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Semantic Web entrepreneur David Provost has published a report about the state of business in the Semantic Web and it's a good read for anyone interested in the sector. It's titled On the Cusp: A Global Review of the Semantic Web Industry. We also mentioned it in our post Where Are All The RDF-based Semantic Web Apps?.

The Semantic Web is a collection of technologies that makes the meaning of content online understandable by machines. After surveying 17 Semantic Web companies, Provost concludes that Semantic science is being productized, differentiated, invested in by mainstream players and increasingly sought after in the business world.

Sponsor

Provost aims to use real-world examples to articulate the value proposition of the Semantic Web in accessible, non-technical language. That there are enough examples available for him to do this is great. His conclusions don't always seem as well supported by his evidence as he'd like - but the profiles he writes of 17 Semantic Web companies are very interesting to read.

What are these companies doing? Provost writes:

"..some companies are beginning to focus on specific uses of Semantic technology to create solutions in areas like knowledge management, risk management, content management and more. This is a key development in the Semantic Web industry because until fairly recently, most vendors simply sold development tools."

The report surveys companies ranging from the innovative but unlaunched Anzo for Excel from Cambridge Semantics, to well-known big players like Down Jones Client Solutions and RWW sponsor Reuters Calais Initiative, to relatively unknown big players like the already very commercialized Expert System. 10 of the companies were from the US, 6 from Europe and 1 from South Korea.

We've been wanting to learn more about "under the radar" but commercialized semantic web companies ever since doing a briefing with Expert System a few months ago. We had never heard of the Italian company before, but they believe they already have they have a richer, deeper semantic index than anyone else online. They told us their database at the time contained 350k English words and 2.8m relationships between them. including geographic representations. They power Microsoft's spell checker and the Natural Language Processing (NLP) in the Blackberry. They also sell NLP software to the US military and Department of Homeland Security, which didn't seem like anything to brag about to us but presumably makes up a significant part of the $12 million+ in revenue they told Provost they made last year.

And some people say the Semantic Web only exists inside the laboratories of Web 3.0 eggheads!

Shortcomings of the Report

Provost writes that "the vendors [in] this report have all the appearances of thriving, emerging technology companies and they have shown their readiness to cross borders, continents, and oceans to reach customers." You'd think they turned water into wine. Those are strong words for a study in which only 4 of 17 companies were willing to report their revenue and several hadn't launched products yet.

The logic here is sometimes pretty amazing.

The above examples [there were two discussed - RWW] are just a brief sampling of the commercial success that the Semantic Web has been experiencing. In broad terms, it's easy to point out the longevity of many companies in this industry and use that as a proxy for commercial success [wow - RWW]. With more time (and space in this report), additional examples could be described but the most interesting prospect pertains to what the industry landscape will look like in twelve months. [hmmm...-RWW]

In fact, while Provost has glowingly positive things to about all the companies he surveyed, the absence of engagement with any of their shortcomings makes the report read more like marketing material than any objective take on what's supposed to be world-changing technology.

This is a Fun Read

The fact is, though, that Provost writes a great introduction to many companies working to sell software in a field still too widely believed to be ephemeral. The stories of each of the 17 companies profiled are fun to read and many of Provost's points of analysis are both intuitive and thought provoking.

He says the sector is "on the cusp" of major penetration into existing markets currently served by non-semantic software. Provost argues that the Semantic Web struggles to explain itself because the World Wide Web is so intensely visual and semantics are not. He says that reselling business partners in specific distribution channels are combining their domain knowledge with the science of the software developers to bring these tools to market. He tells a great, if unattributed, story about what Linked Data could mean to the banking industry.

We hadn't heard of several of the companies profiled in the report, and a handful of them had never been mentioned by the 34 semantic web specialist blogs we track, either.

There's something here for everyone. You can read the full report here.

Semantic Web entrepreneur David Provost has published a report about the state of business in the Semantic Web and it's a good read for anyone interested in the sector. It's titled On the Cusp: A Global Review of the Semantic Web Industry.

