As marketers, we should all pursue how to better communicate a message -- yet many of us naturally limit our opportunities by focusing only on what we know. For example, when you hear the phrase "content is king" in the context of sales and marketing, does your thought process default to content that should be written?
We're all familiar with the old adage of "a picture is worth a thousand words." In this attention (deficit) economy, what's old has become new again.
Many consider visual assets (e.g., images, diagrams, illustrations, animation, video) as secondary marketing elements. However, these are the assets people are most interested in sharing.
You may think this is obvious, but consider what Facebook had to learn, as stated by CEO Mark Zuckerberg in his recent "60 Minutes" interview:
"Photos originally weren't that big of a part of the idea for Facebook, but we just found that people really liked them, so we built out this functionality."
"Liked them" couldn't be truer. With more than 100 million photos uploaded to Facebook daily, it's no wonder their latest update centers around everyone's new user profile page having greater accessibility to photos.
The Power of Data Visualization
Data visualization has the power to facilitate a wide range of insights by visually simplifying what are typically considered complex data sets.
The goal is to efficiently illuminate greater meaning from data patterns and connections, essentially developing a story from a collection of important information that might otherwise be relegated to statistical factoids with incomprehensible points of reference.
For example, how do you meaningfully process a comparison between $3 trillion vs. $30 billion? Doing the math only provides another number. But showing two circles proportionally sized next to each other (or one inside another) visually demonstrates the difference through different cognitive layers.
The best way to get a taste of what I'm referring to is by checking out David McCandless's Ted talk from this summer. As the McCandless talk suggests, a key objective is getting people to better focus on the information that matters most.
The Re-Emergence of Infographics
Although cave paintings by early man are considered the first information graphics, or infographics, the elements have remained constant: data, information, and knowledge.
Given the increasing availability of data, along with what's being learned about media most likely to be shared, we're seeing more organizations look to visualization tactics to enhance not only their social media, but overall marketing efforts.
While some suggest the use of information graphics to support social media efforts as trendy, a deeper look at type and common attributes leveraged should quickly dispel the idea of infographics as a fad:
1. Statistical infographics: Leverage pie charts, bar graphs, tables
2. Location/Geographical infographics: Leverage maps, icons, symbols
3. Timeline infographics: Leverage chronology, sequencing, events
4. Process infographics: Leverage icons, symbols, instruction
5. Conceptual infographics: Leverage various visual attributes to depict an idea
6. Anatomical infographics: Leverage various attributes to show inner workings
A more detailed summary of the above can be found on Andrew Ross's post on InfoGraphic Designs: Overview, Examples and Best Practices -- but the main takeaway is in understanding the importance of infographics as potentially foundational elements to a number of marketing and communications efforts
Applying Your Own Visualization Tactics
In consideration of media that quickly resonates with an audience, gets actively shared, and now increasingly indexed via social search optimization, business benefits can be realized from the use of simple infographics to more complex storytelling endeavors leveraging tactics such as video (whiteboard) scribing.
As we continue becoming accustomed to content consumed in bite-sized fashion, what flashes before our eyes has seconds to work or fail. Inevitably, part of your differentiation as a marketer will rely on growing your content beyond the written word.
Consider a few of the following resources for additional guidance and inspiration:
* Visual Loop: This is a growing resource that includes thousands of infographics that may assist in strategic and creative brainstorming.
* Smashing Magazine's Data Visualization and Infographics Resources: Contains an amalgam of resource summaries and URLs.
* Sneh Roy's article for SpyreStudios on "The Anatomy of an Infographic: 5 Steps to Create a Powerful Visual": A great primer and dissection of a successful infographic to demonstrate how visual aspects work with respect to content and knowledge.
by Jason Cormier
Friday, 24 December 2010
Saturday, 18 December 2010
You Must Watch This! Hans Rosling's 200 Countries, 200 Years, 4 Minutes - The Joy of Stats
A really interesting Video. Sorry its not sized right....
Friday, 17 December 2010
Search is Search, Social is Social: Treat Them Separate
Search is Search, Social is Social: Treat Them Separate
Too much has been made of the impact of "social signals" from Twitter
and Facebook on organic search results. Even if recent articles are true and both Bing and Google factor social media in to their algorithms, the influence is trivial to the final rank in the SERPs. If you look at any competitive niche, the search results haven't changed in any major way for sites that have embraced social media.
Where they have developed an edge is in the inclusion of the listings for "Results from people in your social circle for [insert search query here]." These results aren't always present. When they are, these results are pulled from people you're linked to and are based on their ranking for those terms.
It's here that I can see the impact of an algorithm and a rating of the users based both on their ranking in the regular SERPs and the PageRank of their social profiles.
Google and Bing's Social Signals
On Google, I searched for [search results]. Social signals had no influence in the organic results -- and given some of the results, there could have been an influence. But as the pic below shows, I was served "social circle" results from Matt Cutts
and David Snyder -- two well ranked people in my social network and highly ranked for those terms in organic results. 
Both instances listed above show you have to have content that is topic appropriate and linked to of its own accord. In addition, you then need to be connected to the people who are seeing and who happen to share the story on social media sites.
Because of personalized search, my results for those searches are different than what you would see if you searched for [search results] in Google or Bing right now. You would need to be linked to the people and then have the good content. I saw most of those articles because of my connections.
How does social tie to search? You develop people who you follow because you have interest in their opinions -- mostly as they provide it to you directly.
Is There a Way to Game This?
After all, the interest in this is motivated by ways to improve your rankings in the search results of Google and Bing. So the answer is yes, this can be gamed. But remember, the results are personalized and the effort could be much better spent building connections in Twitter and Facebook for their own right.
Also remember that Facebook maxes out at 5,000 connections, which includes things you like, and groups and fan pages you're a member of.
Twitter, on the other hand is limitless. But as the results in Google show, you need to be ranked for the terms and have a well-ranked Twitter account to impact what the people who follow you see.
You're also competing with the other connections your followers have. So concentrate on each site for their own value and smile when you get the extra traffic.
How to Use Twitter, Facebook
Learn how to use Twitter to create followers for specific messages -- build tweets that people in that space find useful. You can have multiple account there, each dedicated to specific interests. Go the extra yard and create a blog on the topic, even if it's a weekly review of content published in the space.
Add your Twitter follow button and build a readership at both places. Do Twitter searches for the terms of the space and follow people -- if you've been tweeting relevant content, they will see that when they check out your account.
Facebook can be done somewhat similarly, but you'll have to create different names if you want more than 5,000 people in your reach. You can start with variations of your own name, but working through contributions to groups on the topic may be the better approach. There are some similarities with the Twitter method.
As far as the content goes, work like you normally do to improve any page in the organic search results. By adding Tweet and Like buttons, you get the content passed around the social networks, which can generate separate traffic. Thinking your site will rise in the organic results with a little social magic is just wrong.
Sure, your tweet might appear in Google's Real Time scroll, but to butcher a classic philosophical question, "if a Tweet appeared in Google and no one was around to read it, did it really exist?"
Absolutely, you should build followers and you may get re-tweeted. The value is really in them seeing it directly in Twitter, though.
For Facebook's impact on search results, honestly it gets way too confusing and is a real waste of your time. For a searcher to find your article, they have to be friends with somebody who followed you and Liked the page on the topic that they happen to be searching for.
It's about as easy as getting the planets in perfect alignment.
Forget Trying to Find Some Magic Bullet
Your best bet: concentrate on what you would normally do to improve your content in the SERPs and develop social media for their own sake. Don't drink the Kool-Aid of distraction.
Word Lens Translates Words Inside of Images. Yes Really.
Ever been confused at a restaurant in a foreign country and wish you could just scan your menu with your iPhone and get an instant translation? Well as of today you are one step closer thanks to Word Lens from QuestVisual.
The iPhone app, which hit iTunes last night, is the culmination of 2 1/2 years of work from founders Otavio Good and John DeWeese. The paid app, which currently offers only English to Spanish and Spanish to English translation for $4.99, uses Optical Character Recognition technology to execute something which might as well be magic. This is what the future, literally, looks like.
