Thomson Reuters bootstraps Semantic Web of Linked Data with SemanticProxy

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Congrats OpenCalais and how semantic is the produced linked data?

This is quite a landmark. I've used the demo and it's quite good already in its "reverse Google" function. With URIs on top it's gonna rock. The value of recognizing people, companies, places etc... and making those "URIzable" is immense.

Unreasonably taking this one step further, one thing I'll look forward to understanding better is how much of the extraction is actually "semantic" as opposed to "linked data". There is a tendency to use both terms interchangeably when really they are different. Linked data based on poor extraction methods would be poor semantic data, linked or not linked.
OpenCalais seems to nicely recognize "micro-"entities like names, locations, dates, but it still "appears" to use a statistical engine that picks keywords in the text rather than getting down to semantics and using that understanding to propose relevant entities (please right my wrong if I'm mistaken). My question for Thomas Tague: how much farther do you anticipate OpenCalais/Semantic Proxy to be able to go beyond those recognizable entities, and recognize higher-level concepts, i.e. what's the text is about, even if it is not stated black-on-white?

And beyond that, is OpenCalais based on RDF, and how much is the output "RDFized" as well. You mention the output is RDF, but how much do you actually make use of the power of triples by including smart predicates? Are currently these predicates mainly the verb "BE", as in "Paris Hilton" IS a person, Paris IS a city, 1945 IS a date etc...?

What I'm trying to assess is the degree of both built-in and produced semantics. As a disclaimer I haven't digged into OpenCalais's technical guides and FAQs in a long time, so feel free to point us to them. From a pure marketing standpoint, adding some quick popularization information to the demo wouldn't hurt and certainly expand the audience. I know and agree with Thomas Tague's mantra "if you have to explain it, I don't want it", but in that case a little explanation will make the rest of us want it even more

Posted by: gregboutin   Posted on: 09/24/08  (Edited: 09/24/2008 @ 06:36) You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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