Web 3.0 Conference and Expo will explore the strategies, tools, technologies and the big ideas necessary for building impactful, socially relevant, and profitable Web 3.0 products, services and companies. So whether you are a designer, developer, entrepreneur, strategist, or venture capitalist, if you are thinking about the next generation of the Web, the Web 3.0 Conference is the place to be.

* Monetization Implications of Web 3.0 (Semantic Advertising, etc.)
* Product Marketing, Key Biz Strategies
* Business Risks of Web 3.0. What Risks?
* Business models, strategies, valuation
* Semantic Startup 101 - Successes, challenges, strategic decisions

Featured Technology track sessions include:

* From Web 2.0 to 3.0 - Tales from the Trenches
* Opportunity Costs of ODBC and relational data models
* Knowledge Discovery from semantic metadata
* Web 3.0 Channel Demo - mobile, video, social apps
* plus Semantic Search & Services Demos

Register by Oct 1 and save.

The Noesis search engine (PDF) is different than regular search engines because it employs the use of semantics to help its users better shape their search queries. The results of this lead to better, more accurate, and more complete sets of search results. Those results can then be refined even further by Noesis' end users if necessary.

The goal of the Noesis project is to provide scientists working in the field of Atmospheric Science a way to better search through the "hidden web" of scientific catalogs that traditional search engines cannot reach. Because these catalogs are built using a standard vocabulary, the most efficient searches on the catalogs involve using specific terminology.

To create Noesis, researchers simply annotated those specific vocabulary terms with ontologies - the machine-readable definitions for the words that help computers understand the concept of the term and its relationship to other terms. Of course, annotations alone do not make a semantic web search engine. The ontologies must be coupled with a tool that's capable of searching through them. To that end, Noesis employs something they call the Ontology Interface Service (OIS), a SOAP-based web service interface to an inference engine. When a user performs a search, the OIS is also immediately searched for associated concepts. The Specializations and Generalizations discovered are returned in a tree structure which the user can navigate further. Synonyms and related terms are also shown, and, using checkboxes, they can be appended to the original query to refine it further.

Although the project was designed for use in one select area of science, its framework could easily be replicated in other scientific fields of study.

The Semantic Web: Better in Niches?

The main problem with the semantic web today is that the assignment of those above-mentioned ontologies - the pieces of code that allow machines to grasp meanings that humans innately understand - is that there's no solid way to automate their assignment. At the present time, no automatic or semi-automatic processes to do so have been achieved...at least, not to the point that a true vision of a new, intelligent web can be realized.

Most of the time, annotating web resources must be done using manually inserted bits of code placed into various web pages. Obviously, that's a challenge when you consider the size of the internet - it would be impossible to manually annotate this ever-growing resource. Unfortunately, without automated methodologies, a true semantic web will remain an unrealized dream.

However, in smaller communities, the semantic web can easily become a reality. Scientific data catalogs only represent small portions of the web as whole. Because of their limited size, manually annotating the resources they contain is a manageable feat. This is the case with Noesis. It shows there is promise for the semantic web after all - if only in small niches.

Image credit: rule100

We at ReadWriteWeb are tracking the Semantic Web space closely - so far we've identified 20 products (see our first 10, then 10 more) that we're paying particular close attention to. But we know there is a lot of opportunity yet for commercializing the Semantic Web, so we encourage you to add your wish list in the comments.

1. Microsoft makes a very bold play with Powerset technology and starts to challenge Google in search (despite Google's attempts to use semantic web technology, we'd love Microsoft to ramp it up in search - competition is good for consumers!).
2. Semantic Web advertising apps for publishers - we have our eye on Dapper MashupAds in this sector, but we'd like to see others take up this challenge too.
3. Semantic apps for managing your finances - makes connections between transactions, things that you wouldn't normally pick up.
4. Semantic apps for health industry - there are many opportunities here, but in general there is much the Semantic Web could do to organize the maze of data in the health indsutry.
5. A Personalized Memetracker - Techmeme founder Gabe Rivera would be astonished if this happens, but we'd love to see a product that can give a Techmeme-like organization and layout to one's RSS feeds. So at a glance, you can see which stories in your own set of RSS feeds are hot and who's linking to them. Whether Semantic Web technology can achieve that, we don't know ;-)