Founder Good explains the app’s process simply, “It tries to find out what the letters are and then looks in the dictionary. Then it draws the words back on the screen in translation.” Right now the app is mostly word for word translation, useful if you’re looking to get the gist of something like a dish on a menu or what a road sign says.
At the moment the only existing services even remotely like this are Pleco, a Chinese learning app and a feature on Google Goggles where you can snap a stillshot and send that in for translation. Word Lens is currently self-funded.
Good says that the obvious steps for Word Lens’ future is to get more languages in. He’s planning on incorporating major European languages and is also thinking about other potential uses including a reader for the blind, “I wouldn’t be surprised if we did French next, Italian and since my mom is Brazilian, Portuguese.”
Says Good, modestly, “The translation isn’t perfect, but it gets the point across.” You can try it out for yourself here.
Thursday, 16 December 2010
Business Intelligence and Building Automation Analytics Every intelligent management decision will pay back quickly. The question is, are we able to distinguish information from terabytes of data?
The last 20 years have rapidly changed our world. Today it is not a problem of the absence of information, the problem is the surplus of information. It has become difficult to answer simple questions like: Who? Why? Where? Therefore, we need models, which will instantly answer these simple questions, and help us predict the future behavior of systems. Our buildings are very complex systems as well as our business. For years business has been using Business Intelligence technologies for gathering and analyzing data as a key milestone in searching for better business decisions. Simply, BI is a very important decision support system with extraordinary developed tools as well as techniques like reporting, statistic analysis, forecasting and others. Today we are looking at information as intelligent content. It is now a very huge and serious industry. The outcome from BI is creating new services and sources of revenue. It helps business to better position themselves in the market place. It is a new model of learning with an extraordinary ability to dig out knowledge from terabytes of data streams. And as we all know knowledge is power. In general BI is one of the keys of a lean corporate process. Reducing waste and improving quality and in the end lowering cost and raising profit. Every intelligent management decision will pay back quickly. The question is, are we able to distinguish information from terabytes of data?
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Such a challenging economic climate needs good understanding of all events with and around our organization. To grow successfully and overcome recession issues we need well presented information with clear meaning. Good BI software will include everything needed for dashboarding analysing as well as real time reporting. Very critical will be to have access to unified data from multiple sources, so that we can view, share and interact with the information and to benchmark as well as measure performances. That will help us to see how well we are performing and where are our KPIs. Having such, we are able to drill down and see opportunities if there are any existing. Furthermore, we can model future behavior in a blink of an eye.
Process data integration with the BI proactive approach is helping organizations to take control. However, to use that data unified and comprehensive models should be created. Once created such models help prompt business actions with very low risk factors. Such models should be neutral and metadata driven with strong rules.
BI could be observed as a circle process which starts with the gathering of information from distributed data sources, then based as the gathered information ad the problems are defined. The information is then analyzed through BI processes, and often the conclusions are used as base data for a new circle. The process goes on until we get a clear picture.
We can divide the data by source to primary and secondary data, as well as quality. We need both data types to better understand information. Primary data could be our history data, and secondary data could be general statistical KPIs from various sources.
As Sun Tzu said "If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. ...If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle." And that is precisely the aim of Business Intelligence - know yourself and your enemy.
The question is, where do Business Intelligence and Building Automation cross? We know that building automation systems (BAS) are designed to answer comfort, security and energy saving requirements. Energy can represent a significant percentage of the total building expenses, in other words, organizational expenses. An integrated BAS will significantly contribute to the decrease of maintenance costs as well as energy costs. To achieve optimum Business Intelligence, techniques as well as models could significantly influence building automation day to day activity.
Today, the most popular and well-known standards in Building Automation are, LonWorks, BACnet, ZigBee and KNX which we consider as open solution standards. LonWorks, ZigBee and EIB/KNX are considered as field-level and control centric solutions (bottom up), while BACnet is considered as a more service oriented (top down) protocol positioned more for upper-level functionality. The goal of today's building automation solutions is to achieve seamless integration of all building sub-systems (e.g. heating, ventilation and air-conditioning (HVAC), lightning, security, etc.) through both horizontal (data points interactions) as well as vertical (management service interactions) domains. A critical issue for such a system is how to establish multi-vendor and multi-protocol interoperability through all sub-systems and still keep the same reliability. Within such a system, it is possible to share sensor data among different subsystems like lightning and HVAC. An open solution offers numerous benefits, including competitive bidding, consistent installation, consistent maintenance, system integration and interoperability, data acquisition and product interchangeability.
Generally, it is almost impossible to close the building automation system into just one of the mentioned protocols; therefore, we still need the integration of several different protocols, to handle the range of building automation needs. It is very important to understand that there are lots of deployed buildings where automation of the different subsystems is done by different protocols. Intercommunication between such sub systems is done through gateway devices. Every protocol defines its own application model with the data representation description (data format, encoding) as well as the communication model between applications (data manipulation methods). Since, all application models are specific, it is impossible to establish a direct gateway-free communication across protocol borders, and the use of a gateway is a must in such integrations. Gateways generally contain a database of mappings between network entities (data points) of both sides. The data points correspond to the logical inputs and outputs of the underlying physical process.
The main characteristic of a data point is its present value. Typically, it corresponds to the real world physical representations like room temperature or the state of a switch. The data points from different devices on the same network could be directly connected. Often data points have attached attributes (Meta data), such attributes add a semantic meaning to the present value by describing, for example, the engineering unit of the value. Typically, data points are logically grouped to describe specific functions of the system, including both data points and the processing rules that belong to them. Such logical groups are called functional blocks.
Communication between devices on the same network (horizontal communication) is established through data points. Since, the horizontal communication is involved in the exchange of present values, alarm indicators or trend data, it is possible that the semantics interpretation could be assured at setup time.
In the contrary, vertical communication is more stochastic, and is represented by service related tasks such as accessing and modifying data from the application outside the networked devices. Good examples are; set point adjustment, trend logs retrieving. Such tasks are often described as management services. Other tasks which are guided by the same principles are, for example, modifying the application itself by changing binding information. Usually such tasks are called an engineering service. Vertical communications most often follow a client-server model, unlike horizontal communications that follow a producer–consumer model.
The gateway functions needed for internetwork communication are limited to a small set of services, such as read value, write value and change-of-value subscription. Gateways can directly translate information between two control networks, providing horizontal connections from data points of one system to data points in another system. To successfully integrate distributed applications spread over heterogeneous networks, we need to translate data points as well as application services from one network to another. Every network has an application model; equally important communication services and data structures and gateways are not able to seamlessly translate all specifics. Therefore, there is a need for a common application model which will be able to satisfy all relevant building automation networks. Such structure will move the mapping from gateway type data point mapping to full application model mapping where both data points as well as application services will be translated. The biggest obstacle to such structure is the non existence of well defined common building automation ontology. Therefore, there is a need for a framework that is developed to help in solving such issues as well as to enable seamless service interaction with the multi protocol building systems.
Such framework should include the tools for an easy integration, maintenance, supervision and development of new automation applications as well as objects (Prototypes of user-defined constructs, which govern how variable data is processed), and plug-in for horizontal and vertical applications.
That kind of system opens space to ICT professionals, who are not necessarily experts in automation, to build connections to the Enterprise class of applications, as well as to build special corporate and service applications like the energy management dashboards, analytics applications, or real time simulation engines. A complete “syntactic-semantic notion of network infrastructure,” that makes the system expandable to different services bounded directly to data points of the underlying networks significantly simplifies commissioning of the system as well will reduce the number of people engaged in passive maintenance and will help in an establishment of Outsourcing Services in the building automation control infrastructure and at the same time will maintain high corporate standards.
If the system is designed with service infrastructure in mind, combining the technical systems in buildings with analytical services that provide expert’s knowledge will be a simple task without obstacles. Opening automation boundaries to ICT Business Intelligence tools is turning building automation data and services, as well as general understandings of patterns, into financially controllable systems. To do so, there is one very important step to be done; we have to look on data points as we are looking at data sets in a database as well as services as we are looking at the database relations. This is hard to achieve, since after that there is no more customer loyalty base. There is no more fear!
