I attended the Web3.0 conference last month in Santa Clara. The conference was truly inspiring, but web 3.0? One of the first questions you have to ask is “Does web 3.0 mean the semantic web?” Should we view the semantic web as a world wide database, as suggested by Dr. Mark Greaves of Vulcan, and what issues will it raise?

How cumbersome will working with numerous database administrators be? If it is a database, it will certainly be the largest - and noisiest - database in the world. This so-called noise is a big problem for the semantic web.
Another problem is that for many topics there is a vast surplus of information available - how do you find out the richest links? On the other hand, it is democratic, crowdsourced, scalable knowledge engineering, which makes the semantic web a great knowledge base for humanity.
Freshness has always been important for search and over the last months ‘live-search’ has become very popular. Due to the popularity of social media sites like Twitter, search engines have had to go hyper-fresh. People are creating a constant stream of new input, which can contain very useful and especially up-to-date information. But these hyper-fresh content services are creating new problems for search engines. Tweets aren’t always written in English and there are only 140 characters available to broadcast your message. Because there are only 140 characters, semantic technology can be quite helpful in extracting the true meaning of a message. Through semantic technology it’s possible to detect entities that are referenced and disambiguate them.
Search engines like Bing (Microsoft) are already implementing semantic technology for extracting information. “All search engines are somewhat semantic already” according to Scott Prevost, Principal Development Manager for Bing. Whatever the real definition for semantic search is, “it’s already here but it hasn’t been a ‘Voila!’ moment. Semantic search won’t be a big revolution from a new startup, but there will be game changers”. Scott has had first hand experience here with Powerset, often called “The New Google” in the media before their acquisition by Microsoft in 2008 as a feature for their search technology.
Semantic technology, like all technology, needs a certain critical mass. The good thing is that the ecosystem is growing at the moment, with more and more publishers helping out. But the main focus of semantic tech companies should be on creating systems which can automatically promote open content, so we won’t be dependent on the efforts of publishers. By creating this kind of technology the costs of semantic publishing will shrink to almost zero in several years, just as online publishing did during the web 2.0 era.
The technology is here now - there are already more than 1600 APIs and they are growing at a non-linear accelerated rate. People are starting to work in the cloud as the new data center and it is the illusion of infinite scalability and omniscience that serve as inducements. Tom Gruber, a recognized expert in Artificial Intelligence, intelligent interfaces, semantic technologies, and presenter at Web3.0, strongly believes in the “Gigantic Join” which he thinks web 3.0 will become. The semantic web will include the possibility of numerous “joins” of APIs, and his latest product Siri.com is built on this idea. Siri is a mobile device-based question and answer application using speech as input, and is built on a collection of available APIs.
This application is a good example for the upcoming mobile web, which is creating new rules, and possibilities for the semantic web. Mobile devices create new sources of input - users don’t speak in keywords, they ask questions in their native language. These new ways of input have to be interpreted, and that’s where semantic technology kicks in. “Semantic technology is the hottest area of web architecture right now,” according to Dr. Greaves. “It’s a new way of thinking about the web as we know it” says Scott Prevost.
You could indeed feel this vibe at web 3.0. People are eager to learn from each other, sharing thoughts and inspiring each other. In the coming weeks I will dig deeper into some of the Web3.0 topics related to semantic technology like SEO, search and business and opportunities.

Scott Prevost (Bing/Microsoft), Computational Linguist at stage. Founder Powerset. The dimensions of search

What is semantic search? More relevant results, but what is relevant? All searchengines today are already in someway semantic

Relevance: best result at top, completeness, freshness. Speed: page render. Ease of use: simple interface

Semantic Impact. Relevance: ranking based on meaning and concepts not keywords: direct answers

Speed: reduce time to task completion, fewer clicks. Ease of Use: intuitive queries, information aggregation&classification,simplified tasks

Query understanding: disambiguation, refinement. User sessions query1..queryn

Document &content understanding: entities,relations&concepts in text. Structured and semi structured data. Better matching of queries

User experience: reduce user investment

Queries: navigational, informational, transactional. Scope: general vs specific. Context of query. Syntax of query.

Disambiguate query,what to use? Problem: most queries are underspecified

How can semantics help? Term expansion (synonyms,acronyms), Powerset did a lot of work. Flexibel syntax: ABC <-> ACB a NLP task.

Entity detection: nesting problems [[[Carnegie] [Mellon] [University] [Robotic Club]

Document&content understanding:structured content(API’s,RDF,OWL,DBs)weather, sports, stocks, product info, freebase

semi-structured content: map site/page to ontologies, semantic tuples scraped from pages

text: keywords and proximity,entities&semantic relations. The impact: better recall and ranking of results, better organization of results

better presentation of results (captions), better user actions leading to fewer&better clicks

smarter text selections for captions, [rebate of..] vs [rebate of $600] in caption. Captions with word variation. query:sarah palin cap:she

Smart summarization without changing the meaning

whatever semantic search is, it’s already here, it won’t be a big revolution from a new startup, but there will be game changers

you need critical mass, but the ecosystem is growing, more&more publishers are helping

but our focus has to be on making systems which can automatically semantify open content

seo is all about to find the keywords that match your page,semantic tech will help out

what will semantic analytics do?Not sure how that is going to evolve,clicks only are a weak signal,but in combination with content meaning

which vars for mobile web: location, but also calling patterns as social network?

