Another Word For It Patrick Durusau on Topic Maps and Semantic Diversity

June 10, 2013

Beyond NSA, the intelligence community has a big technology footprint [Funding]

Filed under: Funding,NSA — Patrick Durusau @ 2:10 pm

Beyond NSA, the intelligence community has a big technology footprint

From the post:

While all through the past few days the focus has been on NSA activities, the discussion has often veered around the technologies and products used by NSA. At the same time, a side discussion topic has been the larger technical ecosystem of intelligence units. CIA has been one of the more prolific users of Information Technology by its own admission. To that extent, CIA spinned off a venture capital firm In-Q-Tel in 1999 to invest in focused sector companies. Per Helen Coster of Fortune Magazine, In-Q-Tel (IQT) has been named “after the gadget-toting James Bond character Q”.

In-Q-Tel states on its website that “We design our strategic investments to accelerate product development and delivery for this ready-soon innovation, and specifically to help companies add capabilities needed by our customers in the Intelligence Community”. To that effect, it has made over 200 investments in early stage companies for propping up products. Being a not-for-profit group, unlike Private Venture capitalists, the ROI is not the primary motive. Beyond funds, the startups have benefited from a government organization association. “It’s an ego boost to get a phone call from In-Q-Tel, but more importantly, it’s a direct path to major government customers.” states Venture Beat’s Christina Farr.

A partial listing of companies from its portfolio:

  • 10gen:  the company behind MongoDB, a leading NOSQL database.
  • Adaptive Computing: offers a portfolio of Moab cloud management and Moab HPC workload management products for HPC, data centers and cloud.
  • Adapx: helps to collect data with paper forms, GIS maps, and/or all-weather field notebooks using digital pens; software integrated with Excel, Sharepoint and ArcGIS among others.
  • Apigee: provides API technology and services for enterprises and developers
  • Basis Technology: provides software solutions for text analytics, natural language processing, information retrieval, and name resolution in over twenty languages
  • Cleversafe: provides resilient storage solutions, ideally suited for storage clouds and massive digital archives
  • Cloudera: leading provider of Hadoop distribution and services.
  • Cloudant: provides “data layer as a service” for loading, storing, analyzing, and distributing application data
  • Delphix: provides solutions for provisioning, managing refreshing, and recovering databases for business-critical applications
  • Digital Reasoning: provides tools people need to understand relationships between entities in vast amounts of unstructured, semi-structured and structured data.
  • FMSAdvanced Systems Group: focuses on visualization and analytical solutions, as well as solutions in the area of Geospatial/Temporal Analysis and Situational Awareness
  • Huddle: provides enterprise content software with intelligent technology for recommending valuable information to users, with no need for search.
  • LucidWorks: provides search solution development platforms built on the power of Apache Solr/Lucene open source search via enterprise-grade subscriptions.
  • Narrative Insight: provides automated business analytics and natural language communication technology that transform data into personalized stories.
  • Novo Dynamics: develops intelligent information capture software and provides advanced analytics solutions that transform data into actionable insights
  • NetBase: provides semantic technology tool that reads sentences to surface insights from public and private online information sources.
  • piXlogic: has created software that automatically analyzes and searches images and video based on their visual content
  • Palantir Technologies: “was developed to address the most complex information analysis and security challenges faced by the U.S. intelligence, military, and law enforcement communities”. Provides extensible software solution designed from the ground up for data integration and analysis.
  • Pure Storage: the all-flash enterprise storage company, enables the broad deployment of flash in the data center
  • Power Assure: developer of data center infrastructure and energy management software for large enterprises, government agencies, and managed service providers
  • Platfora: works with existing Hadoop clusters and provide business intelligence software for Big Data.
  • Quantum 4D: integrates large data sets into sophisticated models producing moving visual representations that enable users to identify trends, relationships, and anomalies in real-time data
  • ReversingLabs: provides tools for analysis of all unknown binary content which may involve removing of all protection and obfuscation artifacts, unwrapping formatting elements and extracting relevant meta-data.  Results are compared against analysis reports on billions of goodware and malware files.
  • Recorded Future: provides software which utilizes linguistics and statistics algorithms to extract time-related information, and through temporal reasoning, help users understand relationships between entities and events over time, to form the world’s “first temporal analytics engine”.
  • Signal Innovations Group, Inc. (SIG): provides customers with an advanced platform for video analysis, including motion tracking, enhanced metadata creation, and motion-based anomalous behavior detection
  • SitScape: provides software to assemble situational business dashboards based on on-demand componentization and user interface virtualization of disparate enterprise-wide live Web applications and digital assets.
  • StreamBase Systems: provides software for high-performance Complex Event Processing (CEP) that analyze and act on real-time streaming data for instantaneous decision-making
  • Traction software: provides enterprise hypertext collaboration software which combines wiki-style group editing and the simplicity of a blog to provide business and government organizations with enterprise software
  • Visible Technologies: provides enterprise ready social media solution, offering a combination of software and services to harness business value from social communities.
  • Weather Analytics: delivers global climate intelligence by providing statistically stable, gap-free data formed by an extensive collection of historical, current and forecasted weather content, coupled with proprietary analytics and methodologies.

