Some interesting links I got through my InfoMinder Alerts today. I will just add a teaser for each entry. Some of these are blogs. Others are announcements or wiki links.
The Future of Enterprise Software
We are at the beginning of a massive shift from client-server to web-based software in the enterprise. This move will be even more dramatic than the move from mainframe to client-server. The move to self-service distribution will lower sales costs and make comparable technology available to enterprises of all sizes on an eat-as-you-go basis. Having all data in a centralized repository with open interfaces will lead to geometric increases in functionality as customers munge data and functionality together themselves or through third party developers (who will also have access to self-service platforms).
Finally, I predict that Salesforce.com (CRM) will have a valuation higher than SAP (SAP) in 5 years. Today CRM is just under $8 billion in market value and SAP is just under $68 billion in market value.
What is hot in the Semantic Web Community (discovered through Planet-RDF)
Here are some of the topics that have already been put on the wish-list for the Semantic Wiki Mini-Series (source):
- usability vs expressivity
- community building
- uncovering more implementations
- HCI: navigation of large, high-dimensional knowledge spaces
- e-science (especially pharma research & biomedicine)
- semantic wikis and mashups
- recommendation and personalization in semantic wikis,
- knowledge representation (expresivity vs. simplicity)
- how to make business subject matter experts able to enter, review and validate
meaningful information without them having to learn new words - what dialect of OWL supported
- integration of semantic resources (Protege / OOR / MW / …)
- content quality
- integration of external data
- a semantic wiki & OOR session
- experiences with distributed collaboration
- server-side infrastructure to support semantic wikis
- survey of semantic wikis for vertical domains (e.g. HCLS)
- integration with other tools / linking wiki content to other apps
Motorola and the Android Social Networking Phone
Motorola, which is recruiting as many as 350 people
to work on Android phones, is gearing up to make its first one:the Android Social Smart Phone. Last week, Android Guys
Five Ways to Google Proof Your Business
Google has acquired more than 50 companies, and it’s unlikely the spending spree will stop any time soon, as many of Google’s most recognized services came through acquisitions — including AdSense, Android, AdWords, Blogger, Gmail, Google Analytics, Google Docs, Google Maps, Picassa, and, of course, YouTube Inc.
But there are millions of businesses that will not be acquired by Google. As the saying goes, “Google has plenty of money, but you won’t get any of it.” The reality is, if you’re not one of the lucky chosen, Google can be both a competitor and a phenomenon that marginalizes your business model by making alternatives easy to find, or by turning your paid products into an advertising-sponsored free-for-all.
As an optimist, I’d prefer to think of Google as another arrow in the quiver to be used to expand your Internet business, drive qualifying traffic, improve your brand, and ultimately help support an exit (if you want to be rich) or a viable business model (if you’d rather be king) — or perhaps both.
There are several actions I’d suggest for those looking to make Google a weapon for positive gain. Many of these are mutually exclusive, but some combination warrants consideration for any online business
Design Considerations for Parallel Programming
Parallel programming has all of the correctness and security challenges of sequential programs plus all of the difficulties of parallelism and concurrent access to shared resources.
RDB to RDF Mapping (On Demand and ETL)
We expect cases favoring on demand mapping to be characterized by any of:
- High rate of change of the data
- Very large volume of data
- Relatively straightforward translation between RDF and the data
- Relatively few RDB’s being integrated.
We expect cases favoring ETL to be characterized by:
- Large number of heterogenous sources of data
- Complex application logic needed for transforming the data
- RDF reasoning being performed on the mapped data
- Queries with variables in class or predicate positions