Signal from their social graph, but it’s really hard for realtime search what is really important,who is important?What is the real signal?

Freshness is important, but we’re creating hyper freshness through twitter at the moment,a lot of noise in this signal.

The role of telco’s? Voice services

Dr. Mark Greaves (Vulcan inc): The Evolving Semantic Web: From Military Technology to Venture Capital

web 2.0: the read write web, strange name, it isnt a software release. Web 3.0 “the world wide database”

what is the biggest database in the world? Social Security / Walmart database on steroids. Also problem on steroids, updating

or is it like the web? Always changing, no single view, always evolving, no central control.It’s geeky & transformative

it’s democratic,crowd based,scalable knowledge engineering. It’s the hottest area of web architecture right now

It’s the largest but also the messiest formal knowledge base on earth.

origins of the sw; symbolic logic,knowledge representations systems in AI & parallel library science was going on.Web created infrastructure

Google is making me the smartest guy in the world because I can query, but computers can’t do that

The first succes from the sw was catching bad guys: 9-11

Where is SW in 2010? academics are working on the rule parts: proof&trust

Noise is a big problem for the semantic web, there is too many information, how to find out what the best linking is? RDF/OWL is too simple

relevant == semantics,semantics are the key technology for information retrieval. Enhancing snippet presentation has business opportunities

click through rates from better snippets are 15% creating bigger revenue: business opportunity?

Best Buy:RDF markup with RDFa&goodrelations ontology: organic search engine traffic +30%.Not perfectly controlled experiment,but suggestive

they have a higher search engine placement,probably because they are more informative for searchengines.So SEO agencies have to semantify

Collect data,clean it, fuse it with quality control.Sounds boring, but Bloomberg does it and is a multi billion company.

The linked datasets are growing exponential, exciting

Network effects are starting. Link data now! Be part of the revolution

The cost of publishing semantic data is going to zero, just like normal publishing on the web

Winners will be in the mobile space again, building cleaner interfaces and can contextualize their users

Online Publishing panel: Ben Ilfeld (Sacramento Press), Mike Lee (Thoora), Mark Luckie (Journalist/Blogger), Bostjan Spetic (Zemanta)

Thoora indexes realtime news and clusters it by story, which story has the greatest interest at X moment, comments on blogs as measure

Thoora treats the web as one big database,looks at how data is linked at realtime and what the story is about,using a lot of structured data

Using semantic tech publishers get more insight in what people are talking and reading about

Strangly enough there arent many end user solutions for disambiguation

Volume is not the problem for processing, but the noisy input channel is the main challenge

Panel: Semantic Advertising

Don’t talk about semantic technology, you have to show it, and people will understand it immediately

Web of Data: Semantic Web in Marketing. SCOTT BRINKER(CTO Ion Interactive) and KRISTA THOMAS (The Calais Initiative, Thomson Reuters)

How will linked data effect the 4p’s of marketing?Data is the fuel of 21st century,but finding data is hard work,we horde it in silos

But new generation of companies is making their data open, and a wave of linked data in on the way. Marketeers love data

SEO + Data Objects = SEO ++ enrich your data for better snippets, clickrate +15%

bringing structure to unstructured txt can help: streamline SEO,improve reader engagement,unique content experience,reader analytics ..

improve ad placement,using linked data as a transport layer. Problem:structuring content is costly&time consuming.So extraction engines help

Web 3.0 Day2, Keynote: Semantic Web and the Customer Experience, Tom Gruber (Siri.com)

Big Think, Small Screen. Computer is smart when,understands your language,sense of environment,solve everyday problem,be at your service

The Cloud,the pipe,the interface,the ecosystem.Web 3.0 requires more computation (machinemuscle)=expensive,can the cloud make this possible?

The cloud is the illusion of infinite scalability and omniscience.The cloud is the new datacenter(photos,music,text); we live in the cloud

pipe:3g enables mobile inet.The second wave.What makes a smartphone smart?They’ve senses:touch,hearing,sight,proprioception,taste;brain?

Foodchain of web2.0 started with search,what will feed the ecosystem of web3.0?It’s not data but the ‘Gigantic Join’;services&api’s

Over 1600 api’s at the moment, growing at accelerated rate: non-lineair. Network effect is happening

NLP task based on Chomsky deep structure. Impressive demo. Combining services in the cloud, mobile senses as input for search

RT @kristathomas : Siri Demo Video http://bit.ly/bFMxem

thriving big think ecology:connect&combine,dont accumulate.Address human tasks.Apply intelligence at the interface contextaware&personalized

From 23 january till 2 february I’ll be in San Francisco / Silicon Valley to attend the Web 3.0 conference.