Thinking that after a long Summer and Fall hearings rooting out some of the grifters in the NSA surveillance program, there could be opportunities opening up for new faces.

If the U.S. loses its taste for intelligence gathering, there are plenty of other governments and private organizations who might be interested.

“… it’s an ill wind blaws naebody gude.” (Walter Scott in Rob Roy)

March 29, 2013

Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction

Filed under: Funding,Military,Security — Patrick Durusau @ 4:40 pm

The Project on Advanced Systems and Concepts for Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction (PASCC) at the Naval Postgraduate School

From opportunity:

This BAA’s primary objective is to attract outstanding researchers and scholars who will research topics of interest to the security studies community. Research will focus on expanding knowledge related to countering weapons of mass destruction and weapons of mass effect (WMD/WME). The program solicits innovative proposals for research on WMD/WME counter proliferation, nonproliferation, and strategy to be conducted mainly during the January 2014 through September 2015 timeframe. In this BAA, the phrase “security studies research” refers to research in all disciplines, fields, and domains that (1) are involved in expanding knowledge for national defense, and (2) could potentially improve policy and international relations for combating WMD. Disciplines include, but are not limited to: Political science, sociology, history, biology, chemistry, economics, homeland defense, and public policy.

Applications don’t close until March 31, 2014 but there isn’t any reason to wait until the last minute to apply. 😉

Don’t know but information sharing across agencies could be an issue, along with other areas where topic maps would really shine.

BTW, some representative research from this program.

March 23, 2013

Making the Most of Big Data

Filed under: BigData,Funding,Government — Patrick Durusau @ 3:50 pm

Making the Most of Big Data

NSF: Summary Submission Deadline – April 22, 2013.

Aiming to make the most of the explosion of Big Data and the tools needed to analyze it, the Obama Administration announced a "National Big Data Research and Development Initiative" on March 29, 2012. To launch the initiative, six Federal departments and agencies announced more than $200 million in new commitments that, together, promise to greatly improve and develop the tools, techniques, and human capital needed to move from data to knowledge to action. The Administration is also working to "liberate" government data and voluntarily-contributed corporate data to fuel entrepreneurship, create jobs, and improve the lives of Americans in tangible ways.

As we enter the second year of the Big Data Initiative, the Administration is encouraging multiple stakeholders including federal agencies, private industry, academia, state and local government, non-profits, and foundations, to develop and participate in Big Data innovation projects across the country. Later this year, the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), NSF, and other agencies in the Networking and Information Technology R&D (NITRD) program plan to convene an event that highlights high-impact collaborations and identifies areas for expanded collaboration between the public and private sectors. The Administration is particularly interested in projects and initiatives that:

  • Advance technologies that support Big Data and data analytics;
  • Educate and expand the Big Data workforce;
  • Develop, demonstrate and evaluate applications of Big Data that improve key outcomes in economic growth, job creation, education, health, energy, sustainability, public safety, advanced manufacturing, science and engineering, and global development;
  • Demonstrate the role that prizes and challenges can play in deriving new insights from Big Data; and
  • Foster regional innovation.

Please submit a two-page summary of projects to BIGDATA@nsf.gov. The summary should identify:

  1. The goal of the project, with metrics for evaluating the success or failure of the project;
  2. The multiple stakeholders that will participate in the project and their respective roles and responsibilities;
  3. Initial financial and in-kind resources that the stakeholders are prepared to commit to this project; and
  4. A principal point of contact for the partnership.

The submission should also indicate whether the NSF can post the project description to a public website. This announcement is posted solely for information and planning purposes; it does not constitute a formal solicitation for grants, contracts, or cooperative agreements.

Doesn’t look like individuals are included, “…federal agencies, private industry, academia, state and local government, non-profits, and foundations….”

Does anyone have a government or non-profit I could borrow to propose a topic map-based Big Data innovation project?

Thanks!

Phrased humorously but that’s a serious request.

I have a deep interest in the promotion of topic maps and funded projects are a good type of promotion.

Other people see a topic map-based project getting funded and they think having a topic map was part of being funded. Creating more topic map-based applications and hence a chance at more topic map-based projects being funded.

