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

Hi Adam,

With a EU framework or  funding we would have done our tools 
*full-featured* and *large scaled*. But Moldova, where we are located, 
is not yet member of EU - it must be very hard for us to get into EU 
projects.
Three years ago, with help from students, I started a "pet" project - to 
implement in software a model of brain based on an old idea (which goes 
back two decades when I did research on mathematical logics for Soviet 
space program). Only incidentally I heard about SemanticWeb and found a 
"strange" similarity between our "data model" and that of SemanticWeb. 
It looked like W3C developed the standards specifically to embed our 
"artificial brain" into Web. In march 2007 we set up our company and did 
our current tools rather as "excercises" on the standards. Only last 
month we started working in a direction which, I think,  will show the 
real strength of SemanticWeb technologies.
The next versions of our tools will be pretty different from these. At 
some time, we plan to return to building a "brain" for SemanticWeb - a 
semantic virtual machine.

But you message reminds me, that it is very hard to move further as a 
"garage company". I would appreciate a lot if you, or anybody reading 
this, can suggest where to look for some funding

Ioachim
www.semanticsoft.net


adasal wrote:
> 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 
> <mailto: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
>
>
>
>
>
>

Received on Thursday, 10 July 2008 23:56:07 UTC