Latest News from Paul Miller

November’s Semantic Web Gang podcast now online

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 08:13:09 EST

November’s episode of the Semantic Web Gang podcast, which I host, is now online.

‘Why Linked Data?’ presentation at Defrag Conference

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 17:56:10 EST

The presentation I just delivered here at Defrag is now on slideshare, in case you want a look.

Keep Your Executive Assistant Happy if Moving to the Cloud

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 13:00:00 EST

Google held a small event in London late last month, at which senior executives from a wide range of organisations gathered to discuss the impact of the Cloud. Presenters included luminaries such as Marc Benioff, Werner Vogels, Geoffrey Moore and Nick Carr, as well as CIOs at the coalface in adopting various Cloud (mainly SaaS) [...]

Licensing of Linked Data

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 09:00:00 EDT

As part of a workshop at this year’s International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC), former colleague Leigh Dodds prepared an interesting diagram on the ways in which resources comprising the Linked Data Cloud are currently licensed. For various reasons, I was unable to make it to Virginia for the event, but a scan through the presentations from [...]

Avanade finds growing Enterprise enthusiasm for the Cloud

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 07:10:27 EDT

I covered Avanade’s Global Cloud Computing Survey for CloudAve back in February, and took a closer look at the security concerns it highlighted in a related post for this blog. Avanade re-commissioned the same research firm, Kelton Research, to undertake some follow-up work between 26 August and 11 September, and the responses from over 500 C-level [...]

Lew Moorman, President of Rackspace Cloud, talks about customers, interoperability and more

Sun, 18 Oct 2009 09:35:00 EDT

Rackspace has been in the mainstream hosting business for over a decade, and was amongst early entrants into the utility computing market with the launch of Mosso back in 2006. Now rebranded as The Rackspace Cloud, the company’s Cloud Computing offering is one of the most widely used in the industry, probably sitting in second [...]

Cloud Computing in Context

Mon, 05 Oct 2009 04:56:00 EDT

My presentation from Friday’s Future of Technology in Education (FOTE) conference in London is now on Slideshare, and reproduced here. Cutting through the Hype: Clouds in Context set out to question some of the preconceptions that many people seem to hold about Cloud Computing, and I suggest that the majority are less black and white than they initially seem.

Talking with Tom Steinberg about mySociety and public engagement with Government data

Fri, 25 Sep 2009 06:22:47 EDT

Continuing my ongoing series of Talis-sponsored podcasts, I recently spoke with Tom Steinberg. Tom is Director of mySociety, the not-for-profit organisation behind many of the UK’s most established efforts to increase the transparency and utility of Government information. Have a listen to hear about some of mySociety’s projects, and to learn Tom’s views on the current [...]

Are Clouds Green?

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 19:00:00 EDT

On the face of it, the answer to this question should presumably be resoundingly affirmative. With far more efficient utilisation of available compute resources, economies of scale in staffing and infrastructure, and a tendency to site the bigger data centres in areas blessed with natural cooling and abundant green-ish power, the answer is surely obvious. How could a Cloud be any less Green than all those on-premise data centres, full of woefully under-utilised computers that endlessly pump waste heat toward a roof filled to overflowing with heat exchangers and power-guzzling air conditioning units?

September’s Semantic Web Gang podcast discusses Government data

Tue, 22 Sep 2009 08:06:33 EDT

Continuing the Government data theme of my recent podcasts, this month’s Semantic Web Gang conversation also explores the potential for semantic technologies to unlock far more value in the data being put online by Governments around the world. Have a listen, and see what you think.

Talking about Social Data Discovery with Kevin Merritt of Socrata

Thu, 17 Sep 2009 07:22:10 EDT

An issue with many of the current initiatives to provide access to data is that they focus on one particular mode of access. As a rule, they tend to either offer a pretty interface that facilitates end-user exploration of a constrained set of data, or they proudly offer a massive list of files for download, or [...]

True Knowledge Not a Google Killer – and That’s Good

Tue, 08 Sep 2009 19:00:00 EDT

Every time a new search engine pops up, bloggers, journalists and analysts get all worked up about its potential (or otherwise) to be a ‘Google Killer.’ I’ve written about this before, and really can’t understand the apparent obsession with ‘killing’ a company that’s continuing to do remarkably well at meeting the needs of millions. It’s not perfect, of course, and there’s always room for more innovation/competition, but does Google need to die in the process?