I first saw this in a tweet by Tim O’Reilly.

February 24, 2013

In-Q-Tel (IQT)

Filed under: Funding,Intelligence — Patrick Durusau @ 8:31 pm

In-Q-Tel (IQT)

From the about page:

THE IQT MISSION

Launched in 1999 as an independent, not-for-profit organization, IQT was created to bridge the gap between the technology needs of the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC) and new advances in commercial technology. With limited insight into fast-moving private sector innovation, the IC needed a way to find emerging companies, and, more importantly, to work with them. As a private company with deep ties to the commercial world, we attract and build relationships with technology startups outside the reach of the Intelligence Community. In fact, more than 70 percent of the companies that IQT partners with have never before done business with the government.

As a strategic investor, our model is unique. We make investments in startup companies that have developed commercially-focused technologies that will provide strong, near-term advantages (within 36 months) to the IC mission. We design our strategic investments to accelerate product development and delivery for this ready-soon innovation, and specifically to help companies add capabilities needed by our customers in the Intelligence Community. Additionally, IQT effectively leverages its direct investments by attracting a significant amount of private sector funds, often from top-tier venture capital firms, to co-invest in our portfolio companies. On average, for every dollar that IQT invests in a company, the venture capital community has invested over nine dollars, helping to deliver crucial new capabilities at a lower cost to the government.

Topic maps could offer advantages to an intelligence community, either vis-à-vis other intelligence communities and/or vis-à-vis competitors in the same intelligence community.

A funding source to consider for topic maps in intelligence work.

I first saw this at Beyond Search.

November 11, 2012

Why I decided to crowdfund my research

Filed under: Crowd Sourcing,Funding,Marketing — Patrick Durusau @ 1:02 pm

Why I decided to crowdfund my research by Ethan O. Perlstein.

From the post:

For the last five years, I ran a lab in Princeton University as an independent researcher through a $1 million grant. That money ran out in September. Now my option is to apply for government grants where I have a slim chance of success. And, if unsuccessful, I have to stop research.

Over 80% of grant applications to funding agencies in the United States fail. The government is planning to make further cuts to the science budget. More disturbing is the fact that now scientists receive their first big grant at the age of 42, nearly a decade after surviving graduate school, postdoctoral fellowships and temporary faculty appointments.

That’s why I decided to experiment with the way experiments are funded. I am trying to crowdfund a basic research project. Kickstarter brought the concept of crowdfunding to my attention years ago. However, it was only in the last year that I learned about the SciFund Challenge, a “by scientists, for scientists” initiative to finance small-scale ($200 – $2,000) projects, mostly in ecology and related fields, but not much in the biomedical sciences.

Ethan researched the models use by other crowdfunded projects and this post includes pointers to that research as well as other lessons he learned along the way. Including how to visualize the network of supporters for his campaign and consequently how to reach out to new supporters.

Not for the first time, I wonder if crowdfunding would work for the production of subject specific topic maps?

That is to pick some area, a defined data set with a proposed deliverable, and then promote it for funding?

I would shy away from secret government documents unless I ran across a funder who read the Pentagon Papers from cover to cover. It’s a classic, “something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read.”

My problem, which you may share, is that I know what I like, not so good about what other people like. As in other people willing to contribute money.

Suggestions as to sources on what “other” people like?

Twitter trends? News programs? Movie/music reviews?

The next big question: How can topic maps increase their enjoyment of X?

I first saw news of Ethan O. Perlstein in a tweet by Duncan Hall.

August 26, 2012

Grant Seeking/Funding As Computer Science Activity

Filed under: CS Lectures,Funding — Patrick Durusau @ 9:36 am

Robert Harper writes in: Believing in Computer Science:

It’s not every day that I can say that I agree with Bertrand Meyer, but today is an exception. Meyer has written an opinion piece in the current issue of C.ACM about science funding that I think is worth amplying. His main point is that funding agencies, principally the NSF and the ERC, are constantly pushing for “revolutionary” research, at the expense of “evolutionary” research. Yet we all (including the funding agencies) know full well that, in almost every case, real progress is made by making seemingly small advances on what is already known, and that whether a body of research is revolutionary or not can only be assessed with considerable hindsight. Meyer cites the example of Hoare’s formulation of his logic of programs, which was at the time a relatively small increment on Floyd’s method for proving properties of programs. For all his brilliance, Hoare didn’t just invent this stuff out of thin air, he built on and improved upon the work that had gone before, as of course have hundreds of others built on his in turn. This all goes without saying, or ought to, but as Meyer points out, we computer scientists are constantly bombarded with direct and indirect exhortations to abandon all that has gone before, and to make promises that no one can honestly keep.

