It seems strange that I wrote about OpenCalais yesterday and am now doing it again 24 hours later.

There is good reason to be doing it again, a revamped OpenCalais has been released with updated features that add to the current healthy bevy and extend it them in ways to make them easier for developers to work with and supplement user experiences.

This trove of updates listed on their blog includes:

• Version 4.3 of the OpenCalais service features enhanced Social Tags for categorization; improved disambiguation; new entities, facts and events in English; and an entirely new feature called News Names.
• By popular demand, the improved Tagaroo plugin for WordPress gives users more control over the tagging process.
• Our URL submission tool, SemanticProxy, has been normalized to ensure that its results are identical with those you would get by programmatically submitting content to OpenCalais via the API. Additionally, we are now supporting JSONP. You can now specify a callback function when requesting results in JSON.
• Our Gnosis plugin for Firefox now includes categorization of processed Web pages in the sidebar and can sort entities by alphabetical order or according to frequency or relevance.
• And finally, we have published the OpenCalais Schema in OWL, enabling OWL enthusiasts to apply ontology based tools on OpenCalais metadata.

I’m eager to install the updated Tagaroo plugin for automatic generation of tags. This will be a welcome addition to making our posts even better. Once I have a chance to run Tagaroo through its paces, I’ll be sure to share.

Congratulations to the OpenCalais team for getting these updates out the door! The semantic web landscape is really starting to shape up into something that can help publishers and consumers discover better content.

OpenCalais Ups the Semantic Ante with Updates is a post from: TechStartups.com

I am making this my first New Year’s Resolution and I will stick to it. I will. I will.

The resolution is to be an advocate for structured data on the web. I will sing it from the mountain tops and whisper it from the valleys. Well, I might yodel it in both places but I certainly will be vocal.

In the great quest for efficiency online it is time we move beyond the 19% of websites that have XML feeds that structure the sites data to a full onslaught of education for web publishers. The semantic web is depending on it.

The semantic web is in a gestational state and no where near reaching its potential to revolutionize the way that we interact with information. The tech certainly isn’t there yet in the capacity of computing and the redundancy and review that needs to be applied to content for fully actualized linking.

What is apparent however, is that about 81% percent of the web is missing its opportunity to hop on this dog pile of ever growing linked data with information from the publisher and not just the bots that are crawling it. There is much information that can be gleaned from microformats within certain publishing platforms but there is still a mass of information that goes without inclusion into the structured whole.

As part of this resolution I will continue to push for RSS feeds since they are the simplest technology to get up and running when it comes to websites. There are tons of tools available to the put feeds on any site and every blogging platform today offers something in the way of feeds either with Atom, RSS or custom XML.

The time has come to bring data together and prepare for the long tail that awaits in a decade from now. Consider adding structured data to your site now like adding it to a time capsule. And instead of it being an 8-track requiring a special player it is more like a stone tablet with the language of the people – or the machine.

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• Technology Trends #3 – The Data Explosion (realtea.net)

My First New Year’s Resolution is a post from: TechStartups.com

Linking words together online is an hobby. Creating context from those words is an art. Making them work in harmony is a gift. The team at Thomson Reuters have done this for some time with their Calais project and the first consumer product from it OpenCalais.

OpenCalais is a monster database filled with linked data that can be accessed by anyone via a special API. Currently it works on an individual application level and as plugins with other popular CMS and blogging platforms. In tandem they create a more powerful experience for the publishers of new content by allowing the integration of linked data for linking, tagging and finding optional third-party resources for inspiration.

Word on the street and from a trusted source is that the Calais team has something new on the horizon – their own CMS. A release of a CMS that has semantic technologies built right into is a powerful addition to the marketplace. Many blogging platforms and CMS products available today have stagnated under the weight of their own popularity.

It is hard to innovate when you are leading the pack or trying to figure out how to make money from your product that is free. Time and resources become devoted to maintaining the status quo, patching holes and community relations and support. Not to mention that many of these tools have crept out from the minds of developers and not publishers.

The same can’t be said for Thomson Reuters Calais Initiative. With a business model built in from the inception of the project they have the ability to create value from the wealth of content that is entering their system. It is treated to some natural language processing, machine learning and prepared to link with other content. As the initiative currently exists it is the side car to better publishing as there is no status quo or hole patching. They realized this.

