Here we definitely haven’t given up and we keep having success convincing our managers that everybody’s life, including outside the company, will get easier if we publish our product data as Linked Data.

We are in touch with Dydra, and so far we see no reason for being pessimistic

Having interviewed for Talis back in 2008, what they lacked was the marketing strategy to expand beyond their safety zone within the education and library markets. Having made hundreds of presentations and pitches, it is difficult persuading the private sector to invest in Linked Data applications because they fail to fathom the ROI.

Emphasizing ‘Findability’ over ‘searchability’ was my approach but again, the SemWeb and Linked Data really hasn’t been understood commercially, yet.

I’ve — coincidentally — just published a note showcasing use of WebID, WebID protocol, and WebID ACLs to protect SPARQL service endpoints en route as foundation for critical quality of service factors that ultimately drive any business model.

You must know who your consumers are (human or machine) and associate their identities with the value they are consuming, in relation to agreed terms. The Web doesn’t change this reality.

Links:

1. (link removed) — WebID ACL protection of SPARQL endpoints using social relationship based rules.

I enjoyed your history of your reactions to Talis and it’s software. I too had to poke around with the internals of TalisWeb and it’s labyrinthine directory structure, and I too had your same reaction to the myriad of perl scripts to do what turns out to be critical stuff behind the scenes.

The learning about Graph based approaches to product design are still key to Talis Aspire, and I am sure it _is_ going to be awesome.

Quoting from BBC R4 Thought for the Day on the subject of Sunday’s Wimbledon final[1] and Andy Murray also post game[2]: TFTD, “the fertile soil in which the flower of hope takes root much more easily than in the sometimes arid desert of overblown success”, Murray, “I’m more determined than ever to make sure I’m the guy lifting the trophy next time round”. I’m sure I’m not the only person with the feeling that the Semantic Web is inevitable, being more a question of when than if. The tools and techniques will become increasingly commonplace and a part of our everyday lives, and the soil fertile enough for library & information experts and IT technologists[3] to give the boost to our economy that the technology is capable of.

[1] John Bell, 11 July 2012, http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00vwmms
[2] BBC Sport, Andy Murray Wimbledon column, 9 July 2012, http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/tennis/18766101
[3] There are a lot of parallels I think here with the development of MARC, ref. Henriette Avram (Wikipedia) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henriette_Avram

- Waterboys, The Whole Of The Moon

I must admit I raised an eyebrow with somewhat more than a hint of interest when Talis embarked upon a semantic web mission — a company with considerable expertise in the field of libraries, who knew what linked data was as well. I’m sure you will be back Talis.

Talis have put so much in to Linked Data, over seven years, investing in building momentum that I find it surprising that such short term things such as ‘there isn’t much new work to take on during the Olympics’ could be a contributing factor, no matter how small, to the end of a long plan.
I’m not questioning it, or making light, but as someone who lives in the warm safe world of the public sector, and with no ‘real world’ experience, I didn’t think such things would be such an issue.

Chris