Meyer’s rallying cry is for incrementalism. It’s a tough row to hoe. Who could possibly argue against fostering earth-shattering research that breaks new ground and summarily refutes all that has gone before? And who could possibly defend work that is obviously just another slice of the same salami, perhaps with a bit of mustard this time? And yet what he says is obviously true. Funding agencies routinely beg the very question under consideration by stipulating a priori that there is something wrong with a field, and that an entirely new approach is required. With all due respect to the people involved, I would say that calls such as these are both ill-informed and outrageously arrogant.

What Harper and Meyer write is true, but misses a critical point.

To illustrate: What do you think would happen if one or more of the “impossible” funding proposals succeeded?

Consider the funding agency and its staff. If even one of its perennial funding requests were to succeed, what would it replace it with for next time? Can’t have a funding apparatus, with clerks, rule books, procedures, judges, etc., without some problem to be addressed. Solving any sufficiently large problem would be a nightmare for a funding agency.

On the par with the March of Dimes solving the problem of polio. It had the choice of finding a new mission or dissolving. Can you imagine a funding agency presented with that choice?

CS funding agencies avoid that dilemma by funding research that by definition is very unlikely to succeed.

And what of the grant seekers?

What if they can only accept graduate students who can solve nearly impossible CS problems? Would not have a very large department with that as a limitation. And consequently very small budgets, limited publication venues, conferences, etc.

I completely agree with Harper and Meyers but CS departments should start teaching grant seeking/funding as a CS activity.

Perhaps even a Masters of CS/Grants&Funding? (There may be one already, check your local course catalog.)

“Real” CS will proceed incrementally, but then it always has.

I retained the link in Robert’s post but you should forward, Long Live Incremental Research!, http://cacm.acm.org/blogs/blog-cacm/109579-long-live-incremental-research/fulltext, so your non-ACM friends can enjoy the Meyer’s post.

June 27, 2012

MyMoneyAppUp by U.S. Department of the Treasury – $25,000

Filed under: Contest,Funding — Patrick Durusau @ 10:25 am

MyMoneyAppUp by U.S. Department of the Treasury – $25,000

Submission period: June 27 – August 12, 2012.

Prizes:

1st: $10,000

2nd: $5,000 (2)

3rd: $2,500 (2)

From the webpage:

The MyMoneyAppUp Challenge, launched by the U.S. Treasury Department in partnership with the D2D Fund and Center for Financial Services Innovation, is a contest intended to motivate American entrepreneurs, software developers, the public, and students to propose the best ideas and designs for next-generation mobile tools to help Americans control and shape their financial futures. The Challenge calls for mobile app ideas (IdeaBank) and designs (App Design), with cash prizes awarded to the best submissions. Competitors are encouraged to propose mobile apps that incorporate data to empower consumers, as part of Treasury’s initiative to promote Smart Disclosure. MyMoneyAppUp competitors who want to take their winning ideas to the next step and develop prototypes may enter the FinCapDev Competition, a complementary competition sponsored exclusively by D2D and CFSI at the conclusion of the MyMoneyAppUp Challenge. Support for prizes and the administration of the Challenge by CFSI and D2D for the MyMoneyAppUp Challenge comes from the Ford Foundation, Omidyar Network, and the Citi Foundation.

Sounds like a place where topic maps could play a role.

From something as simple as integrating balances from specified accounts or drafts on those accounts, to provide users with projected balances. Could even include projected credit card balances with interest rates.

Need a kill switch for the credit card one, at least while you are buying me a book present online. No particular holiday required. 😉

It’s not a lot of money but a good opportunity to build street cred for topic maps.

Heterogeneous data structures are the rule in the finance community.

PS: When some friend of yours says, “Oh, but we can use X to map between heterogeneous data structures.,” your response should be: “Sure, and when you move up in management, how do we know why that mapping exists?” “Or add to it?”

Fixed mappings are useful, but also repetitively expensive.

May 16, 2012

Need cash? NLnet advances open source technology by funding new projects

Filed under: Funding,Open Source — Patrick Durusau @ 1:52 pm

Need cash? NLnet advances open source technology by funding new projects

Next Round of Ideas Due: June 1st 2012.

Lead story at OpenSource.com today.

From the story:

If you have a valuable idea or project that can help create a more open global information society, and are looking for financial means to make your ideas come through, we might be able to help you. Indeed our mission is to fund open source projects and individuals to improve important and strategic networking technologies for the better of mankind. Whether this concerns more robust internet technologies and standards, privacy enhancing technologies or open document formats – we are open for your proposals.

