Semantics at the New York Times

June 25, 2009 Leave a Comment

Who says the Semantic Web exists only in the minds of academics? Last week, at the closing keynote of the Semantic Technology conference, Rob Larson and Evan Sandhaus of the New York Times unveiled their plans of embracing the Semantic Web by releasing their corpus in the form of Linked Data. The vast amount of data owned by the New York Times will be a major addition to the rapidly growing Linked Data map. Larson pointed out:

It’s been fundamental to what we do for a long time. We feel we’re good at it, but our content is an island… This is wholly consistent with our open strategy… to facilitate access to slices of our data for those who want to include it in their applications.

Watch Larson’s announcement:

Filed under Semantic Web Tagged with , , , , ,

Raw Data Now in the UK

June 20, 2009 1 Comment

Good news from the Raw Data Now front. Tim Berners-Lee has been asked by Gordon Brown to help open up access to government data in the UK. Let’s hope this is not just a publicity stunt to boost Mr Brown’s plummeting popularity, but a true effort in creating a more transparent government. If this works, it should point more governments towards this direction.

In the meantime, critics in the UK point out the great obstacles such an attempt will stumble upon. BBC technology correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones comments:

I fear Sir Tim may be in for a bruising few months, as he tries to convince Sir Humphrey et al to let it all hang out.

Clearly, a lot has to change in the idiosyncrasy of state officials for Sir Tim’s vision to fully come to life, but at least he’s been given this chance. Let’s just see how this goes…

Filed under Semantic Web Tagged with , , , , ,

I am in control

June 14, 2009 Leave a Comment

I’m not much into gaming consoles, but we are talking about a real breakthrough here. Last week at E3, Microsoft unveiled a revolutionary controller for the Xbox 360 console: the human body! Project Natal aims in abolishing all conventional game controllers and replacing them with… nothing! The system uses sophisticated algorithms to capture human motion and translate it in real time into input for the console. The software actually does a lot more than that: it also recognises faces, voices, and human expressions. Seems like it comes out of a sci-fi movie, but it’s real:

Filed under Fun, Technology/Internet Tagged with , , , , ,