Semantic apps

The next web to be user-centric (thoughts on David Siegel’s Pull book)

January 18th, 2010 by Greg Boutin

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 distant 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.

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Slow adoption of Linked Data: why?

November 25th, 2009 by Greg Boutin
Linking Open Data dataset cloud as of July 14t...

Image via Wikipedia

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…).  (more…)

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Discussing the semantic portals of Eqentia with the gang

November 25th, 2009 by Greg Boutin
Image representing EQENTIA - as depicted in Cr...

Image via CrunchBase

Paul Miller has published the Semantic Web Gang podcast we recorded in November, in which we first talk about Eqentia with its CEO William Mougayar.

Eqentia is a web application offering pre-made vertical portals leveraging an ontology-based search engine to extract and distribute relevant information. (more…)

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Does the adoption threshold of RDF limit the grassroot potential of the semantic web?

October 19th, 2009 by Greg Boutin
Rdf-graph-example-TonyBenn

Image via Wikipedia

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.

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Hybrid approaches to taxonomy and folksonomy

October 9th, 2009 by Greg Boutin

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