2011 Semantic-Link Wrap-up

Image by play4smee via Flickr

The December episode of the Semantic-Link podcast was a review of the past year, and a look forward.  The framework for the discussion was:

• What company, technology or issue caught your attention in 2011
• Are we “there” yet?
• What are people watching for 2012

Notable attention grabbers were: schema.org and its impact on who pays attention (i.e. SEO space); linked data (and open data); increase in policy maker awareness of the need to pay attention to interoperability issues; commercial integration of technology (ontologies plus nlp capabilities) to leverage unstructured content; and of course Siri (a key example of such integration…).

In terms of where we are in the progression of the semantic technology realm, the general sentiment was that Siri represents the beginning of inserting UI in the process of leveraging semantics, by making the back end effort invisible to the user.  And looking forward, the feeling seems to be that we’ll see even more improved UI, stronger abilities in analysis and use of unstructured content, greater integration and interoperability, and data-driven user navigation, and Siri clones.

Give a listen, and be sure to express your opinion about a) topics that should be covered in the future, and b) the ways you would like to interact or participate in the discussion (see dark survey boxes).

Related articles

• Experiences from teaching Linked Data (semantic-web.at)
• Going to SEMTECHBIZ Berlin 2012 (semantic-web.at)
• I-Semantics: Get in touch with Europe´s Linked Data community! (semantic-web.at)
• Semantic Web | David Kuhta (davidkuhta.com)