After surveying 17 Semantic Web companies, Provost concludes that Semantic science is being productized, differentiated, invested in by mainstream players and increasingly sought after in the business world.

Sponsor

Provost aims to use real-world examples to articulate the value proposition of the Semantic Web in accessible, non-technical language. That there are enough examples available for him to do this is great. His conclusions don't always seem as well supported by his evidence as he'd like - but the profiles he writes of 17 Semantic Web companies are very interesting to read.

What are these companies doing? Provost writes:

"..some companies are beginning to focus on specific uses of Semantic technology to create solutions in areas like knowledge management, risk management, content management and more. This is a key development in the Semantic Web industry because until fairly recently, most vendors simply sold development tools."

The report surveys companies ranging from the innovative but unlaunched Anzo for Excel from Cambridge Semantics, to well-known big players like ">Down Jones Client Solutions and RWW sponsor ">Reuters Calais Initiative, to relatively unknown big players like the already very commercialized Expert System. 10 of the companies were from the US, 6 from Europe and 1 from South Korea.

We've been wanting to learn more about "under the radar" but commercialized semantic web companies ever since doing a briefing with Expert System a few months ago. We had never heard of the Italian company before, but they believe they already have they have a richer, deeper semantic index than anyone else online. They told us their database at the time contained 350k English words and 2.8m relationships between them. including geographic representations. They power Microsoft's spell checker and the Natural Language Processing (NLP) in the Blackberry. They also sell NLP software to the US military and Department of Homeland Security, which didn't seem like anything to brag about to us but presumably makes up a significant part of the $12 million+ in revenue they told Provost they made last year.

And some people say the Semantic Web only exists inside the laboratories of Web 3.0 eggheads!

Shortcomings of the Report

Provost writes that "the vendors [in] this report have all the appearances of thriving, emerging technology companies and they have shown their readiness to cross borders, continents, and oceans to reach customers." You'd think they turned water into wine. Those are strong words for a study in which only 4 of 17 companies were willing to report their revenue and several hadn't launched products yet.

The logic here is sometimes pretty amazing.

The above examples [there were two discussed - RWW] are just a brief sampling of the commercial success that the Semantic Web has been experiencing. In broad terms, it's easy to point out the longevity of many companies in this industry and use that as a proxy for commercial success [wow - RWW]. With more time (and space in this report), additional examples could be described but the most interesting prospect pertains to what the industry landscape will look like in twelve months. [hmmm...-RWW]

In fact, while Provost has glowingly positive things to about all the companies he surveyed, the absence of engagement with any of their shortcomings makes the report read more like marketing material than any objective take on what's supposed to be world-changing technology.

This is a Fun Read

The fact is, though, that Provost writes a great introduction to many companies working to sell software in a field still too widely believed to be ephemeral. The stories of each of the 17 companies profiled are fun to read and many of Provost's points of analysis are both intuitive and thought provoking. He says the sector is "on the cusp" of major penetration into existing markets currently served by non-semantic software.

Provost argues that the Semantic Web struggles to explain itself because the World Wide Web is so intensely visual and semantics are not. He says that reselling business partners in specific distribution channels are combining their domain knowledge with the science of the software developers to bring these tools to market. He tells a great, if unattributed, story about what Linked Data could mean to the banking industry.

We hadn't heard of several of the companies profiled in the report, and a handful of them had never been mentioned by the 34 semantic web specialist blogs we track, either.

There's something here for everyone. You can read the full report here.

Semantic Web entrepreneur David Provost has published a report about the state of business in the Semantic Web and it's a good read for anyone interested in the sector. It's titled On the Cusp: A Global Review of the Semantic Web Industry.

After surveying 17 Semantic Web companies, Provost concludes that Semantic science is being productized, differentiated, invested in by mainstream players and increasingly sought after in the business world.

Sponsor

Provost aims to use real-world examples to articulate the value proposition of the Semantic Web in accessible, non-technical language. That there are enough examples available for him to do this is great. His conclusions don't always seem as well supported by his evidence as he'd like - but the profiles he writes of 17 Semantic Web companies are very interesting to read.

