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In a recent post, I outlined a kind of layman's test for the Semantic Web . I wrote that the tipping point for the Semantic Web may be when anyone can query a set of data about a historical figure and get a long list of structured results in return. I called this 'The Modigliani Test,' after my favorite artist Amedeo Modigliani. To pass this test, you must deliver - using Linked Data - a comprehensive list of locations of original Modigliani art works around the world. A developer named Atanas Kiryakov gave the test a good crack. In doing so, he illustrated the core issues facing the Semantic Web currently. Sponsor The challenge of this test is that there isn't currently enough linked data on the Web about Modigliani. Also the key data in this test is the locations of art works, which probably isn't one of the main data fields for art data when it's uploaded to the Web (artist name and art work title would be the two key data fields). Kiryakov wasn't the only person who attempted to pass the test; and in fact his results mirror what can be found already on the popular open database Freebase . However Kiryakov, who is the Executive Director of Bulgarian Semantic Technology company Ontotext AD , did a great job of explaining his methodology and noting the issues he faced. The Current State of Linked Data Queries The result of Kiryakov's attempt is a relatively short list of locations of Modigliani paintings around the world. He admits that the list isn't long enough, but says that it's the closest he could get - not just because of the limited amount of data in the Linked Data Web, but because it's "hard to query and use today." Essentially Kiryakov created code to query a few known Linked Data sets, with custom manipulations to output location data. This is what he came up with: PREFIX fb: PREFIX dbpedia: PREFIX dbp-prop: PREFIX dbp-ont: PREFIX umbel-sc: PREFIX rdf: PREFIX ot: SELECT DISTINCT ?painting_l ?owner_l ?city_fb_con ?city_db_loc ?city_db_cit WHERE ?p fb:visual_art.artwork.artist dbpedia:Amedeo_Modigliani ; fb:visual_art.artwork.owners [ fb:visual_art.artwork_owner_relationship.owner ?ow ] ; ot:preferredLabel ?painting_l. ?ow ot:preferredLabel ?owner_l . OPTIONAL { ?ow fb:location.location.containedby [ ot:preferredLabel ?city_fb_con ] . OPTIONAL ?ow dbp-prop:location ?loc. ?loc rdf:type umbel-sc:City ; ot:preferredLabel ?city_db_loc OPTIONAL ?ow dbp-ont:city [ ot:preferredLabel ?city_db_cit ] } That query was executed in a tool called LDSR , a "Linked Data Semantic Repository" created by Kiryakov's company Ontotext. He calls LDSR a "search engine for part of the linked data web." Ontotext's LDSR includes data from existing Linked Data repositories such as DBPedia, Freebase, Geonames, UMBEL and Wordnet. Here is a screenshot of Atanas Kiryakov's attempt to pass the Modigliani Test. He spent over an hour formulating the code used to generate this result. As you can see, the resulting list was just 8 items long and most of the locations are in major U.S. cities. This falls well short of a comprehensive list of Modigliani art work locations. For example, there's no data about Modigliani paintings in Europe - where Modigliani lived all his life. Other Sources of Modiglidata Kiryakov wrote that most of the data returned in the Modigliani example came from Freebase . Indeed, as RWW commenter Brian Karlak pointed out in our original post, you can get much the same result within Freebase itself . Another commenter, Michael, pointed to a non-technical results page . Kiryakov's result has a little more data, but not much more. However the point of Kiryakov's attempt and blog post was to point out the difficulty of passing the Modigliani Test right now. He noted that "getting useful information from LOD [Linked Open Data] quite often requires a lot of efforts to analyze and post-process them in order to get reasonable answers to structured queries." In other words, it's much more than just inputting a natural language query (note that the Freebase example was provided by a user there named masouras , so it's not something an average user could do). I should also mention that in the comments to the previous post, Bruce Wayne pointed to his company Factoetum's effort to pass the test - which had 7 results, including some different ones to Ontotext/Freebase. Like Kiryakov, Wayne noted that it's "nearly impossible" for non technical people to use the current solutions. Finally, to address an issue that some commenters raised in the previous post: yes it would be possible to pass the Modigliani Test with some manual human effort to track down location data. But that's cheating - we want to see this done using Linked Data. And not just for Modigliani works, but for any other artist. Much Work to Be Done Atanas Kiryakov concluded that "there is still a lot of work to be done, because we cannot expect wide usage and interest in the Semantic Web if writing such a query takes more than an hour and a lot of technical knowledge." While that's true, I thank Atanas for giving the Modigliani Test a crack. At least now I know to visit the Museum of Modern Art when I next go to New York! Let us know your thoughts on the Modigliani Test in the comments. Or perhaps you're a developer willing to take on this challenge? Discuss
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The Modigliani Test for Linked Data: Results