Such a distributed software framework with a primary goal to successfully mediate between building automation control networks and their desired uses, and service providers is a must if we would like to really include building automation into a general corporate model. The control networks are, in essence, structured collections of information, and we need a two-way information conduit that connects control networks with server and client programs. The actual function and purpose of clients should not be predefined, enabling complete customization of Server and Clients through an API connecting them to the rest of the framework. The entire system should have a well-defined encapsulated core structure, and it has to be completely extendable to be sufficiently versatile for today’s continuously changing market demands. Solving the problem of polytypic networks with the “adapters” who monitor wanted network traffic and convert it to the common encapsulated object model which preserves specifics of native network both data points and services will allow us to really look at the building automation networks from Business Intelligence perspective as we are looking at databases. Furthermore, the model has to be open on the way that we create and edit object classes needed in a process. One very important feature is to be able to bind the data points and services between dissimilar networks. The variable-to-object and object-to-object mapping has to be done through a straightforward drag and drop.
Multiple adapters have to be able to run simultaneously allowing interconnection of many systems over IP. Therefore, we can assume every building as one node of the infrastructure. Furthermore, the built-in routing service should allow data to be transferred from one protocol to another, either on the same altitude system or between altitude systems, across the IP network. Clearly, the system should be constructed with the idea to manage an arbitrary number of control networks of multiple arbitrary types, as well as a system that could work as a vertical service from the cloud. As we achieve that we will be able to do seamless integration of Business Intelligence with the Building automation.
Without such structure analytics could be only done through proprietary models or by just copying data points into the database, and after we have such databases, analysing of the data could be done through models from separate applications. Such a system will work too, but since the level of real integration is very low the power of combined data and service will also be low.
Furthermore, any advance in technology is not instantly usable, since we will hardly interconnect dissimilar system information into one model. As of today, first we need to get common ground by gateway to the data points, and then we have to move them to general database for further processing. Another issue is that all data is not really automation type data. Therefore, we have to include this information into account too.
At the end various KPIs which are presenting the quality of the buildings corresponding to similar buildings will significantly help in lowering of expenses, and that is exactly what Business Intelligence will provide us with. The KPIs help in both the efficient day to day operation management of the facility, as well as future trend development.
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Such a challenging economic climate needs good understanding of all events with and around our organization. To grow successfully and overcome recession issues we need well presented information with clear meaning. Good BI software will include everything needed for dashboarding analysing as well as real time reporting. Very critical will be to have access to unified data from multiple sources, so that we can view, share and interact with the information and to benchmark as well as measure performances. That will help us to see how well we are performing and where are our KPIs. Having such, we are able to drill down and see opportunities if there are any existing. Furthermore, we can model future behavior in a blink of an eye.
Process data integration with the BI proactive approach is helping organizations to take control. However, to use that data unified and comprehensive models should be created. Once created such models help prompt business actions with very low risk factors. Such models should be neutral and metadata driven with strong rules.
BI could be observed as a circle process which starts with the gathering of information from distributed data sources, then based as the gathered information ad the problems are defined. The information is then analyzed through BI processes, and often the conclusions are used as base data for a new circle. The process goes on until we get a clear picture.
We can divide the data by source to primary and secondary data, as well as quality. We need both data types to better understand information. Primary data could be our history data, and secondary data could be general statistical KPIs from various sources.
As Sun Tzu said "If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. ...If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle." And that is precisely the aim of Business Intelligence - know yourself and your enemy.
The question is, where do Business Intelligence and Building Automation cross? We know that building automation systems (BAS) are designed to answer comfort, security and energy saving requirements. Energy can represent a significant percentage of the total building expenses, in other words, organizational expenses. An integrated BAS will significantly contribute to the decrease of maintenance costs as well as energy costs. To achieve optimum Business Intelligence, techniques as well as models could significantly influence building automation day to day activity.
Today, the most popular and well-known standards in Building Automation are, LonWorks, BACnet, ZigBee and KNX which we consider as open solution standards. LonWorks, ZigBee and EIB/KNX are considered as field-level and control centric solutions (bottom up), while BACnet is considered as a more service oriented (top down) protocol positioned more for upper-level functionality. The goal of today's building automation solutions is to achieve seamless integration of all building sub-systems (e.g. heating, ventilation and air-conditioning (HVAC), lightning, security, etc.) through both horizontal (data points interactions) as well as vertical (management service interactions) domains. A critical issue for such a system is how to establish multi-vendor and multi-protocol interoperability through all sub-systems and still keep the same reliability. Within such a system, it is possible to share sensor data among different subsystems like lightning and HVAC. An open solution offers numerous benefits, including competitive bidding, consistent installation, consistent maintenance, system integration and interoperability, data acquisition and product interchangeability.
Generally, it is almost impossible to close the building automation system into just one of the mentioned protocols; therefore, we still need the integration of several different protocols, to handle the range of building automation needs. It is very important to understand that there are lots of deployed buildings where automation of the different subsystems is done by different protocols. Intercommunication between such sub systems is done through gateway devices. Every protocol defines its own application model with the data representation description (data format, encoding) as well as the communication model between applications (data manipulation methods). Since, all application models are specific, it is impossible to establish a direct gateway-free communication across protocol borders, and the use of a gateway is a must in such integrations. Gateways generally contain a database of mappings between network entities (data points) of both sides. The data points correspond to the logical inputs and outputs of the underlying physical process.
The main characteristic of a data point is its present value. Typically, it corresponds to the real world physical representations like room temperature or the state of a switch. The data points from different devices on the same network could be directly connected. Often data points have attached attributes (Meta data), such attributes add a semantic meaning to the present value by describing, for example, the engineering unit of the value. Typically, data points are logically grouped to describe specific functions of the system, including both data points and the processing rules that belong to them. Such logical groups are called functional blocks.
Communication between devices on the same network (horizontal communication) is established through data points. Since, the horizontal communication is involved in the exchange of present values, alarm indicators or trend data, it is possible that the semantics interpretation could be assured at setup time.
In the contrary, vertical communication is more stochastic, and is represented by service related tasks such as accessing and modifying data from the application outside the networked devices. Good examples are; set point adjustment, trend logs retrieving. Such tasks are often described as management services. Other tasks which are guided by the same principles are, for example, modifying the application itself by changing binding information. Usually such tasks are called an engineering service. Vertical communications most often follow a client-server model, unlike horizontal communications that follow a producer–consumer model.
The gateway functions needed for internetwork communication are limited to a small set of services, such as read value, write value and change-of-value subscription. Gateways can directly translate information between two control networks, providing horizontal connections from data points of one system to data points in another system. To successfully integrate distributed applications spread over heterogeneous networks, we need to translate data points as well as application services from one network to another. Every network has an application model; equally important communication services and data structures and gateways are not able to seamlessly translate all specifics. Therefore, there is a need for a common application model which will be able to satisfy all relevant building automation networks. Such structure will move the mapping from gateway type data point mapping to full application model mapping where both data points as well as application services will be translated. The biggest obstacle to such structure is the non existence of well defined common building automation ontology. Therefore, there is a need for a framework that is developed to help in solving such issues as well as to enable seamless service interaction with the multi protocol building systems.
Such framework should include the tools for an easy integration, maintenance, supervision and development of new automation applications as well as objects (Prototypes of user-defined constructs, which govern how variable data is processed), and plug-in for horizontal and vertical applications.
That kind of system opens space to ICT professionals, who are not necessarily experts in automation, to build connections to the Enterprise class of applications, as well as to build special corporate and service applications like the energy management dashboards, analytics applications, or real time simulation engines. A complete “syntactic-semantic notion of network infrastructure,” that makes the system expandable to different services bounded directly to data points of the underlying networks significantly simplifies commissioning of the system as well will reduce the number of people engaged in passive maintenance and will help in an establishment of Outsourcing Services in the building automation control infrastructure and at the same time will maintain high corporate standards.