Zoltán Andrejkovics, who suggested this topic, is a PhD student at Corvinus University of Budapest and his 5 wishes as a researcher are:

1. Smart notes; easy to find/browse notes, using NLP search.
2. Smart RSS; automatic article-collecting app based on my own interests.
3. Mind writing; using not only words, but "thought" objects, that the NLP engine puts into words.
4. Assistant; "my mirror", learns from my words, behavior on the net, and supports my work, handles calendar, etc.
5. Smart bookmarks; works like smart notes.

Here are some reactions from RWW readers on Twitter (it was very short notice before this post was published, so if we missed you please add your wish list to the comments):

superphoebe: "I'd love to see more semantic blogging tools like Zemanta, but with more sources, really great search and a super simple dashboard."

Marcelo Sánchez: "Zigtag for bringing real semantic tagging and Freebase as the next Wikipedia"

garlin: "I'd like an app that uses semantic tech to identify/analyze the political bias in a particular article/piece of writing."

kevin grandia: "would love to see a better way of submitting content to conversion services like Calais."

Rama Mamuaya: "language based search engines like Hakia or Powerset should be rising fast. Should evolve from search engine, to answer engine."

Jean-Jacques Halans: "mobile safari reading microformats, for adding to calendar, contacts, lookup address on map"

Stephen Edgar: "More on the Semantic Wiki app's and API's such as http://tinyurl.com/27vnno"

Chris Saad: "my hope is to see APML import AND export from more apps ;)"

Tell us your Semantic Web App Wish List for 2009.

Semantic APIs only make sense, superior contextual advertising is clearly the most obvious cash-cow of semantics and a bounty sounds like a good idea - but there's something about this contest that doesn't quite feel right.

"One Meeelion Dollars"...A Cynical Gimmick?

Taking the technology for a test run on SemanticHacker.com doesn't produce very exciting results, though. You can try it yourself right on the front page of the site. While the super-hyped Twine at least attempts to add all kinds of value to the text it analyzes, the Textwise engine's results are clearly suited only to general, topical and contextual advertising.

The polite way to put this, as the company did in its press outreach, is as follows:

The Textwise technology is focused on discovery as opposed to the “extraction” and metadata-based approaches of most semantic web technologies. This is not the same as the “who/what/when/where/how” thread that is based around RDF, OWL and other similar ontologies and approaches. No - this is a semantic discovery tool that can take in huge chunks of text and grok their essential "aboutness". The core technology (with origins in DARPA and intelligence agency stuff) is designed to decode the "DNA" of documents and be able to tell you what they're about.

Like we said, suited far better for advertising than for anything else more interesting. If semantic technology delivers nothing more than spy-agency-built ad networks then that's going to be a real tragedy.

Semantic web expert Paul Miller points out that the contest's limitation to US participants is also a real loss of opportunity and says he'd be much more interested in a bounty not tied to any particular vendor's semantic API.

Market Context

Semantic markup is ready to hit the big time now that Yahoo! has announced that it will index the stuff. A long list of other startups are doing something similar to what TextWise is doing today. Hakia started licensing its semantic search technology yesterday. We've written before about Dapper's forthcoming semantic ad network.

We've offered extensive coverage of the Reuters Open Calais semantic API extravaganza here, as well.

There's a lot of movement in this space; the market is downright crowded. A search through our "top blogs in the semantic web" custom search engine (from the RWW toolkit for 2008) shows that none of the 60 blogs we follow on this space have ever written about TextWise or the SemanticExchange network they participate in. Maybe that shows the limitations of our list of sources, but maybe it says that TextWise just got a whole lot more publicity for a relatively small amount of money.

To open, he said that where we are now in the evolution of the Web is content rich, but information poor - plus "experientially deficient". He suggested that 'web 3.0' is about cleaning up the mess of web 2.0 and improving interfaces. In terms of semantic technology, he explained that over the past 5 years it has evolved from invention of standards to a period of commercial innovation on top of those inventions. While standards are still being worked on, now "we are at an inflection point where innovation is exploding."