Ten is the start of a new decade and the third decade for the Web. The third decade is often seen as and referred to the decade of the semantic Web. So I think that it’s a great way to start this new decade in 2010 by attending the Web 3.0 conference deep in the the heart of the information technology forest - Silicon Valley.

During the previous decade the Web was getting more social. Through user generated content the web is growing containing more and up-to-date knowledge. API’s for making web data accessible are more common, so in future connecting knowledge is getting easier.

Semantic technology is ready to get mainstream and leaving the research labs. But businesswise semantic technology is still often difficult to pitch and understand. Could semantic advertising create a success? Having more knowledge about content could increase the ROI for advertisers due the increased relevance of an ad? How can semantic technology enrich our web experience, making user information needs more meaningful. Could the growing mobile Web create a breakthrough for semantic technology?

Adding semantic technology time-to-results can be increased which is important for ubiquitous mobile devices. What are search engines like Google and Yahoo doing with semantic technology? Are they only implementing it to increase time-to-result or do they see other advantages? What is the future of semantic search in general? Should start ups compete in the market of the search giants? Or should they just concentrate on universal solutions and implement search for a smaller domain?

I’m confident Web 3.0 will give some great new insights and we will report back from our experience and findings at this event.

Antony Gormley from Manchester Art Gallery on Vimeo.

From 1 till 4 december I’ll be in Vienna for the European Semantic Technology Conference 2009 http://www.estc2009.com/

About ESTC

History
The European Semantic Technology Conference (ESTC) was established in 2007 to aid in the dissemination of semantic technologies to European industry. The first conference in the series was held in the impressive surroundings of the Palais NiederOesterreich in Vienna, Austria. The program was made up of a mixture of academic and industrial papers, with a focus on those showing a real application of semantics. In 2008, the conference returned to the Palais NiederOesterreich changing the structure of its program to match more closely that of the Semantic Technology held yearly in San Jose, California since 2004. The new structure focused on presentations on experiences with utilizing semantic technologies in industry. ESTC continues to be a major focal point in the European conference calendar, where new semantic technologies can be disseminated to industry and industrial experiences with adopting these technologies can be reported.

Mission
The European Semantic Technology Conference brings together the world’s leading thinkers, innovators, developers, engineers, and senior practitioners within organizations responsible for information technology and systems in one place to learn about how to integrate this unparalleled technology into their operations. ESTC is Europe’s most prominent and authoritative conference focusing on the growth of the ICT semantic technology markets, highlighted by showcased industry practices, advancements in the field of semantic technologies achieved in the past year, and successful marketing strategies in delivering semantic applications that generate new revenues. Participants know how to develop a cohesive strategy for managing semantic technology initiatives and utilizing these to evolve the operations and effectiveness of their organizations.

http://www.estc2009.com/about-menu

From 24 October, visitors entering these rooms will experience unique sensory perceptions in this homogeneous visual field. While the light manifests itself, referring to nothing but itself, an interplay between surfaces, colours and space is produced, creating an atmosphere that completely encloses the audience and their senses. Viewers plunge into a mysterious, yet scenic world made of pure light. The artist himself calls this experience “feeling with one’s eyes”.

The culmination of the life’s work of James Turrell, who was born in Los Angeles in 1943 and is today considered one of the most important contemporary artists, is the Roden Crater, an extinct volcano situated in the desert of Arizona, which he has been turning into an artistic observatory since 1974. The Wolfsburg Project installed at the Art Museum relates to this cosmic “light observatory”, virtually turning the Roden Crater – which opens up towards the sky – inside out, as it were, thus creating an infinite interior space. For this extravagant installation, state-of-the-art lighting technology is being used, and the artist makes full use of all opportunities the building offers, which are unprecedented in Germany’s museum landscape. The Wolfsburg Project incorporating the Ganzfeld Piece as well as supplemental installations and documentations is the US artist’s largest exhibition ever shown in Germany.

The installation will be on display in Wolfsburg until 5 April 2010. The exhibition at the Art Museum will be accompanied by a large number of side events such as discussions with architects, among others.

http://www.kunstmuseum-wolfsburg.de/

Abstract

“Most personal photos that are shared online are embedded in some form of social network, and these social networks are a potent source of contextual information that can be leveraged for automatic image understanding. In this paper, we investigate the utility of social network context for the task of automatic face recognition in personal photographs. We combine face recognition scores with social context in a conditional random field (CRF) model and apply this model to label faces in photos from the popular online social network Facebook, which is now the top photo-sharing site on the Web with billions of photos in total. We demonstrate that our simple method of enhancing face recognition with social network context substantially increases recognition performance beyond that of a baseline face recognition system. ” [PDF]