By the year 2050, nearly 80% of the earth's population will reside in urban centers. Applying the most conservative estimates to current demographic trends, the human population will increase by about 3 billion people during the interim. An estimated 109 hectares of new land (about 20% more land than is represented by the country of Brazil) will be needed to grow enough food to feed them, if traditional farming practices continue as they are practiced today. At present, throughout the world, over 80% of the land that is suitable for raising crops is in use (sources: FAO and NASA). Historically, some 15% of that has been laid waste by poor management practices. What can be done to avoid this impending disaster?
A software engine that pulls together facts by combing through more than 500 million Web pages has been developed by researchers at the University of Washington. The tool extracts information from billions of lines of text by analyzing basic relationships between words.
So far little awareness exists about the commercial opportunities of linked data. Andreas Blumauer (SWC) talked to Chris Bizer, mastermind behind the DB-Pedia project and advocate of the linking open data philosophy, about the emerging market for deep web applications, its value for corporate purposes, and the need for information accountability and privacy awareness.
Group items tagged 