What are these companies doing? Provost writes:

"..some companies are beginning to focus on specific uses of Semantic technology to create solutions in areas like knowledge management, risk management, content management and more. This is a key development in the Semantic Web industry because until fairly recently, most vendors simply sold development tools."

The report surveys companies ranging from the innovative but unlaunched Anzo for Excel from Cambridge Semantics, to well-known big players like ">Down Jones Client Solutions and RWW sponsor ">Reuters Calais Initiative, to relatively unknown big players like the already very commercialized Expert System. 10 of the companies were from the US, 6 from Europe and 1 from South Korea.

We've been wanting to learn more about "under the radar" but commercialized semantic web companies ever since doing a briefing with Expert System a few months ago. We had never heard of the Italian company before, but they believe they already have they have a richer, deeper semantic index than anyone else online. They told us their database at the time contained 350k English words and 2.8m relationships between them. including geographic representations. They power Microsoft's spell checker and the Natural Language Processing (NLP) in the Blackberry. They also sell NLP software to the US military and Department of Homeland Security, which didn't seem like anything to brag about to us but presumably makes up a significant part of the $12 million+ in revenue they told Provost they made last year.

And some people say the Semantic Web only exists inside the laboratories of Web 3.0 eggheads!

Shortcomings of the Report

Provost writes that "the vendors [in] this report have all the appearances of thriving, emerging technology companies and they have shown their readiness to cross borders, continents, and oceans to reach customers." You'd think they turned water into wine. Those are strong words for a study in which only 4 of 17 companies were willing to report their revenue and several hadn't launched products yet.

The logic here is sometimes pretty amazing.

The above examples [there were two discussed - RWW] are just a brief sampling of the commercial success that the Semantic Web has been experiencing. In broad terms, it's easy to point out the longevity of many companies in this industry and use that as a proxy for commercial success [wow - RWW]. With more time (and space in this report), additional examples could be described but the most interesting prospect pertains to what the industry landscape will look like in twelve months. [hmmm...-RWW]

In fact, while Provost has glowingly positive things to about all the companies he surveyed, the absence of engagement with any of their shortcomings makes the report read more like marketing material than any objective take on what's supposed to be world-changing technology.

This is a Fun Read

The fact is, though, that Provost writes a great introduction to many companies working to sell software in a field still too widely believed to be ephemeral. The stories of each of the 17 companies profiled are fun to read and many of Provost's points of analysis are both intuitive and thought provoking. He says the sector is "on the cusp" of major penetration into existing markets currently served by non-semantic software.

Provost argues that the Semantic Web struggles to explain itself because the World Wide Web is so intensely visual and semantics are not. He says that reselling business partners in specific distribution channels are combining their domain knowledge with the science of the software developers to bring these tools to market. He tells a great, if unattributed, story about what Linked Data could mean to the banking industry.

We hadn't heard of several of the companies profiled in the report, and a handful of them had never been mentioned by the 34 semantic web specialist blogs we track, either.

There's something here for everyone. You can read the full report here.

Semantic Web entrepreneur David Provost has published a report about the state of business in the Semantic Web and it's a good read for anyone interested in the sector. It's titled On the Cusp: A Global Review of the Semantic Web Industry.

After surveying 17 Semantic Web companies, Provost concludes that Semantic science is being productized, differentiated, invested in by mainstream players and increasingly sought after in the business world.

Sponsor

Provost aims to use real-world examples to articulate the value proposition of the Semantic Web in accessible, non-technical language. That there are enough examples available for him to do this is great. His conclusions don't always seem as well supported by his evidence as he'd like - but the profiles he writes of 17 Semantic Web companies are very interesting to read.

What are these companies doing? Provost writes:

"..some companies are beginning to focus on specific uses of Semantic technology to create solutions in areas like knowledge management, risk management, content management and more. This is a key development in the Semantic Web industry because until fairly recently, most vendors simply sold development tools."