If the system is designed with service infrastructure in mind, combining the technical systems in buildings with analytical services that provide expert’s knowledge will be a simple task without obstacles. Opening automation boundaries to ICT Business Intelligence tools is turning building automation data and services, as well as general understandings of patterns, into financially controllable systems. To do so, there is one very important step to be done; we have to look on data points as we are looking at data sets in a database as well as services as we are looking at the database relations. This is hard to achieve, since after that there is no more customer loyalty base. There is no more fear!
Such a distributed software framework with a primary goal to successfully mediate between building automation control networks and their desired uses, and service providers is a must if we would like to really include building automation into a general corporate model. The control networks are, in essence, structured collections of information, and we need a two-way information conduit that connects control networks with server and client programs. The actual function and purpose of clients should not be predefined, enabling complete customization of Server and Clients through an API connecting them to the rest of the framework. The entire system should have a well-defined encapsulated core structure, and it has to be completely extendable to be sufficiently versatile for today’s continuously changing market demands. Solving the problem of polytypic networks with the “adapters” who monitor wanted network traffic and convert it to the common encapsulated object model which preserves specifics of native network both data points and services will allow us to really look at the building automation networks from Business Intelligence perspective as we are looking at databases. Furthermore, the model has to be open on the way that we create and edit object classes needed in a process. One very important feature is to be able to bind the data points and services between dissimilar networks. The variable-to-object and object-to-object mapping has to be done through a straightforward drag and drop.
Multiple adapters have to be able to run simultaneously allowing interconnection of many systems over IP. Therefore, we can assume every building as one node of the infrastructure. Furthermore, the built-in routing service should allow data to be transferred from one protocol to another, either on the same altitude system or between altitude systems, across the IP network. Clearly, the system should be constructed with the idea to manage an arbitrary number of control networks of multiple arbitrary types, as well as a system that could work as a vertical service from the cloud. As we achieve that we will be able to do seamless integration of Business Intelligence with the Building automation.
Without such structure analytics could be only done through proprietary models or by just copying data points into the database, and after we have such databases, analysing of the data could be done through models from separate applications. Such a system will work too, but since the level of real integration is very low the power of combined data and service will also be low.
Furthermore, any advance in technology is not instantly usable, since we will hardly interconnect dissimilar system information into one model. As of today, first we need to get common ground by gateway to the data points, and then we have to move them to general database for further processing. Another issue is that all data is not really automation type data. Therefore, we have to include this information into account too.
At the end various KPIs which are presenting the quality of the buildings corresponding to similar buildings will significantly help in lowering of expenses, and that is exactly what Business Intelligence will provide us with. The KPIs help in both the efficient day to day operation management of the facility, as well as future trend development.
Wednesday, 15 December 2010
Should Google be able to Prioritize its own Search Results?
Don't Users Want Google Results If They're Using Google?
Does Google have the right to place its own content over others' content in its search results? If the company deems it better for the user that way, Google certainly thinks so.
There has been a great deal of discussion around this in the media recently, and a great deal of complaining from other brands who feel this is anti-competitive, and that Google should be driving traffic to their sites, rather than Google giving the user the content themselves.
A Wall Street Journal piece that ran over the weekend, in particular has raised the debate most recently. Amir Efrati reports:
Google, which is developing more content or specialized-search sites in hopes of boosting ad revenue, says that prominently displaying links to them is more useful to Web searchers than just displaying links to sites that rank highly in its search system. But the moves mean Google increasingly is at odds with websites that rely on the search engine for visitors.
Those companies say their links are being pushed lower on the results page to make room for the Google sites. Critics include executives at travel site TripAdvisor.com, health site WebMD.com and local-business reviews sites Yelp.com and Citysearch.com, among others.
When a major publication like the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times raises points that may make Google look bad in the some people's eyes, the company tends to respond. In this case, Google did just that in a post on its Public Policy blog, citing the WSJ piece specifically.
"We welcome ongoing dialog with webmasters to help ensure we're building great products, but at the end of the day, users come first," Google Director of Product Management Carter Maslan wrote in that post. "If we fail our users, competition is just a click away."
It is true that Google largely dominates the search market, but Maslan is also right that competition is a click away - namely Bing, which in many cases does the exact same thing as Google, in terms of delivering instant answers over links to third-party sites - all the more interesting as Microsoft has now joined FairSearch.org, a coalition designed to block Google's ITA Software acquisition for related reasons. Bing, I might add is not necessarily providing a better user experience when it does this. We recently looked at the shortcomings of its "artist pages" for music searches, for example. That's not to say that Bing doesn't do some things well, and it has managed to gain significant ground in the very hard to penetrate search market.
SEOs and webmasters have always had to deal with ever-changing Google algorithms as they struggle to stay visible in Google's search results, and that won't change as Google continues to deliver its own brand of results in more scenarios ( most notably local). Google has always maintained the stance of aiming to deliver a better user experience over a better webmaster experience, even though the company provides many services specifically aimed at helping webmasters optimize and measure their own search engine performance.
All results delivered by Google, whether they come from Google or third parties have always been based on how Google thinks they should be delivered. It's their search engine, and users have been pretty content (for the most part) thus far. You don't get that kind of market share by turning users off. Again, Maslan is right. The competition is a click away, and it's coming from all angles, from Bing to Facebook to Twitter to many different vertical search engines, as Tim Mayer discussed with us (Amazon, Fandango, and many different niche sites and mobile apps).
Analyst Greg Sterling at Search Engine Land makes some good points as well:
The notion that Google should be nothing more than a shell or traffic hose is flawed; it's also a fantasy. Google is a public company looking for growth. It will continue to expand and improve its products in areas where it sees opportunity.
..
It must be said that Google is also not the only way for companies to get exposure in the market.(emphasis added).
I'd also add that it's not as if Google is completely changing how they do things and just totally leaving businesses and webmasters out to dry. They tend to provide information and tools on how to utilize their offerings to boost visibility. Just last week, for example, as Google is shifting toward delivering more localized results, the company blogged and released a video talking about how it ranks these results (in simple terms). Obviously they're not going to completely give away their secret sauce and become more vulnerable to search spam, but they don't completely leave webmasters in the dark, even though they could. Google has openly discussed ways to optimize for YouTube, guidelines for Google News inclusion, etc.
Should Google users be forced to take an extra step in going to a third-party site, when Google can easily offer the information itself? Perhaps if the user wanted a result from that third-party site, he/she would have gone to that site. The biggest opponents to Google's ways haven't exactly been unknown brands. Perhaps improvements in marketing and user experiences are in order.
Does Google have the right to place its own content over others' content in its search results? If the company deems it better for the user that way, Google certainly thinks so.
There has been a great deal of discussion around this in the media recently, and a great deal of complaining from other brands who feel this is anti-competitive, and that Google should be driving traffic to their sites, rather than Google giving the user the content themselves.
A Wall Street Journal piece that ran over the weekend, in particular has raised the debate most recently. Amir Efrati reports:
Google, which is developing more content or specialized-search sites in hopes of boosting ad revenue, says that prominently displaying links to them is more useful to Web searchers than just displaying links to sites that rank highly in its search system. But the moves mean Google increasingly is at odds with websites that rely on the search engine for visitors.
Those companies say their links are being pushed lower on the results page to make room for the Google sites. Critics include executives at travel site TripAdvisor.com, health site WebMD.com and local-business reviews sites Yelp.com and Citysearch.com, among others.
When a major publication like the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times raises points that may make Google look bad in the some people's eyes, the company tends to respond. In this case, Google did just that in a post on its Public Policy blog, citing the WSJ piece specifically.
"We welcome ongoing dialog with webmasters to help ensure we're building great products, but at the end of the day, users come first," Google Director of Product Management Carter Maslan wrote in that post. "If we fail our users, competition is just a click away."
