Re: "State of the Semantic Web" - personal opinions?

Hi Ioachim,
I just read through your post. I think it is really great and shows the
promise of the semantic web as a set of technologies. I am curious about
your relation to EU. It seems you are doing something that has great
potential, but out side of any EU framework or funding?
I think the issue here is that of focus on solutions, I'm impressed.
Adam

2008/7/2 Ioachim Drugus <sw@semanticsoft.net>:

>
> Hi Danny,
>
> Will share about my company SemanticSoft, Inc tools. We finally started
> treating SemanticWeb primarily as a "world wide data bus", as Tim put it.
> Our second vision-shift was that SemanticWeb technologies should move
> "behind the scenes", so that the users see a "classic UI" which does not
> require knowledge of standards. A good return on investments can be obtained
> from "regular" tools equipped with SemanticWeb technologies "in the
> background" to make the tools interoperable, flexible and mobile. I started
> treating SemanticWeb as value-added "regular" software.
>
> We are currently changing our tools described here
> http://www.semanticsoft.net/semanticwebtools.html towards by hiding
> SemanticWeb behind a customary UI.  You can see the *current* versions by
> clicking "Try" against a tool on our site - one standalone tool can be
> downloaded, with other two web based tools you get from the site into our
> servers where you can do work specific to them.
>
> *SemanticServer* is a "gateway" to SemanticWeb. If you click on Try, you
> get to a "desktop" with a Start button in corner like in Windows. But you
> are on the web and you can manage resources and their metadata in any
> vocabulary. The Help file (65 pages) of "Start button" explains what you can
> do in this space. You can add new "hosts" to manage resources in
> repositories on other instances of SemanticServer, or any other repositories
> compliant with JCR, Java Content Repository, specification JSR-170. We chose
> JCR because this appears to be the only standard for content repositories
> for CMSs. You can search resources by our built-in  *visual* SPARQL engine.
> You can also search *inside* some resources - the server stores resources
> which are not blobs in such a manner that it can "see" inside them. This
> tool could be used in corporate space, BUT I think, like many other tools on
> SemanticWeb, which require knowledge of the standards it will be *not* be
> used. With next version we hide SemanticWeb technologies to make out of it a
> "regular" but intelligent tool.
>
> Our new tool *ResourceDescriptor* will be used both as built in
> SemanticServer, or as a separate tool for those who want to use it outside
> JCR "space".  ResourceDescriptor can be treated as an "intelligent client"
> which has wizards so that a user without any knowledge of Semantic Web can
> write any description or make a  SPARQL query. When this tool is released
> and built into SemanticServer, I think, we get be a tool for "corporate
> space", or "content business" like eBay,  Amazon.com, etc.
>
> The version "in works" of  *SemanticStudio*, current version of which you
> can see the web site, will also have a "Human Interface" like in
> ResourceDescriptor. In the autumn it will have an "object oriented"
> graphical UI like in Rationale Rose. All other features remain as described
> on our site. When next version of S-Studio is ready, it can be used also by
> people who do not know the standards. When the graphic mode will be ready
> the people using UML will be able to work in an environment almost familiar,
> but will save the project as an ontology.
>
> "Chameleon" project illustrates our idea of a "semantic" web site. It will
> be a CMS, but will import/export web content formatted in SemanticWeb
> standards, and this will allow to exchange web content with other instances
> of Chameleon or other tools which can work with OWL-formatted web content.
> You will be able to save a compartment (many linked pages and users,
> usergroups, and their access rights) of a site and send it to another
> location where you can import it into a location so that the pages are
> automatically built, with or without users/usergroups/accessRights, etc.
>  Currently, Chameleon is a regular CMS and you can get to it and play
> directly from our site. Unfortunately we don't have money to complete, and
> we stopped implementation of this idea until better times. I just wanted to
> share our idea a "semantic site".
>
>
>> * Money! What's the current status of funding for semweb research in
>> academia? Inside big corps? Gov. orgs? Funding from VCs etc?
>>
> In Moldova, where we are located, there is little of this :-). We finance