The report surveys companies ranging from the innovative but unlaunched Anzo for Excel from Cambridge Semantics, to well-known big players like ">Down Jones Client Solutions and RWW sponsor ">Reuters Calais Initiative, to relatively unknown big players like the already very commercialized Expert System. 10 of the companies were from the US, 6 from Europe and 1 from South Korea.

We've been wanting to learn more about "under the radar" but commercialized semantic web companies ever since doing a briefing with Expert System a few months ago. We had never heard of the Italian company before, but they believe they already have they have a richer, deeper semantic index than anyone else online. They told us their database at the time contained 350k English words and 2.8m relationships between them. including geographic representations. They power Microsoft's spell checker and the Natural Language Processing (NLP) in the Blackberry. They also sell NLP software to the US military and Department of Homeland Security, which didn't seem like anything to brag about to us but presumably makes up a significant part of the $12 million+ in revenue they told Provost they made last year.

And some people say the Semantic Web only exists inside the laboratories of Web 3.0 eggheads!

Shortcomings of the Report

Provost writes that "the vendors this report have all the appearances of thriving, emerging technology companies and they have shown their readiness to cross borders, continents, and oceans to reach customers." You'd think they turned water into wine. Those are strong words for a study in which only 4 of 17 companies were willing to report their revenue and several hadn't launched products yet.

The logic here is sometimes pretty amazing.

The above examples [there were two - RWW] are just a brief sampling of the commercial success that the Semantic Web has been experiencing. In broad terms, it's easy to point out the longevity of many companies in this industry and use that as a proxy for commercial success [wow - RWW]. With more time (and space in this report), additional examples could be described but the most interesting prospect pertains to what the industry landscape will look like in twelve months. [hmmm...-RWW]

In fact, while Provost has glowingly positive things to about all the companies he surveyed, the absence of engagement with any of their shortcomings makes the report read more like marketing material than any objective take on what's supposed to be world-changing technology.

This is a Fun Read

The fact is, though, that Provost writes a great introduction to many companies working to sell software in a field still too widely believed to be ephemeral. The stories of each of the 17 companies profiled are fun to read and many of Provost's points of analysis are both intuitive and thought provoking. He says the sector is "on the cusp" of major penetration into existing markets currently served by non-semantic software.

Provost argues that the Semantic Web struggles to explain itself because the World Wide Web is so intensely visual and semantics are not. He says that reselling business partners in specific distribution channels are combining their domain knowledge with the science of the software developers to bring these tools to market. He tells a great, if unattributed, story about what Linked Data could mean to the banking industry.

We hadn't heard of several of the companies profiled in the report, and a handful of them had never been mentioned by the 34 semantic web specialist blogs we track, either.

There's something here for everyone. You can read the full report here.

What could possibly be bigger news than the supposed heart attack suffered by Apple CEO Steve Jobs? The fact that it's simply not true. The rumor which spread like wildfire across the internet this morning was based on a report from CNN's citizen journalism site, iReport.

According to citizen reporter, Johntw: "Steve Jobs was rushed to the ER just a few hours ago after suffering a major heart attack." Apple quickly squashed the story, claiming it to be untrue. Did citizen journalism just fail us? You bet it did.

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The "Story"

The report about Steve Jobs appeared on CNN's citizen journalism site, iReport this morning. It read as follows:

Steve Jobs was rushed to the ER just a few hours ago after suffering a major heart attack. I have an insider who tells me that paramedics were called after Steve claimed to be suffering from severe chest pains and shortness of breath. My source has opted to remain anonymous, but he is quite reliable. I haven't seen anything about this anywhere else yet, and as of right now, I have no further information, so I thought this would be a good place to start. If anyone else has more information, please share it.

Silicon Alley Insider then proceeded to follow up, making phone calls to Apple. They were able to reach Katie Cotton, Vice President of Worldwide Communications, who replied saying "It is not true."

This Is Trouble

The question was then raised: do false reports like this damage CNN's credibility? The answer is yes, absolutely. This particular report may even lead to an SEC investigation where CNN will be asked to provide an IP address for the user who posted the story.