We are independent. We are not like other funding bodies you may have experience with, because we only have to judge on quality and relevance, and not on politics or any other dimension. What is important for us is that the technology you develop and promote is usable for others and has real impact. And we are also interested to hear your inspiring ideas if you are unable to manage it yourself.

We spend our money in supporting strategic initiatives that contribute to an open information society, especially where these are aimed at development and dissemination of open standards and network related technology.

More details in the story or at the NLnet website.

What’s your great idea?

April 30, 2012

NSF, NIH to Hold Webinar on Big Data Solicitation

Filed under: Funding,NIH,NSF,Research Methods — Patrick Durusau @ 3:17 pm

NSF, NIH to Hold Webinar on Big Data Solicitation by Erwin Gianchandani.

Guidance on BIGDATA Solicitation

<= $25 Million Webinar: Tuesday, May 8th, from 11am to 12pm ET. Registration closes 11:59pm PDT on Monday, May 7th.

From the post:

Late last month, the Administration unveiled a $200 million Big Data R&D Initiative, committing new funding to improve “our ability to extract knowledge and insights from large and complex collections of digital data.” The initiative includes a joint solicitation by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and National Institutes of Health (NIH), providing up to $25 million for Core Techniques and Technologies for Advancing Big Data Science and Engineering (BIGDATA). Now NSF and NIH have announced a webinar “to describe the goals and focus of the BIGDATA solicitation, help investigators understand its scope, and answer any questions potential Principal Investigators (PIs) may have.” The webinar will take place next week — on Tuesday, May 8th, from 11am to 12pm ET.

So, how clever are you really?

(The post has links to other materials you probably need to read before the webinar.)

April 14, 2012

7 Big Winners in the U.S. Big Data Drive

Filed under: BigData,Data,Funding — Patrick Durusau @ 6:25 pm

7 Big Winners in the U.S. Big Data Drive by Nicole Hemsoth.

As we pointed out in Big Data is a Big Deal, the U.S. government is ponying up $200 million in new data projects.

Nicole covers seven projects that are of particular interest:

  1. DARPA’s XDATA – See XDATA for details – Closes May 30, 2012.
  2. SDAV Institute (DOE) – SDAV: Scalable Data Management, Analysis and Visualization (has a toolkit and other resources I need to cover separately)
  3. Biological and Environmental Research Program (BER) has created the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Climate Research Facility. Lots of data.
  4. John Wesley Powell Center for Analysis and Synthesis (USGS). Data + tools.
  5. PURVAC Purdue University – Homeland Security
  6. Biosense 2.0 – CDC project
  7. Machine Reading (DARPA) – usual goals:

    developing learning systems that process natural text and insert the resulting semantic representation into a knowledge bases rather than relying on expensive and time-consuming current processes for knowledge representation that require expert and associated knowledge engineers to hand-craft information.

I suppose one lesson to be learned is how quickly the bulk of $200 million can be sucked up by current projects.

The second lesson is to become an ongoing (large ongoing) research project so that you too can suck up new funding.

The third lesson is to use these ostensible goals of these projects as actual goals for your projects. The difference between trying to reach a goal and reaching it may make a difference.

March 31, 2012

Big Data is a Big Deal

Filed under: BigData,Funding,Government — Patrick Durusau @ 4:09 pm

Big Data is a Big Deal

Tom Kalil, Deputy Director for Policy at OSTP (Office of Science and Technology Policy) wrote last Thursday (29 March 2012):

Today, the Obama Administration is announcing the “Big Data Research and Development Initiative.” By improving our ability to extract knowledge and insights from large and complex collections of digital data, the initiative promises to help accelerate the pace of discovery in science and engineering, strengthen our national security, and transform teaching and learning.

To launch the initiative, six Federal departments and agencies will announce more than $200 million in new commitments that, together, promise to greatly improve the tools and techniques needed to access, organize, and glean discoveries from huge volumes of digital data. Learn more about ongoing Federal government programs that address the challenges of, and tap the opportunities afforded by, the big data revolution in our Big Data Fact Sheet.

We also want to challenge industry, research universities, and non-profits to join with the Administration to make the most of the opportunities created by Big Data. Clearly, the government can’t do this on its own. We need what the President calls an “all hands on deck” effort.

Some companies are already sponsoring Big Data-related competitions, and providing funding for university research. Universities are beginning to create new courses—and entire courses of study—to prepare the next generation of “data scientists.” Organizations like Data Without Borders are helping non-profits by providing pro bono data collection, analysis, and visualization. OSTP would be very interested in supporting the creation of a forum to highlight new public-private partnerships related to Big Data.

If topic maps don’t garner some of the $200 million we have no one to blame but ourselves.