Throwing a CMS on top of this type of foundation is a logical move for OpenCalais to extend development and create publisher relations. There has been so little innovation in core CMS offerings that most rely on third-party developers to create additional functionality or implement API’s like OpenCalais, Zemanta and other discovery products.

An OpenCalais CMS, blogging platform or whatever comes from this group is going to be a welcome addition to the choices that publishers have available today. The closest opportunity today to creating a true semantic experience in a publishing platform that is readily available would be to install the Zemanta plugin in WordPress. It transforms the writing experience. An offering from Calais could transform the writing and CMS experience.

Update: Krista Thomas (@kristathomas) from OpenCalais got in touch to say that there is a fully integrated CMS based on Drupal called OpenPublish available now.

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/0

CMS Innovations from Thomson Reuters? is a post from: TechStartups.com

Sort of like Back to the Future in the sense that these folks are working to build the next, next and next web connected devices and the event is in the past.. Anyway, like Doc, these mad scientists of the AR and Semantic disciplines got together to discuss there passions and find common ground.

They did find that common ground after some time, as I wrote last night. What I didn’t write about last night, partially because I had  the pleasure of posting from my phone, was about another required middle ground – commerce. Both of these technologies have made their greatest leaps in the labs of academics and their students, not in the business world.

For these technologies to find their way into the public consciousness in a meaningful way this merger is necessary. It is necessary not only for funding these endeavors but for continued growth and innovation on top of the core concepts that create the value to users.

This is usually the stage where the process devolves into a soap opera. It is similar to the current drama between journalists and bloggers. The stereotypes – one is trained in the art of story telling, fact checking and impartiality while the other trained in the art self-publishing, internet culture and telling it like it is. I won’t tell you which is which.

These technologies born of academic discourse, grant writing and undergrad sweat equity come to the marketplace they are often unpolished. Which gives the marketing and advertising people only a partial vision of what the technology can do. The academics, feeling that they have done everything right, because the technology works and solves a problem rebuff ideas of how to polish and package it.

This room was no different when marketers stood up and professed their passion for these technologies to the sounds of nerd snickers and snide whispers. That was until immediately following one of these marketing, advertising types pulled up an AR expert and asked them to demo a new project that had just come from the lab.

The video that came on screen was a demonstration of the everyday possibilities of AR to enhance the lives of the wired set – a fashion app. Yep, fashion. A simple everyday activity that some revel in and most of us just follow the trends. This application allows the user to be on camera, choose real clothes images and virtually try them on at scale. It might sound lame but it got the most attention for being practical.

Around the user on screen were buttons that could activate the program to switch clothing items, take a photo to save, buy the item, add a photo and link to social network and of course the old stand by of emailing it to yourself. This context being, of course, shopping – where the commerce meets the tech.

The product hasn’t been released yet but I can describe it simply as the perfect merger at the right time for AR and the public perception of its usefulness. Unlike other attempts to create interest in AR this one has a no-nonsense feel of a real tool. When it is publicly released we’ll do a full review.

My point isn’t to pick on either of these groups but to use them as examples of how leading edge technology products are created and the dissonance that exists during the process of bringing them to the public. It is a world where marketing and ad folks often get the media credit and the technologists get a byline. The gap between the two is closing as we become a more tech savvy culture, but there is still room for the drama. It’s up to us to recognize it and make sure we get back to the future.

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/4

Back to the Augmented Lounge is a post from: TechStartups.com

If you are looking for a meetup with more brainpower than horsepower you need to be in New York next week. Don’t come for Web 2.0 East, come for the Augmented Reality Lounge being hosted by and at Portner Novelli on November 17th at 7:00 p.m..

In this room will be some of the brightest stars from the Augmented Reality and Semantic worlds. You heard that right, AR and Semantic nerds in one room. Two of the most powerful forces that are shaping how the next web will be architected and delivered both on pc’s and mobile. The work of both groups will be the defining factors in how you experience the world around you.

If you would take part in shaping the future of the internet, these are the folks you should meet and talk to. Many of them are going to be in town for a panel on AR at the Web 2Open, an unconference event at the Web 2.0 Conference.  The others are based in New York and take part in the Semantic Web Meetup Group. That group is organized by one of the AR panelists and semantic technologist, Marco Neumann (@neumarcx).