The problem here stems from the fact that because CNN has obviously decided not to police or edit the iReport section of their web site, the section is left wide open to "reporters" who want to wreak a little havoc.

But who are these citizen journalists? And how easy is it to become one?

Apparently, it's as easy to become a citizen journalist on CNN as it is to sign up for a new web app from an internet startup, if not easier. The process involves nothing more than filling out a name, screen name, and email address. Adding a phone number is optional and only necessary if you want the story to be considered by CNN. There's a CAPTCHA to prevent bots and an email confirmation link, but thanks to disposable email addresses, those are practically a waste of time these days.

Above: The Registration Form - Congratulations, You're A Journalist!

While most citizen journalists take their responsibility seriously as reporters of actual news, it's apparent that with iReport, just as with any web site on the internet today, there is going to be someone who decides to have a little sick "fun" with it. Who is the reporter by the name of Johntw anyway? As far as we could tell, the only way to get in touch with the reporter is through iReport's built-in messaging system. We sent him an email asking him why he reported this story, but it remains unanswered. In our minds, we're already imagining an adolescent kid who's having a good laugh with their friends this morning over how they just "punked" CNN.

We're interested in seeing how will CNN respond to this muddying of their good name. Will they disassociate themselves a bit from iReport? Or will they just be happy for the pageviews it brought? And will this give pause to other news outlets thinking of launching citizen journalism sites of their own? It's very possible. In these tough economic times, news reports that affect how the markets move are taken very seriously. Had the timing of this report been different, Apple stock could have really suffered. Fortunately, the rebuttal today came out fast enough that it shouldn't have any long-term effects. Next time, we may not be so lucky.

This week we interviewed one of the founders of online music service last.fm, Richard "Mr Scrobble" Jones. We're running the interview in 3 parts, over 3 days. This is Part 3 about design and features; following on from Part 1 about last.fm and its competition and Part 2 about business models.

In this post we explore last.fm's feature set, how it compares to MySpace Music, and what we can expect to see from last.fm in the near future. Richard Jones also discusses how last.fm has managed to avoid the legal difficulties that have plagued Pandora.

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RWW: One of the enduring features of last.fm has been its mashups, based on your awesome Audioscrobbler database. RJ, what are a couple of your favorite recent last.fm mashups that you've seen (external apps or internal)?

RJ: Well, we liked the Last.fm/YouTube mashup Tim Bormans made so much that we hired him! Internally we've been working on multi-tag search which is available at our Playground, which allows you to search for music using multiple genres (folk + rock + gabba, etc); also on Playground we've been tweaking our Musical Soulmates app, which you could possibly consider the prototype for a future Last.fm dating service ;)

And of course, scrobbling continues to be an almost default setting for new music services now - from Hype Machine to Muxtape (RIP) to Blip.fm to the new version of VLC (which has 4 million downloads already since launch a couple of weeks ago), it seems like everything has to integrate scrobbling now. Great for us obviously, and great for our recommendations which will continue to improve as more people scrobble. People are scrobbling at a rate of 800 million times a month currently.

RWW: In terms of features, Pandora is similar to last.fm, in that both services have great recommendations and allow the user to discover new music. Both are streaming music services, yet it just seems to be Pandora - of all the 4 major services we've discussed so far - that has been having legislation issues. Can you clarify for our readers how last.fm has managed to avoid those sticky issues, when Pandora hasn't? I think many people are confused about that.

Last.fm is about more than just online radio. We've got millions of tracks available free-on-demand as well, and beyond that there's a massive social network element to the site. We also offer videos, the biggest events listings on the web (personalised to your taste), and our own audio and video content under the Last.fm/Presents banner. So the point is, online radio is only one of the things we do, so the legislation affects us only in one particular area of the Last.fm experience. As online radio is pretty much the single focus for Pandora, it understandably hits them harder.

The wider issue here, of course, is that royalty rates are high, and the debate around this needs to continue so we can reach a mutually beneficial and economically workable resolution. We don't want to see legitimate online broadcasters stifled by this - it's not good for music fans, artists or the wider music industry.

