Yearly Archives: 2009

Built for the cloud or moving to the cloud

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Exciting times for CIOs and business executives – real options from both Microsoft and Google to support their information workers.

For those brought up on Microsoft, with what seems like unlimited (if somewhat daunting) functionality in the Office suite, it always seems that the Google Apps suite is ‘dumbed down’ – you are required to give up some functionality.   On the other hand it may seem like nearly everything you actually  need to do can be done in Google Apps – and there’s less to learn.

The cloud seems to have caught fire.  Microsoft has been pushing aggressively on its BPOS offering and the pricing has become a lot sharper.  Meanwhile Google has been busily beefing up its sales and support resources around Google Apps.

Either way both offerings have many attractions for the CIO – in terms of taking away headaches around upgrades, storage, support, etc.

And both offer lots of functionality in the collaboration type space – wikis, blogs, etc.

Side by side with this there are all the other players e.g. zoho with a very comprehensive offering for the information worker – also priced on a subscription basis.  And for project management basecamp seems to be getting a great deal of traction.  And one goes back to the previous thought – are some of these simpler, built for the cloud, product offerings easier to use, if somewhat ‘dumbed down’?

Interesting piece in Forbes re Google, ‘When Google runs your life’.  Seems to me that no more than Microsoft pushing wall-to-wall MS, Google is inevitably pushing google wall-to-wall.  Apologies for unfortunate use of outdated imagery – probably should be cloud-2-cloud.

I think much of the elegance of the web 2.0 applications has been their simplicity and ease of use.  That has driven initial uptake. Products such as googlewave, in trying to deliver a very rich solution, risk contradicting some of this.  There are similar risks in any vendor looking to achieve cloud-2-cloud dominance.

Seems to me that what the internet and the cloud  should be offering – as they evolve – are  easier and more effective ways to access resources (people, knowledge) – both inside and outside the organisation in which you work/ study/ volunteer.  Cloud based computing is part of this.  I think as such the winning solutions may be ones built from scratch for the cloud, expecting to coexist in the cloud, not expecting to dominate.

Understanding semantic web

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Have to say that I think Hatem Mahmoud has done a great job in contextualising and explaining web 3.0/ semantic web in this presentation.

Takes you through web 1.0, through to 2.0 and on to 3.0.  Explains why web 3.0 is required and gives some current examples.

Worth spending 15 minutes – for anyone new to semantic web.

This 6 minute video is also an excellent introduction to the semantic web.

Helping people make the web work for them

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Watched an excellent presentation from Stefan Decker at last year’s International Semantic Web Conference (Karlsruhe).  Stefan Decker is the director of the DERI project in NUI, Galway.

The presentation addressed, inter alia, the lack of excitement about semantic web.  My key takeaway from his talk was that semantic web is about networking knowledge for the benefit of PEOPLE.  I think in getting caught up describing things in terms of computers being able to process information on sites thought use of various standards (not of interest to anyone except the technical community) etc we have lost the focus on the fact that what we really want is more collaboration, more productivity, more discoveries.  Semantic web initiatives have an end game of helping people make more use of the information.

Just looked at a nice 3 minute video from Binaryplex – promoting their beta product Hivemind.  I do not know what the underlying technologies are.  They do not even mention the worked ‘semantics’ in their three minutes.  But what it is about is helping people to find expertise and, more importantly, experts in an organisation.  Recognising that people, for any number of reasons, may not update their profiles within an organisation the product seeks to address this gap, in the background.

Semantically exciting?

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ReadWriteWeb sets out its Top 10 Semantic Web Products of 2009.

Was I excited?

On a personal level I have found a number of these products useful e.g. feedly.  And they do represent some interesting development and practical examples of various elements of the semantic toolbox.

But not that exciting.

Working with business executives looking to uderstand the relevance of semantic web to them not sure that this range of products will excite them.  In fact don’t think it will.

I am beginning to think that we should think of semantics in terms of a set of tools and standards designed to enable us to get more from the web.  Web 3.0 seems to me to suggest a new web – I don’t see that at present.

What does the cloud hold for traditional ERP vendors?

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Is it possible that the traditional ERP vendors may lose their dominant positions in the mid and large size enterprises because of cloud computing and what it enables – notwithstanding their own efforts to exploit the cloud.