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Email may be old fashioned, but it's still where we spend a lot of our time online. Today Google announced that it's webmail service Gmail is becoming all the richer with the inclusion of support for sending Google Calendar invitations inside the email composition window. In addition to being able to insert invitations, you can also cross reference your calendar availability with the availability of anyone included in your email thread that you have permission to see the Google Calendar for. It's not a perfect system, but it's pretty neat and it demonstrates the potential for building cool new features on top of our email inboxes. Sponsor Mashups and platforms are all about cross referencing multiple sources of data or functionality, as in this case: email plus calendar. We wrote earlier this Spring about a startup called Rapportive that cross references email and social media data about an email's sender (see also competitor Etacts ) and earlier this month we discussed the incredible potential in Google's announcement of a way to give developers secure access to the contents of your emails for analysis and the creation of innovative services. Yahoo has been calling this kind of approach Inbox 2.0 and has been working on it for more than two years. Here's what we wrote in November, 2007 coverage of Yahoo's vision - how do you think it's worked out? ( Yahoo Says the Future Will Be Modeled on Facebook ) The social network of the future will be populated by the RSS feeds of the activities of your friends and your friends will be determined by email. The big players won't put a major push into building a new social network. "It is much easier to extend an existing habit than to create a brand," are the words Google's Joe Krause. Your email account isn't valuable because it's got the email adresses of other people who could be solicited commercially - it's valuable because it articulates who in the world is able to command your attention. It contains analyzable, direct communication between you and the people most important to you. [Yahoo's] Garlinghouse says that in the future email and IM will be prioritized depending on the importance to you of the people who send it to you. We're not talking about the number of times people email you - we're talking about the percentage of times you open those emails, the keywords used in them relative to your personal/work profile, there are metrics so crazy we can hardly imagine that are available for determining the importance of people in your life. In your email. Facebook's people-search uses some similar math already. Various Ways Email Gets Innovated On Clearly there are all kinds of different levels of sophistication that can come with these sorts of developments. In fact, two plus years after Yahoo's call to action, things still seem relatively elementary. Rapportive displays data uniquely well but Etacts displays more data. This new Google Calendar integration with Gmail offers some visibility into your and your contacts' availability, but it doesn't tell you what you've got scheduled at a given time. Etacts offers inferior invitation sending but has a whole set of reminder and follow up features that Gmail doesn't offer natively. And Yahoo Mail more closely ties in Facebook than any other email, something millions of people are sure to enjoy. So while all the kids rant and rave about Twitter, Facebook, Augmented Reality, iPads and location based social networking, don't let them deny: email can still be very exciting. Discuss
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Your Inbox as Platform: Google Calendar More Closely Integrated With Gmail
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Although the median age of CEOs is 54, one of the fasted growing demographics of entrepreneurs is young people. According to a survey by JA Worldwide almost three-quarters of high school students indicate an interest in becoming entrepreneurs. Although there are a few college programs dedicated to entrepreneurship, even with the preparation from a college degree program many young entrepreneurs can flounder . To help remedy this, Under30CEO.com has collected advice from its users and offers "Young Entrepreneur Advice: 100 Things You Must Know!" Sponsor Many of the tips echo the idea that it's a cold, hard world out there, and that young entrepreneurs would do well to hire great people, to delegate administrative tasks to others, and to develop strong professional and personal networks, not just of potential customers but of others more established in their field. Some of the notable themes: Know Your Market : "I wish I'd know how much easier it is to build a business around an established market that's already looking for a solution to its problems rather than trying to build the market around the business I wanted to start." - John Crickett Money Matters : "Finding the right Accounting / Financial Manager right up front was our biggest learning and biggest mistake. Completely changed our financial performance and caused us to hit a wall we should have avoided." - Mike Cleary Don't Worry too Much about Education : "It is OK to trust your instincts - even when they are not necessarily backed up by years of finance/accounting or business school credentials" - Jenn Benz Learn to Manage People : "I wish I would have known that the hardest part of owning and operating my own business would NOT have been how to create revenue on a monthly basis. I wish I would have hired a full time IT guy and a shrink to manage with my sales force!" - Bradley W. Smith Have a Business Plan that Includes an Exit Strategy : "Have a serious exit strategy & plan prior to opening doors. As an entrepreneur I was ready and willing to take the plunge to open my own company, but didn't realize I had to structure my company around the exit strategy (i.e. make it sellable and transferable, and self sustaining without my everyday presence)." - Christopher N. Okada Cultivate Strong Support Networks : "I wish that early on I had sought out more business leaders in my field. It wasn't until I was a bit older that I realized the value of the knowledge to be learned from veteran industry players and how it could help me grow my business." - Jim Janosik Take Care of Yourself : "You can't put your life on hold while waiting for your venture to hit. I have tremendous regret around all of the family events, vacations, and time with friends that I missed because I was working on getting my film/company off the ground." - Pamela Peacock You can read the full post here . What advice would you add to this list? Discuss