When I Search Online for Pizza, What Do I Really Want?

Tue, 08 Sep 2009 18:45:00 EDT

Odd as it may seem, this question arose during my preparation for yesterday’s conversation with True Knowledge CEO, William Tunstall-Pedoe. You see, one of the demonstrations of True Knowledge’s capabilities takes the form of a local product search that looks – superficially – a lot like Google’s better known Local offering. Searching for pizza in Google returns [...]

If Government is a Platform, What Are People Building?

Tue, 08 Sep 2009 11:15:00 EDT

Tim Berners-Lee has been amongst those rallying to the cause, and working with Governments here and overseas to realise the opportunities in — first — simply getting data out and — second — ensuring the structure and linkages required if Government data is to form a useful foundation upon which others really can build.

Security and the Cloud

Mon, 31 Aug 2009 08:45:00 EDT

I was talking with Avanade’s Senior Director for Enterprise Security, Ace Swerling, earlier today. The conversation touched on a wide range of security and identity management issues that I’ll probably return to, but one of Ace’s comments brought my attention back to an issue that has been nagging at me for a while. As I’m sure we all know, security concerns often figure highly in discussions about moving Enterprise applications and data to the Cloud. Indeed, I spoke with other Avanade executives earlier this year to report on a survey they had commissioned that suggested just how significant these concerns can be for potential customers. I was talking with Avanade’s Senior Director for Enterprise Security, Ace Swerling, earlier today. The conversation touched on a wide range of security and identity management issues that I’ll probably return to, but one of Ace’s comments brought my attention back to an issue that has been nagging at me for a while. As [...]

I don’t want to move to Essex for e-books

Fri, 28 Aug 2009 07:33:08 EDT

Image by Irish Typepad via Flickr Part of the East Riding of Yorkshire Council’s Library service, my local public library is pretty good. OK, so its welcome experiment with Sunday opening was sadly short-lived, cruelly demolishing this family’s regular Sunday stroll into town for fresh books (’voracious’ really is the best word to describe the manner [...]

Talking with Thanassis Tiropanis about Higher Education and the Semantic Web

Tue, 25 Aug 2009 08:30:38 EDT

Earlier this month, I wrote about the Higher Education sector’s interest in the opportunities presented by use of semantic technologies. Today I published a podcast with Thanassis Tiropanis, project manager for the recently finished SemTech report and co-organiser of a workshop on Semantic Web applications for learning and teaching which takes place in Nice on 30 [...]

Come to Denver in November

Thu, 20 Aug 2009 14:47:24 EDT

Defrag is a conference that I’ve been watching for a while now. I was extremely disappointed when an opportunity to attend last year fell through, and therefore delighted when things aligned better this year. Trans-Atlantic airline pricing being what it is, I’ve even ended up with a few days in Denver afterward… Eric Norlin has once [...]

Talking About Government Data with David James of Sunlight Labs

Tue, 18 Aug 2009 14:30:00 EDT

Continuing my ongoing series of conversations about the increasing availability of Government data, I recently spoke with David James of Sunlight Labs. Sunlight Labs is part of the non-partisan Sunlight Foundation in Washington, DC, and undertakes a range of projects to shine a light on the dealings of the US Federal Government. We discuss some of the Labs’ current projects, including their new National Data Catalog, and consider ways in which this and the Federal Government’s Data.gov portal increase the availability and utility of Government data. Like other conversations in the series, production of this podcast was supported by Talis. Show notes for the conversation are available on Talis’ Nodalities blog.

Linked Data Meetup in London

Tue, 11 Aug 2009 04:49:52 EDT

I tweeted about this when it was first announced, but it’s certainly worth flagging here too. There will be an informal Linked Data Meetup at London’s Hammersmith Club on the afternoon and evening of Wednesday 9 September. The list of attendees is already looking good, and it should be a useful opportunity to explore some of the [...]

Talking with Jim Hendler and Li Ding about Data.gov

Mon, 10 Aug 2009 06:53:32 EDT

My latest podcast is with Jim Hendler and Li Ding of the Tetherless World Constellation at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York state. They’re part of a team converting some of the Federal Government data on the new Data.gov portal to RDF, and we talk about both how the work is going, and what it [...]

