Mar
02
Semantics Rules, Keywords Drool
Filed Under (Events) by L.Scagliarini on 02-03-2009
The Girona airport, from where I will fly back to Italy, is surrounded by cranes, new parking lots and maybe, new terminals in construction. The summer-like weather, despite that it is only February, makes you feel like, at least this part of Spain, is a small Doha. It’s not immediately clear to tourists and business people traveling like me, who choose this airport for budget reasons (note for VC interested in investing in Expert System: yes, we are budget sensitive), whether the constructions had started during the economic boom and then slowed down, or the new infrastructures were already planned to be ready after what is now known as the Great Depression II. It doesn’t matter. To those who see the glass half-full, they are still icons of a better future to come. Images that cheer up even someone who has just attended the Mobile World Congress of Barcelona, and heard for three days complaints like “it was better last year”, “the Nokia party two years ago was something different”, “at this point the sector is mature”.
It was my first experience at the Congress, so I can’t make any comparisons. But my impression was of a lively event, with significant investments made by manufacturers, and, as usual, a frantic attention of the media. Being more familiar with events dedicated to innovative software, I immediately noticed that the crowd was made up by a large majority of men in dark suits and ties, that many booths had hostesses like it was still the ‘80s fair stands, and by the fact that the ghost of Apple dominated the scene. The ghost showed up on the desktop of the new smartphones launched by the competitors  (in the form of iPhone-like small squares lined up in rows and inevitably, activated with a touch of the screen), in the names chosen by the manufacturers and operators to launch new services (as reported by TechCrunch), and as hope for the many start-ups that had developed potentially revolutionary applications but had clashed with a market still controlled by the mobile operators and therefore slowing down the adoption of the new applications, practically preventing the possibility to gather quick success and, if needed, more simply, a fast feedback from the market.
As Thomas Clayton, CEO of Bubble Motion, explained to the crowd attending the Business Services seminar, the market for mobile applications is far more complex than the Internet application market. “We need to develop our applications for different operative systems, whose number is constantly increasing (iPhone, Android, etc.), but, at the same time, we don’t have the opportunity, which for example Facebook or LinkedIn have, to have hundreds of small releases every year, that are very useful to evaluate, in real time, the features users appreciate most. All this prevents innovation and makes it difficult for new companies like ours, to prosper.”
I am new to the mobile sector. As a consumer or business user, I am happy with my Blackberry, and I rarely use the photo camera. I started to follow this sector more carefully in the last 18 months, since we, at Expert System, realized that the quality provided by an effective natural language search engine like ours, in particular its precision or the capability to extract accurately only the relevant information, could stand out more on the screen of a mobile phone, than on the monitor of a computer.  Nevertheless, it seems clear to me that we are at a turning point in the market: with the opening of the wave of new application stores like Nokia’s and Microsoft’s, mirrored to Apple’s (thank you Steve), innovation will be boosted, and the control of operators will inevitably diminish.
During my three days in Barcelona, I spent a lot of time visiting the booths of companies, very often no more than start-ups developing new applications for mobile advertising. Like many others, I believe this market will increase dramatically in the next few years. Yet their success is not to be taken for granted and it will depend on their capability to effectively consider the most significant difference between a smartphone and a laptop. The relationship between a consumer and a smartphone is more intimate compared to the one with a laptop. I realize this fact very often, especially during my much-too-frequent business trips. While my laptop is switched off at some point, perhaps late at night, my BlackBerry is always there, next to me, and when the red light flashes, the temptation to check who’s writing, even right before going to sleep, is very strong. You could argue that this is actually an addiction problem. True, but as it is a common situation, understanding the effect of this sad personal condition is relevant to analyzing the critical factors for the success of mobile advertising:-)
When a user surfs the web on a computer, he or she is more disposed to accept and be reached by irrelevant ads. Obviously, in the next months also Internet advertising will have to move to systems able to improve their relevancy (see our Cogito Semantic Advertiser), to make advertising truly effective. Yet, the failure of the present systems in providing appropriate messages is more tolerable on computers than on smartphones. When using these devices, the user’s patience has a lower limit: the space on the screen is limited, therefore the presence of useless information is more irritating. In addition, as the device is more personal, the user is less disposed in general to be reached by irrelevant messages. However, this is also why the mobile phone can become the holy grail of direct marketing. But in order to become relevant and therefore successful, mobile advertising will have to correctly consider two variables. The first is the easiest to understand, and in fact it is already monopolizing the discussion on the subject: I’m talking about geographic reference. The second, more difficult, is the ability to profile effectively the user in any moment in time. Today this aspect is considered only in relation to the demographic data gathered by the operator. But demographic data alone are not enough: this second variable is crucial. For example, knowing that Simon is 45 years old, lives in London and earns 60K pounds per year is not enough to identify the kind of advertising information to be sent to him today. The dynamic aspects of the profile are far more relevant. For example as it is important to know that today Simon is in Berlin, it is also important (and maybe even more) to know that lately Simon is interested in modern furnishing, because he constantly accesses contents of this kind and often shares information on this subject. Semantic technology can be extremely useful especially for this second dimension of user profiling, because it can obtain relevant results in real time. And this is why I believe that semantics will surely be pervasive for on-line and mobile advertising in the future.
Another aspect of my attendance to the Barcelona event is that I’m returning to Italy with a Global Mobile Award in my suitcase. Cogito Answers won it for best technology for customer care. I believe this award, unexpected since we are new in the sector, proves that semantic technologies can also become extremely important in the development of a wide range of mobile applications. During my acceptance speech (I like to think I stole the audience away from Kevin Spacey, who was speaking  in the next room), I highlighted how the semantic technology applications for customer care are only the tip of the iceberg of the value that this technology can offer to companies. In fact, I believe that semantics will be fundamental to enable the development of applications for smartphones. Semantics makes, in general, the access to information easier and more effective (from tourist guides and user’s manuals, to customers and sales prospects data, from inventory data to reviews of the latest U2 or James Morrison CDs.) Thus, it helps employees and customers to receive precisely only relevant information at the right moment, and above all, enables new ways of interaction between companies and customers.
The success at the Global Mobile Awards proves that Expert System is determined to play a relevant role in this upcoming revolution. It would be nice to fly back to GMA in a couple of years and see less grey suits. It would be a sign of things changing, just as the CEO of a start-up said to me: “Maybe the place will still be Barcelona, but with less grey suits, or maybe the men in grey suits will remain here, while those making real innovation will meet in some other beautiful town, coming from any side of the world.”
And, I would add… that people will no longer ask in which country a winning technology was developed: good technology can be developed everywhere, the “world is flat” now, as we all know.
Oct
15
Companies Think Semantic Thoughts
Filed Under (Events) by B.Aker on 15-10-2008