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Entrepreneurs Under 30: Advice From Your Peers
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Zynga is a leading example of how to wield cloud infrastructure to achieve scale. The company uses RightScale to help match demand of its incredibly successful game franchise with appropriate resources. Zynga seems to be a master of understanding how to model customer demand and underlying resources. As even virtual goods have COGS (cost of goods sold) server resources are part of the bill when conjuring up virtual goods for tens of millions of users. Although we can't all be as smart (or cute) as Zynga, many of us are catching on that scaling into the cloud is a smart choice. This brief analysis of RightScale looks at its offerings and the momentum the company is gaining in the market. Sponsor What Does RightScale Offer ? RightScale is a platform that abstracts cloud offerings from Amazon and a host of other cloud providers to help orchestrate the management and provisioning of cloud assets. In the case of social games, this may be algorithms that help spin up services during a dramatic swing of usage. Or, in the reverse case, it maybe scaling infrastructure across the life cycle of a property as it is launched, goes viral, and eventually is replaced with the next thing. The company also offers resource portability, where it can deploy servers with Amazon, or other cloud providers that compete in providing cloud workload services and the ability to spin up new services through APIs. RightScale has tuned its tools to both learn and to react to changes required in the infrastructure for applications using the platform. New customer announcements include Hitachi Systems and Services in Japan and ProKarma in the United States. Both are strong systems integrators that have chosen RightScale as the platform to bring the cloud to their customers. RightScale has announced over one million servers launched using its platform. Maybe Zynga is the next Zynga The company certainly has the viral pattern down, and delivery nailed. And, one thing that we've learned in watching the excitement of social games is that demand can be like a roller-coaster. In addition to all of the natural benefits of cloud infrastructure in cost and timing, we think being ready for wild success is just good practice - it can much less expensive than failing to scale. More importantly, have a platform that scales can open up new doors to business that may have not existed without it. RightScale: For All Shapes and Sizes At RightScale, it doesn't matter if your application is an addictive game, or monthly billing application. The company knows that in the next years, it is likely that hosting in the cloud makes sense for internet infrastructure and it is well positioned to be a piece of a lot of solutions that want to scale with demand. If the momentum with heavy-hitting system integrators continues, RightScale will be coming to you through its partners. Of course, you can also try it for free and get started in managing the cloud. The company is targeting companies that have more than a handful of servers and has a compelling offering to get started and to grow from there. Does RightScale fit into your scaling plans? Photo Credit: jurvetson Discuss
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Are You the Next Zynga? The Rocket Science at RightScale Helps Deliver a Safe Liftoff
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It's a sunny afternoon in San Francisco and health care is in the air. I'm sitting at the the Peet's in the SF Ferry Building eating a vegan ginger cookie and waiting for Matthew Holt, founder of The Health Care Blog and the leader of Health 2.0 conference to show up for an interview. He arrives wearing shorts and a Health 2.0 t-shirt, and has his dog with him. He tells me he jogged to our location on the bay from Health 2.0 headquarters seven minutes away. It's a beautiful day - and here in the United States, the health care reform bill just passed. ReadWriteWeb's founder and leader, Richard MacManus, joins us, and we dive into a conversation on the revolution underway in cloud, mobile, and social health tools. By the end of the day, we were left with one question: Will health care reform build a health Internet, or will entrepreneurs do it because they can? Sponsor A Brief History One nice thing about profiling the thoughts of bloggers is that they leave a trail to track them down. Here are a few of Holt's social and technology posts on The HealthCareBlog : A new campaign against childhood obesity Aneesh Chopra on txting in Haiti PatientsLikeMe buys ReliefInSite Here are a few of MacManus' posts at ReadWriteWeb that track to health care: McKinsey: Get Ready For Sensor-Driven Business Models iPhone Apps For The Masses: Health & Fitness Health 2.0 Through the Eyes of a Diabetic - One Year Later Health Care Reform is like Ice Skating in San Francisco A phenomenon I see every year in San Francisco in December is the setup of the ice-skating rink. Palm trees and skaters. For children and adults alike, it's a way dream about a past and present, whether real or fiction. And, yet, while good for humanity, something about it doesn't quite hold the spirit of the pristine pond and cabin by the lake. We know, even though the ice is icy, generators are pumping along the edges. It's not quite pristine, and it's not quite ours. That's how health care reform feels - a victory indeed - but for some reason not a personal win. Somehow, reform feels artificial and hard to grasp. A small part inside of me wants to scream