Elise Craig of Xconomy recently shared how PokitDok, helmed by CEO Lisa Maki, is helping patients connect the dots of a fragmented health care system. Craig writes, “Maki and co-founder and chief technology officer Ted Tanner Jr. set out to create a resource consumers could consult to find unbiased information about their health care problems and options. The cofounders built PokitDok, an online platform that would help consumers make informed choices about their healthcare. Users can search for a particular ailment, see what kinds of treatments others have opted for, search through health care providers who have expertise in a given area, contact them directly, and compare treatment prices. Physicians and alternative health professionals can post their information, specialties, and even discounts to help consumers find what they’re looking for.” Read more

Semantic Technology & Business Conference Tackles the Restructuring of Knowledge

  Keynote speaker David Weinberger,  senior researcher at Harvard Berkman Center for Internet & Society, will explore the networking of knowledge in science and education at Semantic Technology & Business Conference, October 15-17 in New York City. His session, The Restructuring of Knowledge, explores how Big Data will help our understanding keep up with our knowledge. Network with fellow linked and big data specialists, information architects, and VCs, while learning from the most forward-thinking minds in technology, finance, media, government, and business. Other featured sessions include Smart Financial Data, Semantic Technology for Enterprise Architects, Modeling Ontologies for Media, and more.

• Save $200 from onsite prices when you register now.
• View the full conference program here.

Qualcomm Research is looking for an Innovative Software Engineer in San Diego, CA. According to the post, “Qualcomm Research is working on strategic projects for the development of new technologies that will be commercialized in near future. We do research in a wide range of areas such as the Internet of Things, Neuromorphic Computing, Augmented Reality, Context-aware Computing, Multimedia streaming, Low-power networks, Network Interface Selection, WWAN and Next-generation Wi-Fi. We seek highly innovative and motivated engineers who can get things done. You will be working in a team of multi-disciplined engineers in a fast-paced, intellectually challenging work environment. Successful applicants will be creative, enthusiastic innovators who are equally comfortable with researching new technologies and implementing code that would go into commercial devices.” Read more

Gil Elbaz has written an article for TechCrunch in which he shares his take on emerging data markets: “The term data market brings to mind a traditional structure in which vendors sell data for money. Indeed, this form of market is on the rise with companies large and small jumping in. Think of Azure Data Marketplace (Microsoft), data.com (Salesforce.com), InfoChimps.com, and DataMarket.com. While this model allows organizations to acquire valuable data, the term is evolving to include a variety of forms, each with varying degrees of adoption success. At the heart of it, data markets enable organizations to access data in new ways, where the currency does not only have to be money, but can be in the form of data or insight.” Read more

ADmantX has released the findings of a new study “conducted on the top 10 US newspapers by simulating A/B testing using keyword targeting/semantic targeting on 20,000 pages from each publication. The analysis noted an average increase in ad reach up to 73% and an average increase in ad lift up to 48% using semantic targeting. Optimizing the match between content and ad is a fundamental step in making the economics of digital advertising work for buyer, seller and consumer.” Read more

Sprylogics International has had an interesting year. The company recently shared an update of some of the most significant developments: “The Company has focused heavily in Research and Development over the past year related to the core semantic ‘Answer Engine’ technology as well as the Liquid Messaging Mobile Application and SDK. As the products approach market readiness, the Company has begun showcasing the products to both sophisticated industry insiders, as well as casual users.  We are extremely encouraged with the reception.” Read more

Sapienza University of Rome is looking for a Post Doctoral Research Fellow in Rome, Italy. The post states, “One position of POSTDOCTORAL RESEARCH FELLOW in Natural Language Processing is open in the Department of Computer Science of the Sapienza University of Rome, with a specific focus on statistical machine translation for Asian languages. The position is part of a 5-year ERC Starting Grant on multilingual Word Sense Disambiguation funded by the European Research Council (ERC) and headed by Prof. Roberto Navigli (see http://lcl.uniroma1.it/multijedi for details). The successful candidate will participate in a frontier research project and will work in the stimulating environment of a leading and highly-active research team comprising 2 faculty members, 2 post-docs and 6 Ph.D. students.” Read more

Dan Ritter reports, “Google has grown in the spotlight recently. The company pushed against record highs on September 25 and is looking particularly good in the wake of Apple’s iOS 6 maps fiasco. The two tech giants have been exchanging blows for a while, and Google’s next stab is directed at Siri, as it prepares to launch Google Now. Siri is well known as Apple’s ‘sassy assistant.’ Google Now won’t come with any personality more exciting than HAL 9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey, but it might be just as smart. Instead of sourcing information from third parties like Yelp, it will use Google’s semantic-search feature, Knowledge Graph. Google Now will also combine the company’s legendary data parsing with its advanced artificial intelligence to predict what someone will ask, and answer it ahead of time.” Read more

Expert System recently announced, “ING DIRECT, the world’s largest online bank, has chosen its semantic software to optimize search and information retrieval on its customer portal atwww.ingdirect.it. Launched in June 2012, the new search portal helps customers quickly find the content they need, resulting in a 46% reduction in call center requests. The advanced semantic engine developed for ING DIRECT is a combination of two powerful semantic products: Cogito Search Explore Engine for semantic search and analysis, and Cogito Answers for natural language processing. Together, they bring a complete semantic and linguistic understanding to customer queries, taking into account variations in language such as slang or abbreviations, and result in the effective and immediate retrieval of answers to online requests.” Read more

SemanticWeb.com is happy to announce that Andrew Nicklin, manager of New York City’s Open Data portal, and best-selling author David Weinberger will both deliver keynote speeches at this month’s SemTechBiz conference. The Semantic Technology and Business Conference will take place October 15-17 in New York City. Nicklin and Weinberger will deliver their highly anticipated keynotes amidst a full program of presentations covering such topics as Big Data, open government, business, the financial sector, publishing, and health care.

New York – The Digital City of the Future by Andrew Nicklin, Office of Strategic Technology and Development – NYC DoITT

New York City is leading numerous technology and entrepreneurially-driven initiatives, from the Mayor’s “Digital City of the Future” vision, to the Open Data Law, and the new CornellNYC Tech campus on Roosevelt Island. NYC intends to be the first “City in the Linked Open Data cloud.” This presentation sets the scene for the conference by putting all of these plans into context, and how the industries of New York can participate in this quintessentially data-driven future.

Read more

VIVO, a semantic information representation system that enables collaboration among scientists across all disciplines, has had a busy summer: The open source project to facilitate the advancement of research and discovery by integrating information about scholars, their activities, and outputs, gained a more permanent home in the DuraSpace Incubator, ensuring a way to continue activities after its NIH grant continuation year ran out. It saw the publication of VIVO: A Semantic Approach to Scholarly Networking and Discovery. And Northwestern University brought its researchers together in a single hub called Northwestern Scholars, an implementation of Elsevier’s SciVal Experts research networking tool (see our story here).

The future is looking pretty bright, too. “We are very interested in funding, research resources, scholarly works, scholars and data sets,” says Mike Conlon, primary investigator of the VIVO project. “As the world moves forward, these things are all inter-related, but that’s been very blurry, especially to organizations and institutions.” Funding agencies, for example, want to know what work was produced as a result of its grants to a major center. It no longer is just a question of who wrote a paper, but who funded it, what tools were behind it, and how was the data produced, and how all these things inter-relate in a scholarly data system.

“Connecting these things becomes the work of the future,” says Conlon.

Read more