RWW: Lastly, one of the most interesting aspects of online music is its ability for new artists to be discovered. It's something MySpace has done well in the past, but we get the sense the perfect solution hasn't been found yet. As our own Marshall Kirkpatrick asked recently:

"How about a service that scans my iTunes library and my online listening history, determines my genres of interest and then never plays music from artists I've already listened to. Or makes sure to play some that I haven't."

Does last.fm have a feature like that coming up? ;-)

RJ: Do you think Myspace has done this well in the past? As you can tell from my reply to your first question [see Part 1], I would argue that Myspace has been a rather difficult site to navigate unless you're after popular stuff - and it's possibly going to be more of the same on Myspace Music, as the major labels jostle for frontpage real estate and push more indie/obscure music off the page.

Our recommendation system is being constantly refined to give music fans the best music discovery service on the web. I think we've got that covered. What's equally important is that these artists being discovered, if they're Long Tail or DIY, get the same kind of licensing and royalty breaks that more established artists get, which is why our Artist Royalty Program exists.

We've been doing this for 6 years, as I said, which is why it's kind of funny to be talking about this now because of Myspace Music. They're just catching up to free-on-demand after we pioneered the model almost a year ago. Now they've got to figure out how to make it easy to discover music that suits your taste (sharing playlists is one thing, but how do you find that music to share in the first place?), which we've been doing since 2002. After that, maybe they'll start paying unsigned artists. I would hope all this will come to Myspace Music at some point in the future - but it's happening on Last.fm now.

See also: Interview With Last.fm Founder Richard Jones: Part 1, The Competition and Part 2, Business Models

When Microsoft announced the launch of its Live Search Cashback rebate program, it quickly became the laughingstock of the tech blogosphere and this week's launch of Live SearchPerks definitely did not help. However, according to the latest data from Hitwise, Microsoft's Cashback promotion is actually working and is helping live.com to keep its search traffic stable, even as Google's market share is rising.

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Live Search Cashback works by giving users a certain amount of money back every time they search for an item on live.com and then buy it from a participating store.

In July, Live Search Cashback represented 3.75% of traffic to live.com, but by September 27, that number had grown to 6.29%. According to Hitwise, visitors to the Cashback site were more likely to be female (55% vs. 45%) and half were between 25 and 45 years old with an average income of under $100,000.

Sign of the Times?

As Hitwise also points out, part of this interest in the Cashback program might have to do with the current economic crisis in the U.S., where shoppers are more likely to start looking for bargains and cash back programs.

CERN today officially unveiled the massive computer network that will crunch the enormous amount of data coming from CERN's Large Hadron Collider (LHC). CERN expects that the LHC will produce around 15 petabytes of data every year. While the LHC was in its planning stages, CERN's IT department decided that the only realistic way to handle this amount of data would be by relying on the then still novel idea of grid computing. CERN's grid consists of 100,000 processors at 140 scientific institutions in 33 countries.

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How to Crunch 15 Petabytes of Data?

As Science reported last month (subscription required), CERN's IT department quickly realized that no known data center could handle the amount of information the LHC would create. It was not even clear that Geneva's power grid could supply the energy necessary to run this massive data center. In addition, most of the money for the LHC project was going toward the collider itself, so that very little funding was left for the actual computing resources.

In order to distribute this data, CERN relies on dedicated 10Gbit/s fiber-optic lines that connect CERN with the 11 Tier-1 data centers on the grid. The Tier-1 data centers (pdf) will do some processing, but will also function as the main archives for the LHC data. These Tier-1 centers then farm out a large part of the actual data crunching to the Tier-2 data centers spread around the world. The Tier-2 centers are connected to the grid via regular, public Internet connections.

Large Hadron Collider @ Home

While grid computing has been around for quite a while now and has been implemented successfully on the public Internet by projects like SETI@home or Folding@home, CERN's grid is most likely the largest and most powerful grid established for scientific research so far.

CERN has also set up a project similar to Folding@home called (somewhat unimaginatively) LHC@home, which, thanks to the current shut-down of th