 

In a recent web seminar that we participated organized by Project 10X some 260 registered attendees submitted questions prior to the event.  I semantically processed these questions (sometimes called “eating your own dog food” – imagine that!) looking for common themes and concerns.

 

In reviewing the outcome here is what I found; 

1.         Case Studies and ROI.  People learn best with storytelling and proof points embodied by Return on Investment.  So it should be no surprise that this tops the list of questions and concerns.  These stories help convince funders, provide guidance for technical planning, and show feasibility.  Yet this also shows a level of understanding of the technology by the participants.  In other words they are convinced of the basic value parameters of semantic technologies and have come to believe they can be deployed with good outcomes within their organizations but need help to find the right place to start, the expected timelines, and how to sell the capabilities and outcomes to upper management.   At Expert System we have over 100 implementations in the last 3 years alone and can confirm this concern meets with our experience.

 

2.         Technical Integration Points.  Here attendees concerns are about how to make semantics live with or interact with existing applications, data sets, and search products.  Here I sense the need to make existing products pay a bit longer for their sunk cost and not to tear things out wholesale and start over.  The good news is that semantic technology is intended to play this exact role by providing new insight into information where ever they currently live.  9 out of 10 customers ask us for a SAAS implementation with a front end user interface that already exists.

 

3.         Semantic Networks.  This is a real surprise to us but pleasantly so.  While our technology relies heavily on a semantic network, sometimes called ontology, it is not always the case that other providers use this method to unlock the meaning of text.  Some use statistical approaches, others heuristics and still others something called latent semantic processing.  These other approaches tend to sound quite scientific but in reality are short cuts that prove to be less than sufficient for industry strength precision and recall.  Semantic Networks are hard to produce and they take time.  But the investment pays off.  They become a knowledge representation of a domain of knowledge.  When done thoroughly and properly can increase the precision and recall of the processing greatly.  Many networks are specific to a branch of science or hold deep technical knowledge representations.  Our semantic network, on the other hand, is of the common language, covering all topics, all words, all concepts and the connections between them.  This means it can be applied to any domain.

 

4.         W3C standards are confusing.  When we read the comments its clear there are too many acronyms and to many standards.  More concerning, the standards themselves seem to be the solution to semantics.  It is as if many seem to think the standards provide the inference, the storage, the modeling, the interpretation and more that are core to semantics.  The reality is that standards are only a proposed common language for describing and exchanging the outcomes of semantic processing.

 

To sum up – the semantic web has come a long way in terms of showing value and laying down a base of understanding.  But as with any new technology, there is more to do.  All of us to do better in terms of explaining, simplifying and educating up and down the organizational decision chain.  Only when that is done will we be able to say “it’s baked”.

 

Where the categories mean the following;

 

Integration:  How to embed or use semantics behind the scenes of existing applications.