It is true that Google largely dominates the search market, but Maslan is also right that competition is a click away - namely Bing, which in many cases does the exact same thing as Google, in terms of delivering instant answers over links to third-party sites - all the more interesting as Microsoft has now joined FairSearch.org, a coalition designed to block Google's ITA Software acquisition for related reasons. Bing, I might add is not necessarily providing a better user experience when it does this. We recently looked at the shortcomings of its "artist pages" for music searches, for example. That's not to say that Bing doesn't do some things well, and it has managed to gain significant ground in the very hard to penetrate search market.
SEOs and webmasters have always had to deal with ever-changing Google algorithms as they struggle to stay visible in Google's search results, and that won't change as Google continues to deliver its own brand of results in more scenarios ( most notably local). Google has always maintained the stance of aiming to deliver a better user experience over a better webmaster experience, even though the company provides many services specifically aimed at helping webmasters optimize and measure their own search engine performance.
All results delivered by Google, whether they come from Google or third parties have always been based on how Google thinks they should be delivered. It's their search engine, and users have been pretty content (for the most part) thus far. You don't get that kind of market share by turning users off. Again, Maslan is right. The competition is a click away, and it's coming from all angles, from Bing to Facebook to Twitter to many different vertical search engines, as Tim Mayer discussed with us (Amazon, Fandango, and many different niche sites and mobile apps).
Analyst Greg Sterling at Search Engine Land makes some good points as well:
The notion that Google should be nothing more than a shell or traffic hose is flawed; it's also a fantasy. Google is a public company looking for growth. It will continue to expand and improve its products in areas where it sees opportunity.
..
It must be said that Google is also not the only way for companies to get exposure in the market.(emphasis added).
I'd also add that it's not as if Google is completely changing how they do things and just totally leaving businesses and webmasters out to dry. They tend to provide information and tools on how to utilize their offerings to boost visibility. Just last week, for example, as Google is shifting toward delivering more localized results, the company blogged and released a video talking about how it ranks these results (in simple terms). Obviously they're not going to completely give away their secret sauce and become more vulnerable to search spam, but they don't completely leave webmasters in the dark, even though they could. Google has openly discussed ways to optimize for YouTube, guidelines for Google News inclusion, etc.
Should Google users be forced to take an extra step in going to a third-party site, when Google can easily offer the information itself? Perhaps if the user wanted a result from that third-party site, he/she would have gone to that site. The biggest opponents to Google's ways haven't exactly been unknown brands. Perhaps improvements in marketing and user experiences are in order.
Monday, 13 December 2010
Security Slammer: Emerging Technologies May Increase Risk, But Not Oversight
So, what ways do you see your enterprise’s IT security plans evolving as the business begins introducing semantic web technologies to support data integration among applications and web sites; to help with social media analytics initiatives; to back-end massive data analysis services in the cloud; and to affect other new-age Web services within or connected to your enterprise infrastructure?
It won’t come as much of a surprise if the question of securing against risks that potentially arise with these – or any other – emerging technologies is greeted mainly by shoulder shrugs and shy headshakes. Ernst & Young’s 13th annual Global Information Security
Survey shows that less than a third of global businesses have an IT risk management program capable of addressing the risks related to the use of new technologies.
While the newly released survey was focused on technologies across the board, it does single out that the business adoption of new technologies – cloud computing, social networking and Web 2.0 among them, all of which can intersect in some way with semantic web technologies – are shown to increase risk for 60% of respondents. Just one in ten companies, however, considers examining new and emerging IT trends, whatever they may be, as a very important activity for the information security function to perform.
“New technology always means new risk. It is vital that companies not only recognize this risk, but take action to avoid it,” said Ernst & Young Global IT Risk and Assurance Leader Paul van Kessel in a statement. That this hasn’t happened on a broad scale yet in a time when IT is advancing on so many fronts, not least among them using semantic web technologies to enable data interoperability, should be cause for caution.
It’s not surprising if internal security personnel haven’t been asked to weigh in on some of the semantic web-related pilot projects that may be cooking in an enterprise. It wouldn’t be the first time these individuals have been left out of new projects, although sooner or later it becomes clear that’s a mistake. At the recent Interop show, for example, FOCUS president and chief analyst Barb Goldworm brought up the Gartner statistic that says 60 percent of virtual servers are less secure than physical ones. Part of the reason, she notes, is that “security staff is not involved in virtual projects most of the time.”
It may be time for those helping to guide enterprises step into the breach and ensure that as new technologies – semantic, social, cloud, you name it – come on board, they are appropriately managed for security, as much as anything else. In fact, there’s an interesting effort underway at the University of Missouri that relates to the idea of more oversight of emerging technologies at large in the workspace. As part of its Mizzou Advantage program, it’s introduced an initiative to work on issues around understanding and managing disruptive and transformational technologies.
One of the initial proposed projects in the initiative was about the role the board of directors should take when it comes to disruptive and transformational technologies (you can’t argue that the semantic web isn’t one of those!), as part of their corporate governance responsibilities. “Most technology innovations are good in many respects, but they also have disruptive effects,” says Carsten Strathausen, the facilitator for the Disruptive Technology initiative and a faculty member in the College of Arts and Science at the University of Missouri. “How technology plays in the boardroom and in decision-making matters.”
It won’t come as much of a surprise if the question of securing against risks that potentially arise with these – or any other – emerging technologies is greeted mainly by shoulder shrugs and shy headshakes. Ernst & Young’s 13th annual Global Information Security
Survey shows that less than a third of global businesses have an IT risk management program capable of addressing the risks related to the use of new technologies.
While the newly released survey was focused on technologies across the board, it does single out that the business adoption of new technologies – cloud computing, social networking and Web 2.0 among them, all of which can intersect in some way with semantic web technologies – are shown to increase risk for 60% of respondents. Just one in ten companies, however, considers examining new and emerging IT trends, whatever they may be, as a very important activity for the information security function to perform.
“New technology always means new risk. It is vital that companies not only recognize this risk, but take action to avoid it,” said Ernst & Young Global IT Risk and Assurance Leader Paul van Kessel in a statement. That this hasn’t happened on a broad scale yet in a time when IT is advancing on so many fronts, not least among them using semantic web technologies to enable data interoperability, should be cause for caution.
It’s not surprising if internal security personnel haven’t been asked to weigh in on some of the semantic web-related pilot projects that may be cooking in an enterprise. It wouldn’t be the first time these individuals have been left out of new projects, although sooner or later it becomes clear that’s a mistake. At the recent Interop show, for example, FOCUS president and chief analyst Barb Goldworm brought up the Gartner statistic that says 60 percent of virtual servers are less secure than physical ones. Part of the reason, she notes, is that “security staff is not involved in virtual projects most of the time.”
It may be time for those helping to guide enterprises step into the breach and ensure that as new technologies – semantic, social, cloud, you name it – come on board, they are appropriately managed for security, as much as anything else. In fact, there’s an interesting effort underway at the University of Missouri that relates to the idea of more oversight of emerging technologies at large in the workspace. As part of its Mizzou Advantage program, it’s introduced an initiative to work on issues around understanding and managing disruptive and transformational technologies.
One of the initial proposed projects in the initiative was about the role the board of directors should take when it comes to disruptive and transformational technologies (you can’t argue that the semantic web isn’t one of those!), as part of their corporate governance responsibilities. “Most technology innovations are good in many respects, but they also have disruptive effects,” says Carsten Strathausen, the facilitator for the Disruptive Technology initiative and a faculty member in the College of Arts and Science at the University of Missouri. “How technology plays in the boardroom and in decision-making matters.”
Minneapolis Metrodome Collapses As Blizzard Dumps 20 Inches Of Snow On Midwest
The inflatable roof of the Minnesota Vikings' stadium collapsed Sunday and roads were closed throughout the upper Midwest as a storm that dumped nearly 2 feet of snow in some areas crawled across the region.
A blizzard warning was in effect for parts of eastern Iowa, southeastern Wisconsin, northwestern Illinois, and northern Michigan, according to the National Weather Service. Surrounding areas including Chicago were under winter storm warnings.