Examining the Linked Data opportunity; the case of Higher Education

Sun, 09 Aug 2009 11:48:14 EDT

Image via Wikipedia Regardless of where you stand on some of the questions of detail with respect to the Linked Data meme, it’s clear that significant enthusiasm is being marshalled behind both the concept and the opportunities that it promises. Dion Hinchcliffe looks at some of the means by which enterprise data can be more visible on [...]

David Eaves Talks About Vancouver’s Open Data Initiative

Sun, 02 Aug 2009 16:34:00 EDT

As more and more data become available as a matter of course, the examples set by organisations such as MySociety become increasingly attainable for us all. Other than ensuring that it is ‘open,’ do we need to be asking for more from those making data available? And once it’s there, will its use and scrutiny move beyond the enthusiasts and activists to encompass the population at large? David shares his views on these and other questions during our conversation. Back in May, ReadWriteWeb reported on a Motion put before legislators in the Canadian city of Vancouver. Duly passed, the Motion commits the city to three closely related ‘open’ agendas; the City of Vancouver will move as quickly as possible to adopt prevailing open standards for data, documents, maps, and other formats of media; the [...]

Thoughts from last night’s Cloud Camp

Thu, 30 Jul 2009 06:04:00 EDT

Image via Wikipedia One problem with living somewhere like East Yorkshire (a problem for which there are certainly compensations…) is that it proves effectively impossible to engage with my chosen industry’s current penchant for short evening events (except one) without the added complication of such things as overnight stays in hotels. Unless these events coincide with other [...]

John Sheridan Talks About the Drive to Get Government Data Online

Thu, 23 Jul 2009 15:00:00 EDT

John Sheridan’s role as Head of e-Services at the UK Government’s Office of Public Sector Information (OPSI) places him at the heart of this country’s enthusiastic drive toward increasing visibility of Government data online. As we discuss in this podcast, the programme is ambitious but eminently achievable, and builds upon a tradition that has actually been a lot more open than it may sometimes appear. Production of this podcast was supported by Talis, and show notes are available on their Nodalities blog.

Does Linked Data Need RDF?

Sun, 19 Jul 2009 07:14:00 EDT

The problem, I contend, comes when well-meaning and knowledgeable advocates of both Linked Data and RDF conflate the two and infer, imply or assert that ‘Linked Data’ can only be Linked Data if expressed in RDF. This dogmatism makes me deeply uncomfortable, and I find myself unable to agree with the underlying premise. The rest of this post attempts to explain why, hopefully more lucidly than I or those with whom I was debating managed on Friday evening via the largely unsuitable medium of the 140 character tweet.

Garlik releases Open Source RDF triple store, claims capacity for 60 billion triples

Tue, 14 Jul 2009 08:05:56 EDT

Garlik CEO Tom Ilube is increasingly coming to represent a voice of reason in the UK’s ongoing angst about Identity, with many a hysterically gibbering Home Office official put in their place by Tom’s more reasoned words in debates on the Today programme and across the UK’s mainstream media. As the company’s press materials note, “Garlik, the [...]

Talking with Mark Birbeck about RDFa and its use in Government

Fri, 10 Jul 2009 08:22:46 EDT

The ease with which RDFa can be embedded into existing HTML web pages makes it compelling as a means of easing traditional organisations and their workflows toward the Semantic Web. If we’re to realise Gordon Brown’s ambitions for making Government information more visible, tweaks to content management systems to inject a little RDFa onto their [...]

The Semantic Web Gang talk about semtech2009, LIVE

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 05:37:47 EDT

Back in May, I mentioned that the Semantic Web Gang podcast for June would be coming – live – from the stage of this year’s Semantic Technology Conference. Well, we did it, and it was a lot of fun. And as I mention during the session, being able to see the panel made my job [...]

Which is better? NO information or the WRONG information?

Mon, 06 Jul 2009 12:00:20 EDT

No system is perfect, and no affordable system can be engineered to be wholly tolerant of every fault and hiccup that might come its way. That’s why we have procedures in place to cope when things go wrong. One important part of those procedures should surely be effective communication with customers, (especially?) when they’re paying good [...]

How Open is ‘Open’ ?