The Big Data Fact Sheet is thirteen pages of where the White House sees “big data” issues.

December 5, 2011

US intelligence group seeks Machine Learning breakthroughs

Filed under: Funding,Intelligence — Patrick Durusau @ 7:50 pm

US intelligence group seeks Machine Learning breakthroughs

From the post:

Machine Learning technology is found in everything from spam detection programs to intelligent thermostats, but can the technology make a huge leap to handle the exponentially larger amounts of information and advanced applications of the future?

Researchers from the government’s cutting edge research group, the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA), certainly hope so and this week announced that they are looking to the industry for new ideas that may become the basis for cutting edge Machine Learning projects.

Read more: From Anonymous to Hackerazzi: The year in security mischief-making

From IARPA: The focus of our request for information is on recent advances toward automatic machine learning, including automation of architecture and algorithm selection and combination, feature engineering, and training data scheduling for usability by non-experts, as well as scalability for handling large volumes of data.   Machine Learning is used extensively in application areas of interest including speech, language, vision, sensor processing and the ability to meld that data into a single, what IARPA calls multi-modal system.

“In many application areas, the amount of data to be analyzed has been increasing exponentially (sensors, audio and video, social network data, web information) stressing even the most efficient procedures and most powerful processors. Most of these data are unorganized and unlabeled and human effort is needed for annotation and to focus attention on those data that are significant,” IARPA stated.

This could be interesting, depending on how you developed the interface. What if the system actually learned from its users while it was being used? So that not only did it provide faster access to more accurate information, it “learned” how to better do its job from the analysts using the software.

Especially if part of that “learning” was on what basis to merge information from disparate sources.

Note: Responses to the RFI are due by 27 January 2012.

November 27, 2011

DOD looks to semantics for better data-sharing, cost savings

Filed under: Federation,Funding,Government Data — Patrick Durusau @ 8:50 pm

DOD looks to semantics for better data-sharing, cost savings by Amber Currin.

From Federal Computer Week:

In its ongoing quest to catalyze cost efficiencies and improve information-sharing, the Defense Department is increasingly looking to IT to solve problems of all sizes. The latest bid involves high-tech search capabilities, interoperable data and a futuristic, data-rich internet known as semantic web.

In a new RFI, the Defense Information Systems Agency and Deputy Chief Management Office are looking to strengthen interoperability and data-sharing for a vast array of requirements through an enterprise information web (EIW). Their envisioned EIW is built on semantic web, which will allow better enterprise-wide collection, analysis and reporting of data necessary for managing personnel information and business systems, as well as protecting troops on the ground with crucial intelligence.

“At its heart, semantic web is about making it possible to integrate and share information at a web scale in a simple way that traditional databases don’t allow,” said James Hendler, senior constellation professor of the Tetherless World Research Constellation at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

One way semantic web helps is by standardizing information to enable databases to better communicate with each other – something that could be particularly helpful for DOD’s diverse systems and lexicons.

“The information necessary for decision-making is often contained in multiple source systems managed by the military services, components and/or defense agencies. In order to provide an enterprise view or answer questions that involve multiple services or components, each organization receives data requests then must interpret the question and collect, combine and present the requested information,” the RFI reads.

Oh, and:

“DOD historically spends more than $6 billion annually developing and maintaining a portfolio of more than 2,000 business systems and web services. Many of these systems, and the underlying processes they support, are poorly integrated. They often deliver redundant capabilities that optimize a single business process with little consideration to the overall business enterprise,” DOD Deputy Chief Management Officer Beth McGrath said in an April 4 memo. “It is imperative, especially in today’s limited budget environment, to optimize our business processes and the systems that support them to reduce our annual business systems spending.”

Just in case you are interested, the deadline for responses is 19 December 2011. A direct link to the RFI.

I may actually respond. Would there be any interest in my posting my response to the RFI to get reader input on my responses?

So I could revise it week by week until the deadline.

Might be a nice way to educate other contenders and the DoD about topic maps in general.

Comments?

BTW, if you are interested in technology and the U.S. federal government, try reading Federal Computer Week on a regular basis. At least you will know what issues are “up in the air” and vocabulary being used to talk about them.

November 15, 2011

VC funding for Hadoop and NoSQL tops $350m

Filed under: Funding,Hadoop,NoSQL — Patrick Durusau @ 7:58 pm

VC funding for Hadoop and NoSQL tops $350m

From the post:

451 Research has today published a report looking at the funding being invested in Apache Hadoop- and NoSQL database-related vendors. The full report is available to clients, but below is a snapshot of the report, along with a graphic representation of the recent up-tick in funding.