The Metrodome's Teflon roof collapsed after Minneapolis got more than 17 inches of snow. No injuries were reported. The snowfall that ended Saturday night was one of the five biggest in Twin Cities history, National Weather Service meteorologist James McQuirter said. Some surrounding communities got more than 21 inches of snow, he said.
Fox News has dramatic video from inside the Metrodome of the roof collapsing.
A blizzard warning was in effect for parts of eastern Iowa, southeastern Wisconsin, northwestern Illinois, and northern Michigan, according to the National Weather Service. Surrounding areas including Chicago were under winter storm warnings.
The Metrodome's Teflon roof collapsed after Minneapolis got more than 17 inches of snow. No injuries were reported. The snowfall that ended Saturday night was one of the five biggest in Twin Cities history, National Weather Service meteorologist James McQuirter said. Some surrounding communities got more than 21 inches of snow, he said.
Fox News has dramatic video from inside the Metrodome of the roof collapsing.
Thursday, 9 December 2010
Wednesday, 8 December 2010
Semantic ads could drive future of semantic search
Brooke Aker, CEO at Expert System and of new semantic ad vendor Admantx has been working on semantic search for many years. He believes his latest venture, Admantx, a company that brings semantics to web display advertising, could help fund semantic search in the same way that advertising helped drive the development of traditional web search.
What is semantic advertising? Group 80/20 defines it this way:
"Semantic analysis of content provides advertisers with the opportunity to more finely tune ads through a robust understanding of the environment in which the ad is placed. This in turn would ideally generate higher click-through rates as consumers respond to increasingly more relevant ads."
Aker admits his new venture, a spin-off of Expert System, is not a new idea. There are several vendors out there using semantics to drive ad views including Peer 39 and Dapper (a Yahoo! property), but he says he believes Admantx will be pushing the state of the art.
Aker says using Admantx technology, companies can serve more relevant ads, not just based on sentiment or context, but also from emotions, motivation and behaviors--a tall task--but Aker believes if he can achieve this, it will result in more relevant ads, which will drive click-throughs, and raise ad prices.
He believes by ultimately raising the cost of advertising on the web, this approach will drive more revenue for advertisers and publishers because people will get ads, not based on keywords, but on a deep set of semantic markers.
If this works out as Aker hopes, he thinks it could provide a way to fund semantic search technology on the open web. Time will tell if Aker is correct, but semantics certainly, on its face, seems to offer a better way to drive relevant ad display than current methods.
What is semantic advertising? Group 80/20 defines it this way:
"Semantic analysis of content provides advertisers with the opportunity to more finely tune ads through a robust understanding of the environment in which the ad is placed. This in turn would ideally generate higher click-through rates as consumers respond to increasingly more relevant ads."
Aker admits his new venture, a spin-off of Expert System, is not a new idea. There are several vendors out there using semantics to drive ad views including Peer 39 and Dapper (a Yahoo! property), but he says he believes Admantx will be pushing the state of the art.
Aker says using Admantx technology, companies can serve more relevant ads, not just based on sentiment or context, but also from emotions, motivation and behaviors--a tall task--but Aker believes if he can achieve this, it will result in more relevant ads, which will drive click-throughs, and raise ad prices.
He believes by ultimately raising the cost of advertising on the web, this approach will drive more revenue for advertisers and publishers because people will get ads, not based on keywords, but on a deep set of semantic markers.
If this works out as Aker hopes, he thinks it could provide a way to fund semantic search technology on the open web. Time will tell if Aker is correct, but semantics certainly, on its face, seems to offer a better way to drive relevant ad display than current methods.
Tuesday, 7 December 2010
Data management, Cloud, and security to trend in 2011
A new report from Ovum has highlighted some of the most important technology trends of the next 12 months, including Cloud Computing, data management, mobility, security, and collaboration.
The report said the three most important trends in 2011 for organisations will be Security, Cloud Computing, and sustainability.
Mark Blowers, the report’s author, said the trends, which also included business analytics and context-aware computing, provided organisations with both opportunities and challenges.“These are the key trends that will define the IT landscape for CIOs in 2011,” he said. “If CIOs do not have a strategy for how they intend to take advantage of the opportunities they provide, and deal with the challenges they bring, then they should form one as an urgent priority.”
On the issue of security, Blowers said it remained high on the agenda for IT professionals, and argued the number of threats is increasing. “New technologies such as mobility, social media and cloud computing present new opportunities, but also vulnerabilities,” he said. “In 2011, CIOs should adopt an approach that brings together technology, policy and people. The wider picture for corporate protection must also include risk, compliance and regulatory issues.”
“As well as challenges, there is a big opportunity to revolutionise business processes and customer interaction using new mobile apps,” said Blowers, who added organisations should try to maintain a balance between user preference and productivity and corporate security and compliance.
The high volume of data will also mean data management will remain a high priority, according to Blowers. “The management of data will come to a head for CIOs in 2011, who will realise that it is an issue that can no longer be ignored,” he commented. “The issue of hardware capacity and the drain on resources will see data management make it on to the investment agenda for IT departments in 2011. We believe they need to address both master data management and storage management to deal with the issue effectively.”
In addition, the use of Cloud Computing is expected to grow steadily in 2011, though Blowers and Ovum acknowledge it is “early days for both providers and CIOs”. The change in work practices, including the increasing use of collaborative platforms is also something expected to grow over the next 12 months.
Finally, the report has said CIOs should be looking to instrumentation, metering and wireless technologies in 2011 to play a significant role in providing the context. Blowers argued this can lead to automated business processes and increased productivity. “It is also important to fully understand the impact increased contextual data will have on the IT environment and applications, as well as back-end infrastructure,” he said.
Semantic Web Gets Closer to Relational Data
Web 2.0 is so yesterday. Perhaps, that’s an overstatement, but Web 3.0, thesemantic web, is rapidly moving beyond the academic laboratory to real-world utilization. Now the W3C RDB2RDF Working Group has published the First Public Working Draft of "A Direct Mapping of Relational Data to RDF.” This work is a major step towards making the astounding amount of data stored in relational databases more easily available to the semantic web.
Semantic What?
Web 2.0 focused on establishing interactive human-to-human communities on the internet with rich content. Web 3.0 evolves beyond this and strives to make content consumable for people and machines. Semantic technology uses RDF, Resource Description Framework, a XML-based language to mark up content as structured data that computers can interpret.
For example, an article about me might indicate that Josette Rigsby writes for CMSWire. RDF allows you to indicate that the two topics, Josette Rigsby and CMSWire, are connected by the "employed" relationship or:
SUBJECT: Josette Rigsby
PREDICATE: employed at
OBJECT: http://www.cmswire.com
PREDICATE: employed at
OBJECT: http://www.cmswire.com
In RDF, the predicate is also represented using URI, but unlike objects, predicates are selected from an established list of URIs categorized by topic. For example:
- Friend-of-a-Friend URIs for describing people.
- GoodRelations URIs for product, price and company data.
Why Should You Care?
Ultimately, the semantic web will make it possible to query a web of linked data exposed by websites as if they were a database, the world’s biggest database, and follow the links between the data. This capability would make it possible to create rich experiences that are not easily possible today.
Much of the data on websites is stored in relational databases. In fact, according to the Association for Computing Machinery, over 70% of existing websites derive data from relational databases. Given this volume of information stored relationally, the promise of the semantic web requires making this content easily accessible.
This is precisely what the recent W3C RDB2RDF Working Group draft does. In progress since late 2007, the draft proposes a standardized language for mapping relational data and schemas to RDF. The mapping does not depend on the schema of the database — the language defines a general mapping for any relational structure into RDF. Users specify base URI for the database and the rest is generated. Once this occurs, users can leave the data in the relational database and link it to web using the mapping.
Who’s On the Semantic Bandwagon?
The excitement and benefit of semantic technology isn’t just being written about in techie blogs. Gartner (news, site) has predicted that by 2017 the majority of websites will include some form of semantic markup. In July of this year, Google acquired Metaweb, makers of Freebase, Metaweb’s free and semantic database of over 12 million things. Last month, Extractiv, a service offering on-demand semantic conversion of unstructured data, announced their public launch.
