Semantics Incorporated: The Feed

Does the Adoption Threshold of RDF Limit the Grassroot Potential of the Semantic Web?

2009-10-19T12:05:09-04:00

In the October of the Semantic Web Gang podcast, Tom Tague of OpenCalais, Benjamin Nowack of Semsol, and yours truly discuss RDF and its controversial relationship with the broader concept of the Semantic Web. We tackle adoption and marketing issues facing the semantic web, and what could be done to overcome them. A great question that applies to start-ups both in the semantic web and beyond, from Tom Tague's closing comments: are you selling solutions or technology? I greatly enjoyed the chat and hope you will too.

Hybrid Approaches to Taxonomy and Folksonomy

2009-10-09T08:58:48-04:00

Semantic Technology 2009: Hybrid Approaches to Taxonomy and Folksonomy View more presentations from Earley.

Discussing government open data and data.gov with the Semantic Web Gang

2009-09-22T12:43:45-04:00

Paul Miller has just put online our semantic web gang podcast for this month. We were joined by Brand Niemann of the United States’ Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for a discussion on the efforts to apply semantic technologies to Government...

Twine Confirms Traffic Drop on ReadWriteWeb, but Spins it Out of Control

2009-09-15T18:58:32-04:00

ReadWriteWeb just wrote about my last post and relayed Twine's response, which in a nutshell is that they saw a 20-25% traffic drop but that it doesn't matter because they are all focused on version 2.0 which will free their traffic acquisition model from its dependence on Google rankings. Couple of immediate comments (also see comments on RWW site): Compete.com shows a 85%-90% drop, and so does Quantcast.

Twine in Freefall?

2009-09-14T14:33:30-04:00

What happened to Twine? Earlier this year, VentureBeat characterized Twine as an "early success", based on information from Compete.com. ReadWriteWeb followed suit in March explaining that Twine could soon surpass Delicious.com. In May, Techcrunch made the observation that Twine had overtaken Friendfeed in traffic. Fast Company wasn't as fast, but in June it echoed the comments with an article labelling Twine as "red-hot". Twine indeed surpassed Delicious in May and June. That was shortlived, however. Since then, the same source VentureBeat used to discuss Twine's traffic, Compete.com, which Twine has endorsed a number of times, shows a huge drop in traffic.

Excellent slides on building buzz into your website

2009-09-12T11:32:44-04:00

Designing For Social Traction View more documents from Joshua Porter.

Linked Data, a Brand with Big Problems and no Brand Management

2009-07-22T20:55:10-04:00

This post builds on the discussion that started on Twitter between Paul Miller and Ian Davis and quickly expanded to a few other folks. Paul subsequently wrote a blog post Does Linked Data need RDF?, and so did Ian Davis with The Linked Data Brand. My turn: I like Davis's suggested approach of looking as Linked Data as a brand. It made me realize something: this brand hasn't been properly managed.

Attention Web 3.0 Start-Ups: Redirect 25% of your R&D Budget to Market Understanding and Development

2009-07-09T17:41:48-04:00

In my observations on the Semantic Technology conference last month, I mentioned I would be blogging separately about the dire lack of investments by Web 3.0 start-ups in market understanding and marketing. My main claim with this post is that companies in the Web 3.0 and semantic web space are downright bad at filling unmet needs, packaging their offer effectively and cutting through the market noise to secure users and revenues. It even appears this incapacity to grow revenues has a direct impact on their ability to make money (ok, it's sunny outside, I guess that after 5 days of clouds there is no harm in having a little fun ;)

Video of the Semantic Web Gang at Semantic Tech 2009

2009-07-08T15:51:59-04:00

Here is the video of the live podcast we recorded at the Semantic Tech conference, courtesy Semantic Universe and Paul Miller who arranged to have this recording.

Will We Soon See a Rally on Web 3.0 Start-Ups? My Take on Semantic Tech

2009-07-07T22:21:04-04:00

About 3 weeks ago, I left a warm Canadian sun to fly south to San Jose's chilly weather, and attend the Semantic Technology conference. Or, let's be fair, 1.5 days out of the 5 the event lasted. The rest, mostly, I followed through Twitter, which by all account tends to be a little like watching the Olympics on TV, as opposed to being in the stadium: you don't get the pop corn and hot dog breeze, but in the end you know more about the games than people who were there.

Tech vs. Biz Type Divide: Tackling the Number One Product Failure Driver Headfirst

2009-07-03T01:13:02-04:00

I am back after quite some time, my ability to blog being constrained by business requirements. I am indeed happy to report that Growthroute's activity is growing rapidly, with clients in the web 3.0 space in particular. I know, I know, I have not even published my thoughts about semtech yet. I was there for less than 2 days, but there were some interesting things I took away that I have not seen expressed anywhere yet, so I will blog briefly about that very soon. In the meantime, I have just published the slides of a beta presentation I gave at Communitech, the innovation and entrepreneurship hub in the IT mecca that is Waterloo, Canada -- and I believe it should be of particular interest to ventures in the semantic web and web 3.0, since it tackles the gap between techies and business people, discusses how that affects commercial success, and explores potential solutions. The post and slides can be found here. I welcome all constructive feedback, with little limitations as to what constructive means.

Excellent Video on Web 3.0 and the Semantic Web

2009-06-15T09:16:46-04:00

The following video was pointed out to me recently and I find it to be a terrific overview of the current evolution of the web

Will 'Common Tag' Help a Publishing Assistant Alter the Web Forever?

2009-06-12T01:15:55-04:00

This could be a giant leap forward for the web... toward a useful giant global graph. Common Tag, which was released today, is a logical extension of Linked Data. In a nutshell, it offers an accessible and open standard to incorporate semantic tags in web content. It is supported by a range of up-and-coming semantic players, the most notable among them being Yahoo SearchMonkey. That, in itself, is a solid step forward. But wait, there is more. And in my opinion, that's web-changing.

Search: Statistics vs. Semantics. And so the Battle Begins...

2009-05-26T21:33:21-04:00

The Semantic Web gang gathered this month to discuss the recent launch of Wolfram Alpha and the endorsement of RDFa by Google. My impression of Wolfram, to talk about it, is that it fills a clear white space in the search engine arena, a space I would divide up into 2 sub-fields: * FIND * DISCOVER (more on the post)

Launch of the Toronto Semantic Group and First Meeting

2009-05-24T12:16:17-04:00

I am glad to announce the launch of the Toronto Semantic Meetup Group, at last! Our first meetup will take place this Wednesday at 6PM at Xtreme Labs. After an introduction to the group by William Mougayar of Eqentia, who started the group, I will be giving a presentation "Semantic Web 101" and discuss ways start-ups can succeed in the space. William and I will also report on the recent Web 3.0 conference we both went to. There will be an extensive Q&A and networking opportunity. Please visit the Toronto Semantic Group page on Meetup to register.