out, "is there an app for that"? Is it One Big Health Cloud? To get the conversation started, I asked Holt and Macmanus, "What is your take on cloud computing for healthcare?" Holt asked in return, with a grin, "What exactly is the cloud? Is it a thing, or is it a collection of services that are connected together?" We discussed this question in practical terms Holt : "Here's a question: Will Salesforce's cloud be merged with other organizations' contacts, and will we have shared controls? Is that the difference between cloud computing and SAAS?" We came back to our business, blogging. Blog software like Moveable Type (RWW) and WordPress (The Health Care Blog) generate common feeds in simple formats (RSS) that can be used and mashed up in all sorts of ways. But, that doesn't mean that MT and WordPress themselves are hot swappable, as there are controls, widgets, and other tools that are optimized in the application layer. Perhaps, in this way, EHR (Electronic Health Record) systems can be thought of as a blogs, where people are the categories, and events are the posts. If so, what is needed for health care information exchange is a basic feed for key members of the exchange: doctors, patients, pharmacies that connects new systems on top of it. For health care exchange, connecting patients is so much more than connecting infrastructure, platforms or software. Like all good software, it's about finding the shortcut. We should endeavor to find, build, and monetize the simplest exchange that will drive the future generations of meaningful interoperability. As we spoke, a light turned on. Is Health Part of the Internet of Things? Macmanus : "Health devices are one of my favorite use cases for the Internet of Things. Let's take the example of a blood pressure monitor. It's a portable device that augments your life and well being, and the promise of connecting to other things and streams is real". Holt : " ...and look at these devices closer - we see they are intelligent, self adjusting, and include feedback loops and reminders. Thse devices are starting to connect to the Internet and to people." "And what about the Wii," he continued. "The Mii is already virtual me, and the WiiFit is compelling and network enabled". All of us noted that Nike's work in this area is inspiring - from ease of use to business model implications, there is something great going on with the Nike + sensor and the company's broader ambitions. We realized that technology has already started a revolution in health - and it's getting traction. Macmanus : "I'm fresh from SXSW and have location on my mind. We heard that FourSquare is at work on a next-generation feature on websites, where checking in will connect virtual and real worlds. Also, with innovations like self-tagging StickyBits and Microsoft Tag floating around, real-world augmentation is starting to take form and connect with the Internet world." Holt : "UPC tag scanners, such as mobile phone bar code readers like ScanAvert connect real world things to facts about them, such as ingredient and nutrition information." We were reminded of the Quantified Self movement. This is a meetup that has growing momentum in the SF Bay Area and around the country. It is a place where self-reporters get together and share war stories. Organized by Gary Wolf and Kevin Kelly, it combines what's on the cutting edge and our overwhelming fascination of creating a digital diary through logging data about oneself. And, best of all, the meetings focus on "What did you learn about yourself," which focuses the meetup on us, not just technologies or business models. We learn that our motivations matter. Let's Run it All on Amazon and Get Scale The tools are ready, entrepreneurs are on board, and we all believe that the cloud is here. But, what about the data? That is a tougher question, and a familiar storyline of permissions, identity, matching, EDI, XML - it's enough to make you sick considering all of the potential work to align it all. In the spirit of the shortcut, the three of us came up with an idea: What if instead of connecting all of the hospitals, instead we connected every person in the U.S.? What if we would each have a server in the cloud, tuned to receive and share our own health transactions? This health server on the network would run software to receive files, add streams and connect devices under our direct control. The three of us did a bit of back of napkin work and believe that we could outsource the entire thing to Amazon for about US $1 billion yearly. This would cover server fees and data access for every American to have their own instance of server optimized for transmitting health information Here's our math: 300 million people [multiplied by base fee of $30.00 per year multiplied by the .1 concurrent utilization rate. Build a cloud architecture that reduces the cost by 10 times by leveraging computing systems that spin up on demand and therefore dramatically reduce physical costs. We think this type of math, however crude (and perhaps wrong), is worth thinking about as we spin up the servers for health care reform. We're Convinced: People Eat, Sleep, Pirouette, Take Pills By the end of our conversation, Macmanus, Holt and I were left with an invigorating idea about the new health care reform: It isn't a thing, it's a moment in time. Innovations for health care are already springing out of the Web and will thrive on their own merits, so the job of health care reform technology should be to instigate this innovation, stat. What would you do if offered a fixed bid contract for $1 billion annually to build a new health cloud for America? Who would you bring along to get the work done? Photo credit: abhijittembhekar Discuss
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Healthcare Reform is a Cloud: Interview with Matthew Holt & Richard MacManus
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