Dear subscriber!

“Linked Data is the Semantic Web done as it should be", stated Sir Tim Berners-Lee at this year's WWW Summit in Beijing. "It is the Web done as it should be.” So finally, the masterpiece has been accomplished. While some will keep complaining that Linked Data is just another marketing slogan for something which is only a nice vision but not yet in place, others will either start using the LOD cloud to enrich their corporate web with data from the web, or will start thinking about new (business) opportunities by contributing to the LOD cloud themselves. Yet another group will start using Linked Data as a method to solve rather "complex puzzles" like the ones the life sciences community are faced with or will seek to exploit Linked Data to address one of the most urgent problems humanity has to solve: climate change.

Feel free to contribute - you could start by taking part in our LOD Vision Competition. The fabulous prize: a full conference pass for the LinkedData Planet Conference in June in New York, worth $1095!

With best regards,

The Semantic Web Company

Ken North, member of the LinkedData Planet 2008 conference faculty, believes EU privacy laws can be thought leading on ethical issues related to publishing open data. Learn more about his recommendations for an open data strategy and the scope of the LinkedData Planet conference, which offers a program for people interested in "mashups, social networks and data integration for SOA, enterprise and web applications and services".

PR expert Markus Pirchner talks about online relations, PR 2.0, 3.0 and future developments in this market. His conclusion: Semantic technologies have appeared on the PR-radar, but will only be adopted once PR practitioners fully understand their benefits.
Interview by Marion Fugléwicz-Bren.

The Semantic Web Company's Web Expert Course Program is designed to gradually introduce participants to the core principles and advanced technologies of the Semantic Web up until they reach web expert level. The seminars take place between May 27 and July 4, 2008 in Vienna. The course is divided into 12 stand-alone seminars and workshops which can also be booked separately.

We are giving away a full conference pass for the LinkedData Planet conference taking place in New York on June 17-18, worth $1095! To enter the competition, simply tell us your vision of a future enhanced by Linked Open Data. Which impact is linking Open Data going to have on business, politics and/or culture?

The TRIPLE-I conference series is a joint venture of the conferences I-KNOW, I-MEDIA and I-SEMANTICS, which is to take place on September 3-5, 2008, in Graz. TRIPLE-I reflects the increasing importance and convergence of knowledge management, new media technologies and semantic systems, and is organized by the Semantic Web Company and Know-Center Graz as key coordinators. Confirmed keynote speakers are Henry Lieberman (Research Scientist, MIT Media Laboratory), Peter Kemper (Knowledge Management Portfolio Manager, Shell) and Dickson Lukose (Director Knowledge Technologies, MIMOS Malaysia).

Semantic Web and Ontological Technologies are expanding

InfoQ's Steven Robbins notes that "as tool support has become more available and the concepts of semantics and ontologies are being understood, there are more players that have come to the table with contributions." Robbins offers a discussion of recent developments, available tools and a perspective for the imminent future.

Powerset, as Rob Hof reports, employs so-called “natural-language” search, allowing people to use more natural queries. Hof deems Powerseut "perhaps the most high-profile of the startups looking to one-up Google with easier, more precise, or more in-depth ways to help people find what they’re looking for online".

Keyword search about to hit its breaking point?

TechCrunch cites Nova Spivack about the latest state of keyword search. “Keyword search is okay,” says Spivack, “but if the information explosion continues we need something better.” The solution? The semantic web, of course.

Triplify is a small plugin that reveals the semantic structures of web applications by converting their database content into semantic formats. ReadWriteWeb explains in plain English what this means.

At Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco, Yahoo! CTO Ari Balogh unveiled a "limited preview" of a tool that enables developers to create SearchMonkey applications. Vanessa Fox at Searchengine Land has the details.

Scott Gilberson on WIRED blog network reports that Adaptive Blue, creators of smart-browsing add-on BlueOrganizer, have released a new metadata format that the company is hoping will help preparing the way for a smarter, more semantic web.

Linking to DBpedia with TopBraid

Holger Knublauch, vice president at TopQuadrant, sheds more light on TopBraid Composer 2.5.3's new features that semi-automatically suggest missing links, "in order to support linking domain models with DBpedia and to encourage our users to link their domain models into the Semantic Web".

Henry Story, Sun Microsystems' official semantic web evangelist, reviews the latest publication by Dean Allemang and Jim Hendler, Semantic Web for the Working Ontologist. His preview sounds promising: "It was exactly what I had been waiting a long time for."

ZDNet Steve O'Hear's guest blogger Ben Werdmuller explains the Open Data Definition, a "new format for the import and export of data from within social applications" and promises that "rather than an academic exercise, it’s driven by necessity."