Linked Data
A semantic journey

A semantic journey

Earlier this week, Gigaom announced their latest event; Structure Intelligence. “In the past year we’ve seen massive growth in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and deep learning. Our own Derrick Harris has been covering this area for years and we have decided it’s time to give this rapidly growing area a platform (and conference) of its own.”...
How to Lie with Data

How to Lie with Data

Back in the early Nineties, I was working on a Ph.D applying a tool called a Geographic Information System (GIS) to the challenge of modelling archaeological deposits under cities. For those of us worrying about these things, Mark Monmonier‘s then-newly published first edition of How to Lie with Maps was required reading. It wasn’t so much a handbook...
To Dublin, in search of evidence

To Dublin, in search of evidence

I travelled to Ireland last week, to attend the second meeting of the European Data Forum (EDF). The EDF provided travel support for my trip, and I am grateful to them for that. I was searching for evidence of ways in which smart use of data is having a transformative effect upon European businesses. Although some...
Doing the DataBeat

Doing the DataBeat

For the past two years, Ben Kepes and I have helped the team at VentureBeat assemble the programme for their annual Cloud Computing event, CloudBeat. It looks as though we may end up doing something similar with them this year, as CloudBeat moves from Redwood City to downtown San Francisco, and from November to September....
Survey: How open is your data?

Survey: How open is your data?

Back in 2006 as we rolled out the first public draft of the Talis Community Licence, the world of data licensing seemed a simple place. Today, the Open Knowledge Foundation‘s Data Hub contains 3,888 data sets, many of which are explicitly licensed with respect to the Open Definition. But many are still not explicitly licensed. Over at...
Thinking about Data Gravity

Thinking about Data Gravity

Dave McCrory introduced his idea of Data Gravity with a blog post back in 2010. The core idea was — and is — interesting, and got some traction from sites like ReadWriteWeb, ZDNet and GigaOM. More recently, Data Gravity featured in this year’s EMC World keynote.  But beyond the observation that large or valuable agglomerations of data...

Data Market Chat: Leigh Dodds discusses Kasabi

Kasabi sees its role very much as an enabler of aggregation. Rather than focusing, as some data markets do, on simply providing access to data sets, Kasabi is betting on the power of being able to combine and recombine data in compelling new ways. Hidden under the hood, Talis’ platform technology leverages the potential of...

A conversation with Richard Wallis, an experiment, and a survey

Richard Wallis left Talis (my former employer) last month, and has set up as a consultant at DataLiberate. In this short podcast, Richard shares some of his thoughts on data, semantics, and ‘the power of the link.’ Our conversation is also an excuse for an experiment. I have been producing audio-only podcasts here and elsewhere...

CloudCamp London: the Big Data Special

The CloudCamp unconference returned to London for the 14th time this evening, regaling a capacity crowd in the Crypt below Clerkenwell’s St James Church with several hours of discussion and debate on the somewhat elusive topic of ‘Big Data’. Rather rough notes of the proceedings follow, after the break.

Top Level Domain for data answers the wrong question

British-born computer scientist Stephen Wolfram sees ongoing efforts to extend the Internet’s top-level domains (TLDs) beyond the familiar .com, .org, .uk etc as an opportunity to raise the profile of machine-readable data. In a blog post published yesterday, he argues that a new .data domain would increase “exposure of data on the internet—and [provide] added impetus for...

June is San Francisco month

For real-world applications of Linked Data and the Semantic Web, the long-running Semantic Technology Conference is hard to beat. For getting a real handle on the Cloud Computing landscape, GigaOM‘s Structure Conference is also a leading light. Working across both areas as I do, these events tend to figure prominently in my calendar for the...

Trust, Big Data, Semantics, Data Marketplaces, and More Trust

I’ve had a few posts published over the weekend, picking up some things I have written about before. These are; My latest monthly column on SemanticWeb.com; Big Data Presents a Big Opportunity? My latest weekly wrap-up on GigaOMPro; Rosslyn Analytics, Microsoft Finding Value in Data Aggregation The teaser piece on GigaOM’s public Cloud site; In...