According to a recent article, “Salesforce.com, the cloud enterprise service, has moved even farther from its original business of contact and sales force management. In January 2011, Salesforce.com acquired the Web conferencing service provider Dimdim. Dimdim provided a free Web conferencing service. Users could share  desktops, show slides, collaborate, chat, talk and broadcast via webcam… The enterprise technology of Dimdim “snaps in” the Salesforce.com cloud. In addition, the enterprise version of Dimdim supports a number of third-party cloud-based applications, including Salesforce.com competitors’ SugarCRM and Zimbra, an open source e-mail server. Dimdim also offers an open source version of its technology.” Read more

Dont Miss SemTech 2011, June 5-9 in San Francisco

The next Semantic Technology Conference is just a month away! Make sure to register today to get access to the world's largest educational conference for the community of executives, technologists, researchers, investors and customers involved with semantic technologies. Learn more

A research center is looking for a Software Developer of Semantic Service Platform for Web, TV and Mobile in Austria. According to the post, “STI International Consultancy and Research GmbH (STI Research), a research centre based in Innsbruck and Vienna, Austria which contributes to the international semantic technology community, seeks applications for a software developer. Both students and graduates are welcome to apply. The position is available from anytime from May 2011 onward, with an initial duration of up to 2 years. An extension is also possible.” Read more

A recent article examines the shortcomings of sentiment analysis and how semantic analysis can help. According to the article, “For years, sentiment has been a widely used measure of how customers view a company’s products and services. But sentiment analysis has inherent flaws. First is what it cannot tell you because it only considers a small amount of the available data. Only about 25 percent of posts actually contain sentiment, either positive or negative, which means three out of four posts are neutral, revealing no sentiment, and are effectively being ignored by the analysis. Thus, decisions are being based on what only a quarter of the posts are saying. Another problem with sentiment is statistical confidence in the data. Simply stated, all methods of sentiment analysis rely on example data that, whittled down, reveals a low level of confidence about the sentiment being identified, either positive or negative. Data with such low confidence is a poor foundation for sentiment analysis.” Read more

CIOs who care about digital business– which means pretty much any CIO out there – increasingly will care about the Semantic Web. At this month’s upcoming MIT Sloan CIO Symposium, they should have an opportunity to explore the intersection between the two in some more depth – and their changing role in this evolving digital business world.

As Graham G. Rong, Chair at MIT Sloan CIO Symposium sees it, CIOs and other corporate leaders will need to look beyond the strategies or best practices that have worked in the past, which may not be adequate to the demands of the future.  Consider the virtual nature of social networks, which are virtually without control but data-rich, and how CIOs as change agents will need to understand, develop and make good use of new ways and  tools for collecting and analyzing such digital information.

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This article takes a look at one of the new features in TopBraid Composer 3.5 – the Web Data Basket view: “This can be used to incrementally download Linked Data (either RDFa or RDF) while browsing the web. The best way to experience this is by getting a small TBC Firefox extension. This will add a tiny TopBraid button to the lower right corner of your browser. Click on this button while TopBraid Composer is executing, and all RDF data encoded on the currently visited page will be added to TBC’s Web Data Basket.” Read more

A recent article discusses the lessons that can be learned from Watson, IBM’s champion computer: “Big Blue has set its sights on many commercial applications for the technology in healthcare, financial services and customer service operations.  But the question remains, is it practical? Does Watson embody an approach that enterprises can exploit, or learn from?  How readily can a “Watson” be applied to the knowledge and content access problems of the typical enterprise?” Read more

Since 2005, the Semantic Technology Conference has been going strong and growing. As we have reported here, the 2011 series is expanding into new markets, with conferences scheduled in London and Washington DC later this year.  This is an exciting development, but has also raised questions from the community about the similarities and differences between the three events.  Following are brief descriptions from the SemTech Conference series Co-Chair, Tony Shaw. For information about registration and sponsorship opportunities for each event, see the links after each listing below. Discounts are available for multi-event sponsorships.

SemTech SF is “Everything Semantic.”  It’s by far the largest of the 3 events, in terms of both attendance (approx 1200) and the size of the conference (9 tracks).  SemTech SF has business and technical content, and covers all the major topics from enterprise IT to web-scale infrastructure, and application areas including search, data integration, sentiment analysis, information infrastructure, content management, knowledge management, text analysis, etc.  We also have a research component to the San Francisco program.

WHEN: June 5-9, 2011

WHERE: San Francisco, California – Hilton Union Square

ACTIONS: Register, Sponsor

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A social media firm has looked at the data to determine how the nation reacted to Osama Bin Laden’s death. According to the article, “From Crimson Hexagon, the social media analysis firm that dispelled the myth of the Verizon iPhone exodus and Sharon Angle’s 2010 Senate sweep, comes a truer-to-life snapshot of the world’s reaction to Osama Bin Laden’s death. Nearly 50% of social media reaction wasn’t simple jubilation, but rather a mixture of fear, humor, and solemn remembrance. This sophisticated look is thanks to Crimson Hexagon’s unique semantic analysis algorithm, which begins with actual humans coaching an automatic process into recognizing, not just positive and negative reaction, but the nuanced expressions that distinguishes humor from celebration, and revulsion from sadness.” Read more

The NYU Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute has added Computational and Digital Journalism to their list of majors. According to the website, “This new sequence of courses responds to trends in the news industry and journalism profession: the shifting from print and broadcasting to a digital base. There is huge demand for people who have the traditional skills and aptitude of a journalist and enough technical knowledge to re-design a website, create an interactive data feature that can run online, or build a mobile application for news company. Almost all the employers who have traditionally taken our graduates are experiencing a severe shortage of technical talent.” Read more

Diffbot, a semantic start-up in Palo Alto, CA, is looking for Machine Learning Interns and Web Development Interns. According to the post, “At Diffbot, we apply computer vision techniques to web documents to extract out semantic metadata. These services are used within hundreds of products at companies such as Cisco, Evernote, StumbleUpon, and AOL. We also offer free access to our technology to developers via an open API. Internally, we are using our technology to develop the next generation semantic results engine for the web. Check out http://diffbot.com for more information about our technology and APIs.” Read more