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 09:17:40 EDT

Image by Getty Images via Daylife There has been a recent burst of enthusiasm for making raw data produced by and for Government more ‘open,’ and this must surely be welcomed. Long-running grass-roots efforts such as Tom Steinberg’s mySociety and The Guardian’s Free Our Data campaign continue to innovate, but in an environment that is suddenly [...]

Looking back at the Semantic Technology Conference, and the rest of my week in the Valley

Wed, 24 Jun 2009 10:34:07 EDT

Image by official_powerset via Flickr Today’s my first day back at home, following a tour of Silicon Valley and a couple of days in London to present at the ISKO UK Conference. The main event was this year’s Semantic Technology Conference in San Jose, which I’ve already partially covered via various blog posts over on ZDNet. More [...]

Thomson Reuters turns to FedEx and DHL to boot-strap their Cloud of Data

Tue, 16 Jun 2009 09:00:45 EDT

Image by perspikace via Flickr Thomson Reuters‘ Open Calais team have clearly been busy, with several announcements at the Semantic Technology Conference here in San Jose. On 15 June the company rolled out version 4.1 of Open Calais, embracing Spanish language content and the notion of ’social tags;’ “OpenCalais is a great semantic data extraction engine. If you [...]

Sir Tim Berners-Lee talks to the BBC’s Rory Cellan-Jones about Linked Data

Fri, 12 Jun 2009 06:37:08 EDT

Image via Wikipedia There has been some coverage of the recent announcement by UK Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, that Sir Tim Berners-Lee will be helping the UK Government to make more of its data available for use and reuse. Charles Arthur at the Guardian was quick off the mark, and the BBC’s Rory Cellan-Jones followed through [...]

Tom Gruber talks about Siri, the Virtual Personal Assistant

Thu, 11 Jun 2009 16:22:33 EDT

Image via CrunchBase Tom Gruber will be one of the keynotes at the Semantic Technology Conference in San Jose next week, and there’s a lot of interest in what he’s likely to show. I spoke to Tom yesterday to learn more, and the result has just been released as a podcast. Well known in the Artificial Intelligence [...]

TripIt - adding structure, one journey at a time

Mon, 08 Jun 2009 09:15:54 EDT

Image via CrunchBase TripIt is one of those web applications upon which I have really come to rely. Like Tungle, it sets about reducing the pain of dealing with the admin behind a boring, repetitive, frustrating yet necessary part of my work. For Tungle, as I’ve said before, that task is meeting scheduling. For TripIt, it’s organising [...]

Sun moves their Cloud forward at CommunityOne

Mon, 01 Jun 2009 12:38:35 EDT

Image by Getty Images via Daylife Sun Microsystems used the CommunityOne East event in New York City this past March to unveil their Cloud Computing offering. I spoke with the company’s Juan Carlos Soto recently, to learn more. Today, David Douglas (Senior VP, Cloud Computing) opened CommunityOne West in San Francisco discussing ‘Communities, Open Source Platforms, and [...]

John Wilbanks talks about Creative Commons, Data, Science and more

Mon, 01 Jun 2009 09:03:40 EDT

Image by mecredis via Flickr My latest podcast is with John Wilbanks, the VP at Creative Commons with responsibility for their Science Commons project. John has a varied background that includes founding a bio-informatics startup, Harvard’s Berkman Center, the World Wide Web Consortium and the US Congress. In his current role at Science Commons, he is working to [...]

Discussing Business Search with Robin Johnson, CEO of FT Search

Fri, 29 May 2009 06:16:00 EDT

The supply of vertical search solutions tailored to particular business niches remains a lucrative and important area, even in these days of Google's apparently unstoppable growth in generic search market share. Many of the products and companies involved are almost invisible to the general web user, either surfacing only inside the firewalls of large enterprise [...]

May’s Semantic Web Gang talks Wolfram Alpha and Google

Fri, 22 May 2009 08:45:52 EDT

I mentioned the Semantic Web Gang podcast last week, in the context of our upcoming Live appearance at the Semantic Technology Conference in San Jose next month. This month’s show was recorded yesterday, and is now available. During the conversation, Gang members dig into the two hot stories of the moment; the launch of Wolfram Alpha [...]

Discussing Cisco’s Unified Computing System with Wendy Mars

Tue, 19 May 2009 09:00:00 EDT

Global networking giant Cisco unveiled Unified Service Delivery (USD) last week, following up on the company’s enthusuastically welcomed Unified Computing System (UCS) hardware announcement back in March. Taken together, these announcements shed light on the company’s strategy to strengthen its hold over the data centre, and to offer solutions tailored toward the evolving needs of organisations [...]