According to our figures, between the beginning of 2008 and the end of 2010 $95.8m had been invested in the various Apache Hadoop- and NoSQL-related vendors. That figure now stands at more than $350.8m, up 266%.

That statistic does not really do justice to the sudden uptick of interest, however. The figures indicate that funding for Apache Hadoop- and NoSQL-related firms has more than doubled since the end of August, at which point the total stood at $157.5m.

Takes more work than winning the lottery but on the other hand it is encouraging to see that kind of money being spread around.

But, past funding is just that, past funding. Encouraging but the real task is creating solutions that attract future funding.

Suggestions/comments?

November 9, 2011

Accel Partners announces $100M Big Data Fund…

Filed under: Conferences,Funding — Patrick Durusau @ 7:42 pm

Accel Partners announces $100M Big Data Fund — to invest in Hadoop, NoSQL and other cool stuff

From the post:

Venture firm Accel Partners has carved out a $100 million “big data” fund to invest in companies focused on building new IT infrastructure or on applications than run on that new infrastructure.

Accel, based in Palo Alto, Calif., at the heart of Silicon Valley’s venture capital community, has invested in companies like Facebook, Dropbox, Cloudera and Etsy.

As such, the firm has seen how companies like Facebook have been forced to exploit new technologies to store and analyze their huge amounts of data more efficiently. In Facebook’s case, it has used open source project Hadoop to help it process the billions of messages it receives each day. NoSQL database technology is another way companies have become more efficient in storing data.

All big Web companies, including Google, Yahoo and Twitter, and increasingly large enterprise companies, are building applications on these platforms.

Ping Li, the partner at Accel (pictured right) who has led the firm’s investments in in companies such as Cloudera — which commercialized the Hadoop technology — said the new fund will be invested in two types of companies: (1) companies building out the new infrastructure, including in storage, security and management; and (2) companies building applications on top of that infrastructure (spanning, for example, business intelligence, collaboration, mobile and vertical apps).

He said these companies will span just about every sector, from enterprise to gaming — all of which will require new kinds of data-intensive platforms, he said. Investments will be made globally, he added.

Over the last 30 years, legacy data platforms, including relational databases, drove the emergence of significant companies like Oracle, SAP and Symantec, Li said. Likewise, big data will usher in a new era of multi-billion software companies, Li says.

The firm has carved out the $100 million from its existing funds, so this does not represent a fresh dollop of cash, Li said.

Accel also plans to host a “big data” conference in Spring, 2012, to drive discussion on technology trends in the sector, Li said.

You may not get part of this $100 million but attempting to do so will be good practice for next time.

I will keep watch for the Spring 2012 conference.

October 31, 2011

Venture Capital (VC) Blog Directory – 2011 Edition

Filed under: Funding — Patrick Durusau @ 7:33 pm

Venture Capital (VC) Blog Directory – 2011 Edition

From Larry Cheng’s blog “Thinking about Thinking:”

This is the 4th edition of the Venture Capital Blog Directory (1st edition, 2nd edition, 3rd edition). This directory includes 149 venture capital, microVC/seed, and growth equity blogs. The imperfect statistic used to rank these blogs is their average monthly uniques in Q410 from Compete (more methodology info below). Blogs that have seen increased traffic over Q409 by 1,000+ uniques/month are highlighted in bold. There is an additional list below of VC blogs below that had insufficient Compete data. To subscribe to the top 15 VC blogs through Google Reader, click here: Top 15 VC Blogs. As always, if there is any information missing or incorrect, please leave it in the comment field. Many thanks to my colleagues at Volition Capital for their assistance with this directory – we hope it’s a useful service for everyone.

Topic maps are a lot of fun to write and write about but end of the day, we all have to make money from their use as well.

Thought this would be of interest to start-ups using topic maps (or technology start-ups generally).

Best of luck!

PS: Speaking of making money, if you are lucky and need a standards editor/topic map theorist, you know where to find me. 😉

September 21, 2011

CITRIS – Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society

Filed under: Biomedical,Environment,Funding,Health care,Information Retrieval — Patrick Durusau @ 7:08 pm

CITRIS – Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society

The mission statement:

The Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society (CITRIS) creates information technology solutions for many of our most pressing social, environmental, and health care problems.

CITRIS was created to “shorten the pipeline” between world-class laboratory research and the creation of start-ups, larger companies, and whole industries. CITRIS facilitates partnerships and collaborations among more than 300 faculty members and thousands of students from numerous departments at four University of California campuses (Berkeley, Davis, Merced, and Santa Cruz) with industrial researchers from over 60 corporations. Together the groups are thinking about information technology in ways its never been thought of before.

