Where is the scope for innovation in Semantic Technology?

The research in the area of semantic technology has been going on for more than a decade. W3C has done a great job in finalizing various standards. So what is the next step? It is of course innovation. We will continue to see new innovative software companies cropping up who will build verticalized semantic solutions for various domains leveraging existing data. There is already so much of data out there that the time has come to develop some new algorithms in context of semantic technology. Who says that software is dead now!

In this context, the company which comes to my mind is Metatomix. The Metatomix platform is combination of rules/policy engine, semantic technologies and enteprise-class data integration. They use semantic technologies for informaition modeling and facilitating data integration; use rules engine to drive behaviour; and use integration platform to work with data, connect to data sources, recevie events etc.. The company has developed a very good solution for law enforcement systems. They have developed actionable insights for justice systems personnel - basically finding the right information and then bringing to the right people at the right time can be life saving in the world of law enforcement. Please go to metatomix website to see video which tells you about a real case. It will take only few minutes. The company also has secured a new round of funding lately.

Example of Semantic Technology in action - Yahoo Search Monkey

Its is a misconception when people question the viability of semantic technologies by saying that "it isn't possible to convert all the data to RDF format?" In reality , it is not true at all. Again, it is important to keep in mind that we are not talking about semantic web, we are talking about semantic technologies. It can be best explained by talking about how Yahoo Search Monkey is using RDFa (RDF in Attributes) to enhance search results more useful and visually appealing. It is just one of the simple examples but it can hopefully answer the sceptics. It can be a boon to small businesses who can drive more traffic to their web sites. SearchMonkey looks for special data inside websites, based on a standard called RDFa. Your website should include this data so it is available to Yahoo as they crawl and index your site. This way your business information is available to any developers who build SearchMonkey apps, and you will show up with enhanced results as this gets adopted over time. The SearchMonkey platform has three main components: - "Site owners share structured data with Yahoo!, using semantic markup (microformats, RDF), standardized XML feeds, APIs (OpenSearch or other web services), and page extraction. -Third party developers build SearchMonkey applications. -Consumers customize their search experience." RDFa is a way to encode data within HTMLand XHTML pages which helps people and machines to embed structured data within HTML and XHTML pages. The underlying representation of RDFa is RDF because it is flexible enough to let publishers build an devolve their own vocabularies. You can see Search Monkey in action by clicking on this link http://www.yelp.com/search?find_desc=nobu&ns=1&rpp=10&find_loc=San+Francisco%2C+CA#find_loc=new%20york
You can see the enhanced quality of the result "nobu new york restaurant". You will probably realize that you have many using Semantic technologies without even realizing it.

How do you explain Semantic Technology to someone who has never heard of it?

“Any intellegent fool can make things bigger and more complex. It takes a touch of genius - and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction.” Albert Einstein

This blog is not about me trying to be a genius in a subtle way. But is about a question which has been bothering me for some time. How do you explain a concept like semantic technology to someone higher up in your organization who will never have the time to go to a conference or a read a book on OWL? The idea is to simplify it in simple words but at the same time convey the value of it. Explaining it as Web 3.0, read-write-execute web or rebirth of AI won't really help.

IMHO, semantic technology can be explained as a way to describe data models and representation which allows to be linked with other data models as if they are part of the same big gigantic database.
Semantic technology solves data integration problem in a big way. It simplifies the way you can connect and exchange data with many systems. The value is that you can maintain it much easily. Also, with the introduction of new semantic tools in the marketplace, we will continue to see that it will be maintained by the business users with mimimal code change. THe W3C, the standards committe behind the semantic web, has done phenomenal job with coming up with languages like RDF and OWL which makes all of it possible.
Business have already made substantial investments in databases, data warehouses, BI, ILM, ERP, CMS and enterprise search. Forming a complete picture of enterprise data is very hard to achieve. Tracking data on timely basis is one of the biggest business and technical challenge! At the end of the day, we need relaible information about business performance! Semantic web technologies, if applied correctly, can solve this problem without scraping your existing investments.

This primer http://www.semantic-conference.com/primer.html might be useful to more inquistive kinds.