Seems to me that the cloud enables business managers to demand a different experience of implementing information solutions to support their businesses.  There is an emerging demand for simpler, faster, cheaper implementations – potentially not built on one integrated solution from one ERP vendor.  And this may work well for the implementation partners also.  Ultimately they may be required to work off a reduced margin – but this may be achieved for significantly reduced investment and reduced risk of failure.

Excellent piece recently in CIO dealing with the future of ERP.  The piece does not purport to have all the answers – but certainly speaks to the challenges being faced by traditional vendors and the opportunities for those with solutions built for the cloud.

Open data coming to the UK. Where is Ireland on this?

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data dot gov dot uk is about to become a reality.  Tim Berners Lee and Nigel Schadbolt cover this off in their article, ‘Put in your postcode‘, out comes the data, in The Times 18/11/09.

The UK government is moving forward on a similar basis to the US government – in making public data available to the public.

Curious to see how far advanced we are wrt implementing something similar in Ireland – in the context of our knowledge society and smart economy.  Must make sense to make this type of information available – as argued by Tim Berners Lee in the referenced article.

Three examples of semantic web being used in advertising

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Three different examples recently reported of use of semantic web technologies to improve online advertising efforts.

OpenAmplify is a web service developed by Hapax that brings human understanding to content. Using patented Natural Language Processing technology, OpenAmplify reads and understands every word used in text. It identifies the significant topics, brands, people, perspectives, emotions, actions and timescales and presents the findings in an actionable XML structure.

NEW YORK – ad pepper media, the international online advertising network and semantic advertising technology solutions provider, launched the SiteScreen for Agencies platform, enabling advertising agencies to apply its ground-breaking SiteScreen semantic brand protection technology across their entire range of online media buys to effectively prevent ad misplacements.

Read more: http://www.adoperationsonline.com/2009/11/12/ad-pepper-media-launches-sitescreen-for-agencies/#ixzz0XL2vwtcR

Jennifer Zaino
SemanticWeb.com Contributor

In Italy, Quattroruote is a leading online magazine for car aficionados and buyers, with its reputation built on testing and evaluating models and its own blue book-like price estimates for vehicles. Now it’s a leading-edge user of semantic web technology, too.

It has deployed Expert System’s Cogito semantic solution to help add value to user searches for used cars in its portal to the world of classified car sales.

semantic web and intelligence

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There is a great deal written about web 3.0/ semantic web in terms of knowledge and intelligence.  Much of it relates to computers being able to process data published on the web and ‘understand’ it – either via Natural Language Processing type solutions or through markups such as Resource Definition Framework (RDF).

This
 piece of research being conducted by IBM reminds us of the competition – the human brain.

For now I see the real benefit of the semantic web being to give me some assistance in terms of processing the vast amount of data which is available on the web (and within enterprises – under linked open data initiative).  For instance, if in going to a meeting to discuss evolving health & safety issues in the construction industry in Australia, I have a piece of software which can filter/find/ summarise much of the information and data in the public domain then my contribution to the meeting may be more valuable (or my preparation time may be accelerated).  Again, within the context of semantic web, my profile – if I have an interest in such a field – should result in my being prompted with relevant information.  This ties in with Kevin Kelly’s dictum, ‘No personalisation without transparency’.

Explaining the semantic web

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Find myself being asked more regularly to explain ‘the semantic web’.  I think it’s a combination of a growing awareness in the business community of the semantic web and a greater focus on this topic by myself.

Read a piece this morning on the hypios web site – a web 2.0 based problem solving site.  In the first page of this essay the author offers an excellent introduction to the semantic web (and the requirement for a semantic web).

The only reservation I would have would be the ‘plea’ to business to make more data available publicly as linked open data.  I agree with the sentiment – but not sure that business on such sentiment.

Introduction to semiotics – leading to semantics

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Excellent presentation (to undergrads I presume) outlining background to semiotics and semantics.

Great start – asks the participants in 15 seconds to define ‘forward’.

Works through the basics of symbols, icons and indices.  This in turn leads on to the importance of context (more important for symbols e.g. language than for icons).

Follows on from this to explain the need for rules and agreed terminologies – leading to Ontologies.