InsightNG

Anyone who has seen a slide presentation on Semantic Web, Linked Data, or related technologies, has most likely seen the Linking Open Data (LOD) Cloud diagram. Since its debut in 2007, the diagram has grown to its current size which includes 295 datasets in the form of a connected cloud. The data sets in the LOD cloud consist of over 31 billion RDF triples and are interlinked by around 504 million RDF links.

Mike Bergman recently wrote a strong defense for the Semantic Web, stating, "There have been some notable attempts of late to make elevator pitches for semantic technologies, as well as Lee Feigenbaum's recent series on Are We Asking the Wrong Question? about semantic technologies. Some have attempted to downplay semantic Web connotations entirely and to replace the pitch with Linked Data (capitalized). These are part of a history of various ways to try to make a business case around semantic

For the 7th time, I-SEMANTICS, the International Conference on Semantic Systems, took place in Graz, presenting latest research outcomes and industry-ready applications to the wider public. Co-located with I-KNOW, the 11th International Conference on Knowledge Technologies, the event proved once again that the interest in semantic information processing is high and of increasing practical relevance.

Beware online "filter bubbles": Eli Pariser on TED.com As web companies strive to tailor their services (including news and search results) to our personal tastes, there's a dangerous unintended consequence: We get trapped in a "filter bubble" and don't get exposed to information that could challenge or broaden our worldview. Eli Pariser argues powerfully that this will ultimately prove to be bad for us and bad for democracy.

Web search engines have become indispensable tools for finding information online effectively. As the range of information, context and users of Internet searches has grown, the relationship between the search query, search interest and user has become more tenuous. Not all users are seeking the same information, even if they use the same query term. Thus, the quality of search results has, at least potentially, been decreasing. Search engines have begun to respond to this problem by trying to personalise search in order to deliver more relevant results to the users. A query is now evaluated in the context of a user's search history and other data compiled into a personal profile and associated with statistical groups. This, at least, is the promise stated by the search engines themselves. This paper tries to assess the current reality of the personalisation of search results. We analyse the mechanisms of personalisation in the case of Google web search by empirically testing three commonly held assumptions about what personalisation does. To do this, we developed new digital methods which are explained here. The findings suggest that Google personal search does not fully provide the much-touted benefits for its search users. More likely, it seems to serve the interest of advertisers in providing more relevant audiences to them.

A question for you: How does discovering and sharing online information make you feel? [I'd bet a good number of you are frustrated, feeling the negative effects of what Eli Pariser calls the "filter bubble"...] Well, here's something else to consider: discovering and sharing information - and the means for curating it - should be serendipitous. Really, it should. A Form of Collective Intelligence I had the fortunate pleasure of meeting up with my friend Jarno Koponen while in Helsinki this past week. Jarno and his founding partner, Marko Anderson, have spent the last two plus years building a predictive discovery engine, called Futureful.

"The universe is made of stories, not atoms," poet Muriel Rukeyser famously proclaimed. The stories we tell ourselves and each other are how we make sense of the world and our place in it. Some stories become so sticky, so pervasive that we internalize them to a point where we no longer see their storiness - they become not one of many lenses on reality, but reality itself.

Web content management is at the most significant inflection point in its 15-year history. It's now all about the context. By 2013, Gartner contends, 40% of large companies will have context-aware computing projects on the way. Context is driving content and intelligent customer interactions, delivering Web experiences that will engage site visitors and deliver better business results.

I've had to persuade myself to believe in the impossible more often. In the past several decades I've encountered a series of ideas that I was conditioned to think were impossibilities, but which turned out to be good practical ideas.

I've had to persuade myself to believe in the impossible more often. In the past several decades I've encountered a series of ideas that I was conditioned to think were impossibilities, but which turned out to be good practical ideas.

Neuroscientists have opened the door to these scenarios: They've identified a signal that indicates when the brain is primed to remember one particular thing-images of scenes. (Hey, it's a start.)

Our company is a science-oriented company, and the core belief is that behavior - human or otherwise - can be mathematically expressed. Yes, people make irrational value judgments, but they are driven by common motivation factors, and the math expresses that. I look at the so-called "big data phenomenon" as the instantiation of human experience. Previously, we could not quantitatively measure human experience, because the data wasn't being captured. But Twitter recently announced that they now serve 350 billion tweets a day. What we say and what we do has a physical manifestation now. Once there is a physical manifestation of a phenomenon, then it can be mathematically expressed. And if you can express it, then you can shape business ideas around it, whether that's in government or health care or business.