> our SemanticWeb development from small profit from "classic" software they
> order to us. Big foreign corps are outsourcing to Moldova only development
> of "classic" software. Now we are waiting for a big corp which would like to
> build SemanticWeb tools cheaper...
>
>>
>> * What's the range of application of RDF like nowadays? (Obscure examples
>> would be nice)
>>
> 1. *Data reconciliation* is the strength of RDF and no other standard can
> compete on this. Data coming from different sources in different formats
> (and even different media types) can be reconciled by conversion to RDF. The
> biggest impact would be on B2B. I am coming to SemanticWeb from EDI - the
> "backbone of e-commerce". The situation in B2B is like this - businesses
> doing B2B are grouped in a couple dozen "closed worlds" each governed by one
> standard. To exchange data between such worlds is almost impossible, because
> each standard is complex and standard-to-standard conversions are hard to
> implement. If nothing is done, the EDI will become next "millennium bug".
> There is a rather simple idea how to reconcile the standards based on RDF,
> but I will not share it here since it would take some technical details.
>
> 2. In sound recognition, the methods based on physical characteristics are
> not sufficient even for music/speech discrimination in soundtrack. Neural
> networks raised the quality close to "speech recognition", but without
> continual "guesswork" and "anticipation" the quality is still low. There are
> strong relationships between RDF graphs and neural networks (roughly, a
> logical "pattern" in speech is a RDF graph).  Therefore RDF can serve as the
> *logical layer* in speech recognition. Intellectual Property domain is the
> main investor in this area and IP in entertainment industry probably is
> among largest. They would value a program to get some control over millions
> of Radio/TV channels, in order to protect IP of pieces of music, films, etc.
> Also, Radio/TV pays big money for "simple" programs of music/speech
> discrimination needed for statistics on radio/TV. I am sure that protection
> of IP and statistics/planning in Radio/TV will be next great application of
> RDF. We gave good thought to this, because some of our developers formerly
> worked on such a program for TV and now they see how they could have done
> this work better, if they knew  RDF at that time. Now we are looking for
> such an order to try this technology.
>
>> * Has the role of the W3C changed in this context over the past few years?
>>
> The W3C's help on SemanticWeb to companies is really great. I wonder how
> the SemanticWeb activities leads manage to read and reply in detail even to
> a message addressed personally. I believe,  W3C changed from a standards
> organization to also a *dev lead* on large scale projects. But there is also
> a dark side to this - now investors are asking why you (W3C) did not yet
> complete the project :-)
>
>>
>> * Slightly tangential - where do you see social networking going?
>> (Possibilities off the top of my head - unification of services; general
>> loss of interest through another fad coming along; descent into the Web
>> infrastructure) - supplemental: assume the fad prognosis - what'll be next?
>>
> I believe, *descent into the Web infrastructure* is the correct path to
> take
>
>>
>> * Not unrelated, there's a fair bit of similarity between OpenID Attribute
>> Exchange and RDF, as well as what appears to be a parallel stack to the
>> (Semantic) Web with XRDS/XRI/XDI etc. Is independent invention of this
>> nature a good thing or not?
>> (My mouth remains firmly shut :-)
>>
>>  I think, everything fits or can be adjusted to fit into URI as a
> *scheme*.  I believe, a good thing are only inventions which fit in the
> SemanticWeb project stack.
>
>>
>> * Jim Hendler's question: where are the agents?
>>
>
> Suppose we complete our Chameleon "semantic site" and it saves itself into
> a file and sends it to other compliant location, and in the file there are
> "new" users with access rights, then this content get into other sites with
> "controlled access"... there are lots of scenarios which make such agents
> worse than global warming.
>
> I believe in direction of intelligent agents  lies the "semantic virtual
> machine" which I outlined in my article "A Wholebrain Approach to the Web"
> at "Web Intelligence - Intelligent Agent Technologies", Silicon Valley, Nov
> 2-5.
> When SemanticSoft become richer :-), we are planning to implement this.
>
> Ioachim Drugus, Ph.D
> Main Architect,
> SemanticSoft, Inc
> http://www.semanticsoft.net
>
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