Opening up and letting go to strengthen market position

Tue, 19 May 2009 08:57:14 EDT

Two separate pieces of news came my way during the night, and although both were written about elsewhere whilst those of us on this side of the Atlantic slept, they remain worthy of mention; both in their own right and because of the wider trend of which they are part. First, Cloud Computing provider 3Tera announced [...]

The Semantic Web Gang Live in San Jose

Fri, 15 May 2009 04:34:00 EDT

One of the podcasts I've been doing for a while is the monthly Semantic Web Gang. It began whilst I was with Talis, and the company continues to support production and hosting of the show. Unlike most of my podcasts (all listed over there on the right, for those of you reading on the cloudofdata.com site), the Gang is a (virtual) round table rather than an interview. Each month, regular Gang members (and the occasional guest) get together to discuss the latest moves in the semantic technology arena. One of the podcasts I’ve been doing for a while is the monthly Semantic Web Gang. It began whilst I was with Talis, and the company continues to support production and hosting of the show. Unlike most of my podcasts (all listed over there on the right, for those of you reading on the [...]

Do Sociable Media herald the transition from complaint to FYI?

Wed, 13 May 2009 05:56:26 EDT

Image by luc legay via Flickr Much has been written about growing Enterprise use of social media (usually Twitter, these days) to successfully track and mitigate customer complaint. Many have been quick to spot that the disproportionately high cost of satisfying (or, more cynically, silencing) these early adopters is unlikely to scale effectively as an increasingly [...]

Forrester Reckons Private Clouds Are OK

Tue, 12 May 2009 06:42:00 EDT

It might seem that the mega-bucks reports from the likes of Gartner, Forrester et al are the preserve of CxOs with vast desks upon which they can array the multitudinous documents to which their employers’ subscription entitles them. The truth, though, is that these documents — which notionally sell for hundreds or thousands of dollars apiece — can often be downloaded in exchange for some contact details. The source of this apparent largesse is not the analysts’ own website, but rather the sites of companies looked upon with particular favour within a given report. The back-room exchanges of kudos, cash, or mutual back-slapping that sees these assets made freely available are well understood, and legitimate. It might seem that the mega-bucks reports from the likes of Gartner, Forrester et al are the preserve of CxOs with vast desks upon which they can array the multitudinous documents to which their employers’ subscription entitles them. The truth, though, is that these documents — which notionally sell for hundreds or thousands of [...]

Surfing the Data Flow in Luxembourg

Mon, 11 May 2009 08:00:53 EDT

Today I’m in Luxembourg, at the invitation of the European Commission’s Directorate General for the Information Society. As European readers are doubtless aware, the EC has traditionally been a generous funder of research across Europe’s member states, with Digital Libraries, the Semantic Web and more owing much to the largesse of Europe’s massive ‘Framework Programme‘ funding [...]

Talking about VMware’s approach to building Clouds in the Data Centre

Fri, 08 May 2009 11:16:25 EDT

On 21 April, market-leading virtualisation provider VMware expanded upon CEO Paul Maritz‘ earlier Cloud announcements with the unveiling of vSphere 4, billed by the company as ‘the industry’s first operating system for building the internal Cloud.’ Virtualisation is clearly an important aspect of Cloud Computing, as is the capability (addressed by VMware’s vCloud Initiative) to easily [...]

Zmanda CEO Talks About Backup and the Cloud

Thu, 07 May 2009 08:39:00 EDT

Chander Kant is Founder and CEO of Zmanda, a provider of Open Source backup solutions that exploit the capabilities of Cloud storage services (such as Amazon’s S3) to supplement the traditional on-premise backup practices of their business customers. I spoke with Chander recently to learn more about the company, and to understand the particular issues associated [...]

Talking with Kristof Kloeckner about IBM and the Cloud

Wed, 06 May 2009 12:29:31 EDT

With an enterprise-friendly combination of hardware, software and professional services, IBM should be well placed to work with wary CxOs as they try to understand the extent to which Cloud Computing makes sense within their own business. Announcements earlier this year, as I said at the time, seemed geared toward building and sign-posting an easy [...]