The big boys of software are also taking notice. Oracle offers Oracle Spatial 11g, a separately-licensed RDF management component for its data platform. Cisco has not yet released a semantic product but is offering customer education. Microsoft is active in semantic search via their acquisition of Powerset and integration within Bing.
IKS has also released its first demo of a semantic knowledge engine and there are a number of content management vendors looking at incorporating this technology into their solutions.
Business verticals also see the value of the semantic web. BioPharma is perhaps the best example. The industry is adopting semantic technology to address data integration challenges — companies like Eli Lilly have been using the tool for researching drug targets of interest.
Monday, 6 December 2010
How Entity Extraction is Fueling the Semantic Web Fire
by Dan McCreary
I have been working on several large entity extraction projects in the last few months and I have been very impressed at the scope and depth of some of the new OpenSource entity extraction tools as well as the robustness of commercial products. I thought I would discuss this since these technologies could start to move the semantic web (Web 3.0) up the hockey stick growth curve.
If you are not familiar with Entity Extraction (EE), think of it as pulling the most relevant nouns out of a text document. But EE technologies look at the syntax of each sentence to differentiate nouns from verbs and locate the most critical entities in each document.
There are very primitive EE tools in place today such as tools extract InfoBox data from a Wikipedia page. But these are only the beginning. There are many more to come.
Once of the most significant developments in Entity Extraction is the Apache UIMA project. UIMA (for Unstructured Information Management Architecture). This is a massive project being undertaken by the Apache foundation to allow non-programmers to extract entities from free-form text using an innovative high-performance architecture for doing document analysis. The best way to describe UIMA is a version of UNIX pipes for entity extraction but with an important twist: the data does not have to physically move between processes. Annotator processes dance over the documents and out pops documents with high-precision annotations.
The second demonstration you can try is the Thompson/Reuters ClearForest/OpenCalais demos. This is a commercial product with an excellent FireFox
plugin called Gnosis that can be used to see the incredible quality that Entity Extraction has made in the last few years. The FireFox add-on does a great job of extracting precise entities from any free form text. The results can also be formatted in RDF or other formats.If you are working on a Wikipedia article it is very useful to use the Gnosis plugin to find out what words should have wikipedia links in them. You will find that many of the words that Gnosis finds are already in Wikipedia. They just need to have the wiki markup tags added.
But using these tools is creating some new strategic thinking in the industry. In the near future the UIMA tools will become so mature that you can just configure your web server to automatically create a "richly-linked" views of each web page. This will have many implications for the search marketplace and web site stickyness. Once you are on a richly linked page you will be able to allow your users to "find other documents that reference this term" and keep them from going to a search engine.
When you combine EE with a native XML database such as eXist-db.org, search application can be created with just a few pages of XQuery. In fact, it is possible that an XQuery module will be created to automate the EE process.
In summary, I think that the newer generation of EE will add an incredible amount of fuel to the semantic web fire. This is going to ignite several new business strategies.
Thursday, 2 December 2010
IKS Semantic Technology Project Making Solid Progress
In only two years, the Interactive Knowledge Stack (IKS) (news, site) project has released its first working demo of a semantic knowledge engine and is making quite a stir, as early adopters begin integrating it into their content management software. Recent events have also seen part of the results acceptance as an Apache incubator projected named Stanbol. Here's an update.
Much to the dismay of some, IKS did release an alpha version of their project. CMSWire has followed the EU-funded effort since the early stages, inviting readers to become an early adopter, or fill in the semantic features survey. The first working demo, FISE The RESTful Semantic Engine, was released by Nuxeo (news, site) a few months ago, with new developments to the story already.
What Is IKS and Why Does It Matter?
IKS is an open source project whose purpose is to add semantic functionality to content management systems. The large project is still in its early stages, so there is more to see from it in the future. The goal of the project is to make semantic technologies popular, which in turn will speed the implementation of semantic functionality in CMS.
IKS is not a single project. It has several sub-projects and a consortium of seven research partners and six industrial partners — the idea being to bridge science and research with business. For those who may want to see IKS components first hand, the second annual Amsterdam workshop on the 9th and 10th of December will demonstrate the new Stanbol architecture for the first time.
As for what a Semantic Engine does, here are some common examples of semantic functionality:
As of today, FISE is a standalone HTTP service. It does have a web interface, but a very basic one. It can be used to get an idea of what a semantic search engine does, but in order to use it in everyday life, it needs to be integrated into a broader platform.
(ASF). FISE has been accepted in the Apache incubator and it will continue its life as Apache Stanbol. The Apache Stanbol project will use FISE as its basis, but there will be other components around to extend its functionality.
are joining in.
When the integration is over, people, places and organizations will be easily identified in text and automatically marked-up with RDF tags. If IKS fulfills its mission, this is just the beginning of semantic improvements to come for both closed and open source content management systems.
Much to the dismay of some, IKS did release an alpha version of their project. CMSWire has followed the EU-funded effort since the early stages, inviting readers to become an early adopter, or fill in the semantic features survey. The first working demo, FISE The RESTful Semantic Engine, was released by Nuxeo (news, site) a few months ago, with new developments to the story already.
What Is IKS and Why Does It Matter?
IKS is an open source project whose purpose is to add semantic functionality to content management systems. The large project is still in its early stages, so there is more to see from it in the future. The goal of the project is to make semantic technologies popular, which in turn will speed the implementation of semantic functionality in CMS.
IKS is not a single project. It has several sub-projects and a consortium of seven research partners and six industrial partners — the idea being to bridge science and research with business. For those who may want to see IKS components first hand, the second annual Amsterdam workshop on the 9th and 10th of December will demonstrate the new Stanbol architecture for the first time.
As for what a Semantic Engine does, here are some common examples of semantic functionality:
- Categorize documents
- Suggest meaningful tags
- Find related documents and assets
- Extract and recognize known entities
- Detect yet unknown entities
- Extract knowledge assertions
FISE as Part of the IKS Project
Nuxeo and others in the IKS consortium teamed-up to produce a functional semantic engine under the auspices of IKS. FISE (the Furtwangen IKS Semantic Engine) was created during the IKS Semantic Engine Hackathon in March 2010. It is written in Java, but can be integrated into any platform written in any language thanks to it's RESTful design — one of its key strengths.As of today, FISE is a standalone HTTP service. It does have a web interface, but a very basic one. It can be used to get an idea of what a semantic search engine does, but in order to use it in everyday life, it needs to be integrated into a broader platform.
FISE Accepted as Apache Incubator
Recognition for the significance of the project came from a reputable organization, the Apache Software Foundation (ASF). FISE has been accepted in the Apache incubator and it will continue its life as Apache Stanbol. The Apache Stanbol project will use FISE as its basis, but there will be other components around to extend its functionality.Early Adopters Integrate IKS
The IKS project is still far from finished, but already has a list of early adopters. For instance, GOSS (news, site) has been working to integrate the IKS software into their Web Content Management system, GOSS iCM (intelligent Content Management). Day Software (now Adobe) and Nuxeo have been heavily involved from the beginning, and others such as Hippo, Gentics, Jahia, Modera and Jadu are joining in.When the integration is over, people, places and organizations will be easily identified in text and automatically marked-up with RDF tags. If IKS fulfills its mission, this is just the beginning of semantic improvements to come for both closed and open source content management systems.
Tuesday, 30 November 2010
Has NASA discovered extraterrestrial life?
Here's a curious press release from NASA:
NASA will hold a news conference at 2 p.m. EST on Thursday, Dec. 2, to discuss an astrobiology finding that will impact the search for evidence of extraterrestrial life. Astrobiology is the study of the origin, evolution, distribution and future of life in the universe.I did a little research on the news conference participants and found:
1. Pamela Conrad (a geobiologist) was the primary author of a 2009 paper on geology and life on Mars
2. Felisa Wolfe-Simon (an oceanographer) has written extensively on photosynthesis using arsenic recently (she worked on the team mentioned in this article)
3. Steven Benner (a biologist) is on the "Titan Team" at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory; they're looking at Titan (Saturn's largest moon) as an early-Earth-like chemical environment. This is likely related to the Cassini mission.
