Semantics Incorporated: The Feed

Announcing Our Upcoming MeetUp: Business Opportunities from Semantic Technologies with Author David Siegel

2010-02-09T15:04:53-05:00

In the footstep of my last post, I would like to announce the next meeting of the Toronto Semantic Web Meetup group, which I am co-organizing with William Mougayar of Eqentia. The meetup will take place on March 2 at 6.30pm at the Social Innovation Centre in Toronto, and feature a roundtable discussion on the business opportunities opened up by semantic technologies, with the participation of David Siegel, the author of Pull: The Power of the Semantic Web to Transform your Business. To sign up, please visit http://www.meetup.com/Toronto-Semantic-Web-Meetup-Group/calendar/12531709/

The Next Web to Be User-Centric (Thoughts on David Siegel's Pull Book)

2010-01-18T15:44:32-05:00

Tell me, how much time do you waste searching for stuff on the web, or filling up forms with similar information over and over? For all its might, utility, and growth, what we have today is a scattered web, a web of destinations, on which finding information requires a whole expedition across loosely-connected archipelagos of data, each with its own information requirements*, rules of engagement, and gravitational attempts at capturing your time and money. So, when David Siegel contacted me to review his upcoming book Pull: The Power of the Semantic Web to Transform Your Business, I was immediately attracted by his core premise, the creation of a web that would automatically wrap around us and serve us based on the actual characteristics and needs of our lives.

Slow Adoption of Linked Data: Why?

2009-11-25T21:13:46-05:00

During the November issue of Semantic Web Gang podcast, we also talked about DBpedia, which led me to share new thoughts about Linked Data. And more specifically, two things: 1- my growing concerns that adoption of Linked Data is going slower than expected (an observation I will test further) given the R&D investment and focus of a large community including the inventor of the web and the W3C, which led us to anticipate a faster growth curve. 2 - the possibility this slow adoption rate might be due to inherent flaws in the design of Linked Data. Even if adoption is in fact rapid (which I don't think it is), I am nonetheless concerned those flaws could also limit the potential of Linked Data to "turn the Web into a database", as per the main promise associated with the Semantic Web by its apostles (to this day...).

Discussing the Semantic Portals of Eqentia with the Gang

2009-11-25T17:38:19-05:00

Paul Miller has published the Semantic Web Gang podcast we recorded in November, in which we first talk about Eqentia with its CEO (and also friend of mine) William Mougayar. Eqentia is a web application offering pre-made vertical portals leveraging an ontology-based search engine to extract and distribute relevant information.

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.