Tools

• Semantic data mgmt
• Semantic data generation
• Databases
• Integration and workflow

Tague said that tools are important, particularly in the enterprise. He sounded a note of caution to tools vendors: they need to simplify their stories, along with have "simple basic tools."

Social

• Semantics-powered link sharing
• Network mining
• News sharing
• Tweet mining

Tague said that we shouldn't focus on providing "frosting" on top of current social Web tools. He advised to focus on commercial imperatives, such as the categories above.

Advertising

• Semantic ad placement
• Contextual ad placement
• Semantically driven landing pages
• Mashup ads

There are clearly opportunities to improve advertising using semantic technology, said Tague.

Search

Tague noted that semantic search may be "the answer to the question nobody is asking." He said that we should look at general "semantic search" vs domain specific semantically-enhanced search. The latter is where the commercial opportunity actually is, but he questioned the economics of general semantic search.

Publishing

He put this into 3 sub-categories:

• A-Content Producers - from back office to user experience
• B-Editorial + Aggregation Publishing Models
• C-Robotic publishing - aggregation only

Tague explained that Calais has really focused on this over the last 8-9 months. He said that classic publishers can get an enormous amount of value from this. Right now the big focus is "back in the bolier room," for example to cut editors from 3 to 2. He expects that later on more focus will go on enhancing the user experience.

Tague thinks that B is the biggest opportunity, using Huffington Post as an example. He said that it gives a "near newspaper like experience" at perhaps a 5th of the cost. It's an area where they're seeing adoption of Calais.

Interface

Tague noted that gaming is a huge industry that the semantic technology industry can learn from. He listed these attributes:

• Great story line
• High interactivity, immediate responsiveness
• No interuptions
• Graphically engaging
• Seamless
• Fun

So he asked who out there is trying to really change the user experience in semantic technology? He listed 4 companies (all of whom we've profiled on ReadWriteWeb):

• Zemanta
• Apture
• Feedly
• Glue

Tague told the audience that the next big innovation in interface will be something that stays with the user where they are, which will be mobile and in the browser.

To sum up, Tague suggested that semantic technologies vendors should decide whether they care about semantics or about user value. If it's semantics, then be a tools vendor. He said the basic building blocks are out there already, so focus on user experience.

Disclosure: SemTech has been a recent sponsor of ReadWriteWeb

We also discovered that Cognition, which currently licenses its technology to other organizations, is planning to build a general consumer search engine - which will compete with Google and others.

A Semantic Map is kind of like a dictionary, in that it's a representation of Cognition's ability to define things. Cognition claims that its Semantic Map has over 10 million semantic connections; over 4 million semantic contexts (word meanings that create contexts for specific meanings of other related words); over 536,000 word senses (word and phrase meanings); 75,000 concept classes (or synonym classes of word meanings); 7,500 nodes in the technology's ontology or classification scheme; and 506,000 word stems (roots of words) for the English language.

The company says that its Semantic Map "is more than double the size of any other computational linguistic dictionary for English".

Cognition Technologies has been working on its technology for 24 years, with a lot of input from lexicographers and linguists over that time. Because they've used a mix of algorithms and human input, Cognition has been able to discern relevancy, meaning, synonymy. Scott Janus told us that one of Cognition's strengths is that it can disambiguate words and phrases, which Janus says differentiates them from the keyword and pattern matching algorithms of Google, Yahoo and others.

For example Janus told us that Cognition's technology can find results even if direct words are not used - which he says Google can't do.

Cognition Plans General Search Engine

The comparisons to Google led us to ask the obvious question: does Cognition's semantic technology have a more general application? In other words, does Cogition plan to take on Google by creating a search engine for consumers? CEO Scott Janus replied that yes they do plan to "one day offer search on the general web". However he said that they need more capital funding to index the entire Web, put infrastructure in place, etc.

As of now Cognition will continue to license its semantic technology to verticals like law and health. Janus told us that Cognition is "good for complex content where lot of synonyms are used", so right now data-intensive industries are where it is aiming.