4. James Elser (an ecologist) is involved with a NASA-funded astrobiology program called Follow the Elements, which emphasizes looking at the chemistry of environments where life evolves (and not just looking at water or carbon or oxygen).
So, if I had to guess at what NASA is going to reveal on Thursday, I'd say that they've discovered arsenic on Titan and maybe even detected chemical evidence of bacteria utilizing it for photosynthesis (by following the elements). Or something like that. (thx, sippey)
Monday, 29 November 2010
Linking MDM and the Semantic Web
This article is 1 year old, oh how things change!
Leveraging Information and Intelligence
J. Brooke Aker talking about the links organizations can make between the semantic Web and MDM.
"MDM requires extensive understanding of business terminology and the context and importance of data. Furthermore, much of the corporate data MDM needs to capture and organize is unstructured, buried in emails, corporate Intranets and white papers.
A hybrid semantic Web MDM approach can solve these tough issues."
So why the semantic Web? As the author puts it the semantic Web can enhanced MDM solutions by locating and managing any duplicate data. Indeed, semantic Web technologies are able to identify and analyze customer data, purchasing trends, market deals and competitive information. Moreover, semantic Web technologies can uncover unstructured data not only from within the existing enterprise systems, but also from unstructured Web delivered data as well.
So, where is the fit? Semantic Web technologies can enhance MDM solutions by locating and managing duplicate data. "For example, if there are records of the same customer but filed with different names (Enterprise, Inc. and Enterprise Corp; Hank Brown and Henry Brown), semantics can assist MDM and identify the different meanings of the same customer and give true insight into the customer's information."
MDM seems to be like "going to the gym," for most enterprises. Everyone talks about it, perhaps spends money on it, but few are following through. Truth-be-told many of the MDM solutions out there that I've been briefed on are less than innovative, and perhaps learning to leverage standards such as the semantic Web, if they not have already, is the right path to MDM becoming a much bigger deal within the enterprise. We're not there yet.
A hybrid semantic Web MDM approach can solve these tough issues."
So why the semantic Web? As the author puts it the semantic Web can enhanced MDM solutions by locating and managing any duplicate data. Indeed, semantic Web technologies are able to identify and analyze customer data, purchasing trends, market deals and competitive information. Moreover, semantic Web technologies can uncover unstructured data not only from within the existing enterprise systems, but also from unstructured Web delivered data as well.
So, where is the fit? Semantic Web technologies can enhance MDM solutions by locating and managing duplicate data. "For example, if there are records of the same customer but filed with different names (Enterprise, Inc. and Enterprise Corp; Hank Brown and Henry Brown), semantics can assist MDM and identify the different meanings of the same customer and give true insight into the customer's information."
MDM seems to be like "going to the gym," for most enterprises. Everyone talks about it, perhaps spends money on it, but few are following through. Truth-be-told many of the MDM solutions out there that I've been briefed on are less than innovative, and perhaps learning to leverage standards such as the semantic Web, if they not have already, is the right path to MDM becoming a much bigger deal within the enterprise. We're not there yet.
Sunday, 28 November 2010
Interesting Semantics Magazine
Nodalities Magazine
Semantic Web technologies are moving beyond the laboratory and finding a role in the wider business world. Traditional companies such as Reuters and Oracle are putting semantic technologies to work, and startups are attracting increasing venture capital investment.Talis has launched a magazine called Nodalities that bridges the divide between those building the Semantic Web and those interested in applying it to their business requirements. Supplementing our blogs, podcasts, and Semantic Web development work, Nodalities Magazine is available - free - online and in print, and offers an accessible means to keep up with this rapidly evolving area.
http://www.talis.com/nodalities/
Tuesday, 23 November 2010
Social Media Data Wars Will Determine Semantic Web Leader
Social Media or Web 2.0 can be considered the battleground for Web 3.0's Semantic Web. The shift has been happening subtly but is picking up speed as Internet companies and nations vie for control of data. With 600 million users now on Facebook, Google's 1.3 billion visitors per week and China's 1.35 billion citizens, these three entities have the greatest opportunity to dominate the Web of the Future.
For the first time in history, Chinese Internet users have produced more content than professional Web sites in its country. Hu Yanping, of the Data Center of China Internet (DCCI), said the era of Web 2.0 has officially overtaken Web 1.0 as the amount of content generated by personal users on blogs, online forums, social networking sites (SNS) and user-generated 'question & answers' exceeded the amount contributed by professional organizations in news, search engines and e-commerce.
Why is this an important fact? Because we are reaching a 'tipping point' where this massive amount of data and content becomes a valuable commodity. And the companies and/or nations that have the greater access - wins in the battle for the Web's next iteration- Web 3.0!
Eric SchmidtGoogle has modified its algorithm to accommodate this shift. At a recent Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) meeting in New York City, Google CEO Eric Schmidt noted that Google's incorporation of "collaborative filtering" into its search algorithm was done to incorporate "serendipity" into its search results. Collaborative filtering is a crowdsourcing method whereby the search engine will increasingly rely upon massive feedback from its users, including their search histories, to improve its predictive results.
Michael Arrington in his recent TechCrunch report, titled "Data Protectionism Begins In Earnest" sees the battle between Google and Facebook as somewhat inevitable. By Facebook protecting its 'Open Graph' flanks, in Arrington's estimation it's already raised the first red flag. "If you start it, you can expect the other side to start it to. That's when you get what's called a trade war (where) lots of potential economic gain evaporates," says Arrington.
While Facebook has refused Google and others any access to their social graph, even though they import excessively from ever source available to them on the Web, this move has forced Google and other competitors to protect their data as well.
According to Arrington, Google is doing it presently in a more subtle way than Facebook. "Google's done it in a surgical way to avoid fallout with other non-Facebook companies - but once this ball starts rolling, and it has, it's pretty hard to stop," notes Arrington.
On Google's and Facebook's other flank sits China, one of the world's leaders in its investments in the "Internet of Things" and the Semantic Web. In addition to its access of data from humans, the Chinese see the advantage of tagging all the physical objects on the planet that humans interact with on a daily basis. Basically over the last century, with the Internet becoming so interconnected with physical objects as well as people, the planet has grown a central nervous system. And China wants to control that space.
While Google has tried its hardest to fight China on the censorship front, Schmidt seems to be resigned to the fact that it is a losing battle. While he still see the "Great Firewall of China" as a potential threat to Western liberalism, "Google's goals are best served when the company works to serve the interests of a particular country's citizens, rather than pick fights with that country's government (see my previous post, titled, "Google Is No Secretary Of State When It Comes To Diplomacy In China" for more on this topic).
However. figuring out real-time social content appears to be Google's focus these days in advance of moving to the next stage of Web evolution. "Figuring out how to rank real-time content is (our) greatest challenge," Schmidt said in an interview at a recent Gartner symposium conference in Orlando last year. This however becomes even more complicated as Schmidt acknowledges the growing threat of China's dominance on the Web. At the same conference he predicted that within "five years from now the Internet will be dominated by Chinese-language content."
In the soon-to-be-released graphic novel, "Facebucks & Dumb F*cks," the character of Mark Zuckerberg (aka Z-Man) ponders the dilemma that Google (aka Gobble) has faced over the years, and ultimately hatches a plan for his social network (aka Facebucks) to overtake what he believes is his one last competitor - China!
Page from Facebucks & Dumb F*cks graphic novel
Without spoiling the ending as to how this plays out in the fictional world, I ask you readers: Who do you think will become the dominant player in the Data Wars for Web dominance? Who do you think will lead the race into the Web's next iteration - the Semantic Web?
For other related posts on "Web 3.0," and "Semantic Technology
Without spoiling the ending as to how this plays out in the fictional world, I ask you readers: Who do you think will become the dominant player in the Data Wars for Web dominance? Who do you think will lead the race into the Web's next iteration - the Semantic Web?
For other related posts on "Web 3.0," and "Semantic Technology
Ron Callari
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