W3C. One important step ahead brought by HTML5 is the introduction of new elements which enable the creation of web pages with more explicit semantics, leveraging the traditional usage of the semantically-neutral <div> tag:
Continue reading 'HTML5 and Semantics'»

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By Javier Carbonell, January 27, 2010 12:34 am

In the latest posts we have reviewed the present situation of Semantic Technologies for enterprises from several points of view: providers, technologies, demand.

Undoubtedly we can claim that these technologies are mature enough to go to market, there is a big number of providers with interesting solutions, and there is demand for these technologies in lots of sectors. Sometimes companies don’t know that semantic technologies can be the solution to some of their problems, but they know that something must be done to manage the increasing amount of data, and of course STE will have a say in that.

Continue reading 'Semantic Technologies can be profitable, of course'»

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By Javier Carbonell, January 22, 2010 10:29 am

Value-it “Demand Driven Report”  is very rich in data, conclusions, results, undoubtedly a reference document for people who want to know about Semantic Technologies possibilities. But a one hundred pages document is perhaps too much document for people who only want to have a high level picture.

For this reason it is worth to highlight the most relevant key findings:

• Semantic Technologies for the Enterprise can facilitate business recovery: On the present situation this fact must be taken into account for some companies.
• Many IT decision-makers have little knowledge of STE: It is clear that STE suppliers have not done a good job disseminating semantics, this is a “must change” for the future.
• IT managers want to know more about STE: Though semantic has not been well sold, IT managers know that something to manage the data overflow must be done, for this reason they want to know more about STE possibilities.
• Information-driven industries will benefit first and most from STE: Of course, in that places where information has a high value, semantic technologies will gain momentum soon.
• Approaches taken will vary by sector requirements: Depending in the need of the sectors, the STE solutions could be different
• Consumer-focused functionality will raise awareness: Speech recognition, new interfaces…, could be fundamental factors to bring STE closer to consumers
• Suppliers must work harder to make the case clear: Again, there is a consensus about the utility of these technologies but there is a sensation that something has not be done well by supplies
• Growing markets in speech recognition can anchor growth for STE: Speech recognition can be the open door to STE for lot of applications.

In short, there is a clear opinion that STE can be useful but there is a impression that something is not well done, mainly by STE vendors. All these findings must move us to a reflection about how we must continue to make more attractive these technologies from now on.

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By Javier Carbonell, January 15, 2010 6:56 pm

This document, that you all can download here,  tries to bring us nearer the STE supply vision. To achieve this, TechnoVision Report provides a vision of the STE products, services, technologies, and expertise that play and will play a key role in configuring and further consolidating the Supply of STE products and services from the market perspective.

The document begins with an effort to center the concept of Semantic Technologies in the enterprise. This is, which are the main areas for STE applications and what is happening in the environment (political, IT, services…) that is triggering the present interest of STE. Are they consistent enough or are STE a fashion?. In our analysis, we got the conclusion that STE present buzz has very strong foundations.

Continue reading 'Value-it. First deliverables main results. Technovision Report'»

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By Javier Carbonell, November 10, 2009 2:15 pm

Yesterday I was reading El caparazón, one of the most relevant blogs about semantic applications in Spanish language, when I found this post about “Education and Web 2.0”. Undoubtedly this is an area where semantic technologies will have an important say in the future.

Some experts state that most of the knowledge that an elementary school student will need to perform his job when he will grow up, don’t exist yet. How can we focus the education in so a rapidly changing environment?. Certainly knowledge is advancing so quickly that it is an almost impossible task trying to keep the pace. This raises a fundamental change in the education approach, as its key task will be to transmit information to the students, to help them to manage all this information, to help them to distinguish useful one from useless, to help them to extract knowledge from all this information… This is, learning how to learn.
No doubt Internet will change education approach at all levels. No longer students will go to university to pick up some notes, or to listen a one way explanation in which the teacher talks and students listen. Because to access to information we have Google, and to hear lectures, we can easily access to those of the outstanding experts in each subject.
Any country that wants to maintain a high level in the knowledge society must be capable of integrating technologies within education systems at all levels. We’re going to be bombarded along all our lives with millions and millions of information bytes, this is a real fact we must live with. In this situation it will be paramount to extract useful knowledge from this information, indeed this will mark the difference among efficient and no efficient people. In this environment semantic technologies will play an important role, because they will help us to navigate through information and to adapt it to our needs, that is to contextualize it. Nowadays, semantic technologies have got an important level of madurity and standards as RDF, or OWL will help us to give the jump form a “textual” management of information to a “concept” treatment of this information. This is a first step and a very important achievement. However, some years will be required to settle these concepts, and to develop technologies allowing us to extract knowledge from all the information around us: this means tools to show us to learn.