Cognition's current applications include legal (e.g. LexisNexis Concordance's case management), health (e.g. MEDLINE), and a semantically charged version of Wikipedia.

Image from Cognition

Cognition vs Powerset and Hakia

Two other Semantic search engines we've been tracking closely on ReadWriteWeb are Powerset and Hakia. We asked CEO Scott Janus what makes Cognition different from those two products?

In a nutshell, Janus says that its Semantic Map is bigger and better.

Specifically, he said that Powerset is actually "not so similar" to Cognition. According to Janus, Powerset does "parsing" - which it licensed from Xerox Parc. That is 20-25% of the solution, said Janus, but Powerset "doesn't have a good semantic map". Cognition went so far as to write a white paper (pdf) explaining why it thinks Powerset "misses the point".

As for Hakia, Janus said that as far as he can see Hakia is focused on "ontological classifications" - classifying words and concepts together. But he says Hakis doesn't have as full a semantic map as Cognition, so he thinks Cognition has "a better understanding" compared to Hakia.

In summary, Janus told us that semantic search companies "must include a comprehensive semantic map" to be successful. We're sure that Powerset and Hakia will have different opinions on what makes a successful semantic search company, but it does make for a good differentiator for Cognition.

Open Question

Tell us in the comments what you think of Cognition and whether you think it can compete with Google in the long run?

We asked last month how vulnerable Google is in search and the leveraging of standards-based structured data may be the most obvious approach to improving on the search industry's current best practices. As Tim Berners-Lee said just weeks ago the time for the semantic web is now.

Here's one example of what that could mean: Today, a web service might work very hard to scour the internet to discover all the book reviews written on various sites, by friends of mine, who live in Europe. That would be so hard that no one would probably try it. The suite of technologies Yahoo! is moving to support will make such searches trivial. Once publishers start including things like hReview, FOAF and geoRSS in their content then Yahoo!, and other sites leveraging Yahoo! search results, will be able to ask easily what it is we want to do with those book reviews. Say hello to a new level of innovation.

This has been really geeky stuff for a long time, with little market traction and a whole lot of promises from academic research and outlying innovators. That will now change.

The basic idea behind Semantic Web technology is that by signaling what kind of content you are publishing on an item-by-item or field-by-field basis, publishers can help make the meaning of their text readable by machines. If machines are able to determine the meaning of the content on a page, then our human brains don't have to waste time determining, for example, which search results go beyond containing our keywords and actually mean what we are looking for.

Publishers will now be able to clearly designate content on a page as related to other particular content, as business card type information, as a calendar event, a review or as many other types of content. It will make Yahoo! a lot smarter and should shake up the world of Search Engine Optimization and web publishing, a lot.

Who Does the Markup?

Many observers of the Semantic Web, including us at times, have argued that it's unrealistic to expect web publishers to markup their own content and that a more realistic path to market for technologies based on semantics is to build applications that can parse the semantics out of other peoples' content from outside.

In my interview with Mark Zuckerberg last week, for example, the Facebook CEO expressed disinterest in participating in the Semantic Web. I didn't publish it in the interview, but he indicated such a move would be up to a third party site organizing information via the Facebook Platform if it was going to happen at all. He will probably change his tune now, as adding hCard support to Facebook public profiles will now be a no-brainer. Other publishers will be faced with similar questions.

Semantic web markup will quickly become standard practice though for all CMS/publishing systems and we'll wonder what we ever did without it or why it seemed so hard.

Google Will Soon Follow

This move by Yahoo! will likely be followed up by Google, it's just too much opportunity for any search engine to pass up. Semantic markup is like a content-level site map, something all the search engines have agreed on a standard for already. Semantic web technology is next. There will be big job opportunities, more than there are for SEO in the short term, for people who can help publishers implement Semantic Web markup retroactively and into the future.

The Semantic Web was one of a handful of topics that we identified as key themes for the coming year in our RWW Toolkit for 2008. Check that toolkit out for resources you can use to follow this important topic as it unfolds.