Mobility:  Get semantics to support mobile workers.

ROI Case Studies: Examples of successful, killer applications and their payback.

Semantic Nets:  Semantic networks or ontologies, what they are, when to use them, how to maintain them.

Standards:  W3C’s soup of acronyms and what they mean.

Timing: How fast will the technology and/or market progress.

Performance:  Can semantics run with everything else and keep up.

Databases: How and when to use databases with semantics.

Automatic:  Do semantic systems or tools learn on their own.  What about maintenance and support.

Selling:  How to make the case for funding to upper management.

NLP: how does semantics support natural language processing or computing.

Aug
13
Semantic Advertisement
Filed Under (Events) by L.Scagliarini on 13-08-2008

Last week I was invited to speak at Google TechTalks.

Google TechTalks are designed to disseminate a wide spectrum of views on topics ranging from Current Affairs, Science, Engineering, Humanities, Business, Law, Entertainment, Medicine, and the Arts. My presentation focused on how our semantic platform can help advertisers to publish targeted advertisements based on the actual meaning and sentiment of a page instead of keyword or general topics covered by the site.

 

More than 80 “Googlers” attended from different offices. It was a very interesting exchange considering how philosophically different is the approach of Google compared to Expert System’s.

 

After my presentation I had the opportunity to speak with several people. To my big surprise, for the first time I heard several people from Google saying that “at the end of the day what matters is the bottom line. If, to improve our bottom line in some situations, we need to move away sometimes from our “all automatic” approach then…. so be it”.  They were not executives but I think it was a sign.

 

Probably one of these situations is the area of contextual advertisement and Google, even with the most popular contextual advertisement platform currently available (adsense), strives to do better.

 

We think our semantic platform, even if still in beta, can significantly improve the quality of contextual advertisements and we will be collecting data in the next couple of months with partners that are already working with us. The advantage we have is that our platform is mature, performing and already used in the real world. I know several other start ups are tackling the issue. This will make for a very interesting time.

 

Below my presentation at Google TechTalks:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGygU_D-qqY

Jun
04
SemTech 2008
Filed Under (Events) by L.Scagliarini on 04-06-2008

The Semantic Technology Conference in San Jose is probably the most important in this sector.

I attended it for the second year in a row and this year the event had more than 1,100 people attending. It is a very important moment to understand the maturity level of the so called semantic technologies and in general, to evaluate if these technologies have started their run to become mainstream. Below you will find some random thoughts from a non-technical guy on trends and issues facilitating or preventing Semantic technologies from becoming mainstream.

The language used by vendors and experts is still too technical to engage and to excite business people. However, I noticed that more presentations included practical demo sessions showing how users interact with the applications or the solutions presented. This is a first step but what should happen next is to have presentations with clear ROI analysis, which was still missing from most presentations at this year’s event. I believe that, as usual, this is a turning point for any technology to show its strategic relevance for enterprises.

This year we were finally able to see the first real working semantic web applications. It was impressive to see the expectations that platforms like Twine, Freebase or Powerset have generated in the community. I am a Twine user so I am not surprised to see this interest but it is still nice to see this phenomenon. It is still early to say if these applications will be successful and drive a lot of traffic. Initial users seem to have split opinions. I have a conflict of interest because we are suppliers of Twine and the developer of www.askwiki.com which directly competes with Powerset  so I cannot express my opinion. However, we will all follow the efforts of these companies carefully because if they can deliver on the hype they have generated it will help to make Semantic Technologies pervasive.

The defense sector seems to be ahead of the enterprise and other government sectors in the adoption or at least interest in Semantic Technologies. Many of the most important defense-related system integrators, vendors or agencies attended the event. It’s difficult to say if this interest depends on the fact that the major wave of investment attributed to the defense sector allows it to have a much broader scope in monitoring new technologies or is it as I believe, due to the issues facing the defense sector (especially in monitoring open sources) that makes semantic technologies a perfect fit. In any case, this interest is of a great help to the industry.

Analysts of the major firms (like IDC and Gartner) seem not to have really caught up with the semantic wave. While most of these firms have started to cover semantic technologies in some shape or form, they don’t yet seem to be very engaged and comfortable with the topic. It came as no surprise that there were no analysts from these firms among the attendees of the event. I think it will be important for semantic technology companies to engage these firms in the future to present clearly their case if they want to find some advocates for a breakthrough in the business world.

There was a lot of talk about standards for the semantic web (OWL, RDF, etc.) as if simply having the standard makes a semantic web. People seem to forget that you need something to create applications to process the information and create output to the standards. In order to become mainstream and be really usable in real world applications, it is mandatory to have the tools to do the heavy lifting. This fact has always driven the development of our technology here at Expert System and this is why we have developed such a solid set of tools.

We believe that only when application development and customization tools are readily available, can the semantic web become a reality.