Other members of this panel include:

• Robert Rice: CEO of Neogence, Chairman of the Augmented Reality Consortium
• Ori Inbar: Co-founder and CEO of Ogmento
• Jack Mason: Global Business Services, Strategic Programs and Social Media at IBM
• Lynne d Johnson: SVP Social Media at the Advertising Research Foundation and host of the NYC Android Developer’s Meetup
• Erik Manley: Manager, Digital Media at GE
• Michael Eisenreich: Technology Leader for GE’s company-wide Internet presence
• Matt Szymczyk: CEO of Zugara
• Marco Neumann: CEO and Founder of KONA, Lead Organizer for New York Semantic Web Meetup Group

This meetup before the event is the brainchild of John C. Havens (@johnchavens), the author of the book and blog Tactical Transparency and lead organizer for the first PodCamp NYC that helped to define all that followed. John has a strong interest in Augmented Reality and saw the obvious ties between the AR world and the Semantic side that I was talking to him non-stop about.

The Augmented Reality Lounge is an event that Marco described as:

“The Semantic Web is an ideal candidate to become the fabric for Augmented Reality applications in the near future. The global availability of HTTP and the flexibility of RDF, the foundational framework for the Semantic Web, make it a perfect match for distributed, heterogeneous and networked applications that can help to enable emergent Augmented Reality services.”

Believe me, if there is an iteration of the web that you should be a part of it is this one. The foundation that is being built from semantic data and the interaction with the real world that augmented reality presents is one that your ideas should be a part of.

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/4

Shape the Next Web Next Week – with Augmented Reality and the Semantic Web is a post from: TechStartups.com

Remember our post about five people that were changing journalism? I do.

And with the very fresh release of Linked Open Data by the New York Times, we begin the next phase of the semantic web today.

The New York Times is in the initial phase of opening up their news vocabularies to the public. Throw in a dash of linked data and some serious structure in RDF and the push begins to become the brand associated with the prevailing taxonomy.

It is important that attention is paid to this release because it is the first salvo of its kind by a new organization that is making a play to maintain it relevance and revenue stream. Next versions of the web will be built on structured and linked data and the ability to make it portable.

The cyclical pattern that content will travel in the future between devices for consumption, the sharing of and the monitoring of will rely on the ability to speak a common language around the language. Ya feel me? I’m sure you do.

The internet needed its own language, terms and definitions wrapped around it simply to be explained. The data that travels on it is in the same need now. The talk of filters and too much content is dominant on today’s web and tomorrow’s web is lacking codification. Enter the New York Times and a new phase of startups that will shape this new lexicon and how those words link together.

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/0

New York Times Brings Us Linked Open Data is a post from: TechStartups.com

The semantic web is well on its way and one of the startups that has taken an early lead is Zemanta. They have taken a unique approach to linked data and the science that powers their ability to create structured content from it. They aimed their service at publishers, not the IT crowd.

Typically, semantic technology companies rely heavily on their colleagues with computer science degrees not the actual publisher. They will deliver products as API’s or server side solutions with a hefty price tag. Zemanta has created the right relationships with CMS and blogging platform owners to integrate their tools within administration sections.

They offer AJAX’ed out components in these platforms that reads from the main content box as a publisher types a post and updates linked content like photos, links and tags that are appropriate for the post. By doing this it allows the publisher to focus on their post and actual release content faster.

The core of their service is to intelligently eliminate the need for the publisher to start research from ground zero. They offer points of direction inside the administration interface to guide the publisher to resources quickly. I am most impressed with the way that Zemanta handles tags and the relationships between them.

Zemanta does offer an API, I have used it in the past. The API returns data quickly and an even more robust set than the plugin style for CMS’s. A sample request returns maps, categories, links, excerpts and more. The only problem that I encountered was one that all semantic companies have right now, context and sentiment for breaking news.

Semantic services rely on hefty algorithms that need sample data to create the links between data and develop sentiment. As a result of this issue, it makes it very hard to implement solutions that work with real-time data and syndication of that content. Most times, once something has hit a feed or been released to a partner site it cannot be updated with linked data. I’ve been told it is something that the Zemanta team is working on.

Zemanta makes it easy to Zemify your content in WordPress, Drupal, Movable Type among others and possibly Blogger in the future.

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/4

Zemify Your Content With Zemanta is a post from: TechStartups.com