CITRIS works to find solutions to many of the concerns that face all of us today, from monitoring the environment and finding viable, sustainable energy alternatives to simplifying health care delivery and developing secure systems for electronic medical records and remote diagnosis, all of which will ultimately boost economic productivity. CITRIS represents a bold and exciting vision that leverages one of the top university systems in the world with highly successful corporate partners and government resources.

I mentioned CITRIS as an aside (News: Summarization and Visualization) yesterday but then decided it needed more attention.

Its grants are limited the four University of California campuses mentioned above. Shades of EU funding restrictions. Location has a hand in the selection process.

Still, the projects funded by CITRIS could likely profit from the use of topic maps and as they say, a rising tide lifts all boats.

August 7, 2011

U.S. to Fund Hacking Projects That Thwart Cyber-Threats

Filed under: Funding,Marketing,Topic Maps — Patrick Durusau @ 7:07 pm

U.S. to Fund Hacking Projects That Thwart Cyber-Threats

From the post:

LAS VEGAS—Former L0pht hacker known as “Mudge” discussed a new government initiative to fund hacking projects designed to help block cyber-threats at the Black Hat security conference.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency will fund new cyber-security proposals under the new Cyber-Fast Track project, Peiter Zatko, currently a program manager for the agency’s information innovation office, said in his Aug. 4 keynote speech at Black Hat. The project, originally announced at ShmooCon cyber-security conference back in January, will bridge the gap between hacker groups and government agencies, he said.

Under the Cyber-Fast Track initiative, DARPA will fund between 20 to 100 projects annually. Open to anybody, researchers can pitch DARPA with ideas and have a project approved and funded within 14 days of the application, Zatko said. Developers will retain intellectual property rights while DARPA will operate under government use rights, Zatko said.

That sounds awfully attractive.

Suspect the more specific the proposal the better chance of getting it funded, so will be omitting the universality arguments about topic maps and the coming data singularity. 😉

I don’t hang out in hacker circles (oversight on my part) so I guess the first step is to look at some of the conferences to see what threats are being discussed along with current remedies. To get a feel for where topic maps could make a difference.

If you do hang out in hacker circles (don’t tell me) and you are interested in working on a topic maps proposals for DARPA (I won’t ask where you get all your brilliant hacker ideas from, you must just read a lot), drop me a post.

August 2, 2011

XBRL Challenge ($20K Prize)

Filed under: Funding,Marketing,Topic Maps,XBRL — Patrick Durusau @ 7:54 pm

XBRL Challenge ($20K Prize)

OK, I admit that after the US budget debate, $20K doesn’t sound like a lot of money. 😉 But, think of the prestige, groupies, etc., that would go along with winning first place.

From the website:

Over 1770 companies have already filed XBRL-formatted financial statements to the SEC and by year-end 2011, all public companies will be doing so. While several XBRL-enabled tools are available on the marketplace today, we’ve created the XBRL Challenge to encourage the development of more tools and build awareness among analysts about the wealth of data available to them.

The XBRL Challenge is a contest that invites participants to contribute open source analytical applications for investors that leverage corporate XBRL data.

Here is the short description of what they are looking for:

Tools that rely on XBRL data, e.g., tool that extracts data for multi-company comparison via desktop application; or one that creates real-time valuation measures and delivers to mobile devices.

I am going to check out the rules and existing apps.

See you near the winner’s circle?

Announcing the Digital Science Catalyst Prize

Filed under: Funding — Patrick Durusau @ 7:54 pm

Announcing the Digital Science Catalyst Prize

From the website:

Since we launched in December 2010, the Digital Science team has been hard at work not only crafting our own software solutions for science, but also engaging with and supporting a range of start-ups and innovators who are working to make research more effective. Today we’re launching a new initiative set to push that engagement and investment in technology one step further.

We’re thrilled to unveil the Catalyst Prize – a programme designed to unleash the most promising new ideas for software in science. This provides grants up to £15,000 (around $24,000) each to fund exciting innovations, and to take them from concept to prototype. They also come with the opportunity to work with the Digital Science team to help refine, develop and promote the innovation. In this way we hope to lower barriers and foster greater creativity in information-technology solutions for science.

The process is simple and fast. Applicants are asked to submit a short proposal detailing their idea and the impact they envision it having in scientific research. Those who pass an initial screening are then asked to present their idea, preferably in person at a Digital Science office (in London, New York or Tokyo), following which a final decision is made. Applications are open now and are accepted at any time.

Sounds like a plan to me!

BTW, saw this on a tweet by Tim O’Reilly.

July 17, 2011

Social Media in Strategic Communication (SMISC)

Filed under: Funding,Marketing,Social Networks — Patrick Durusau @ 7:25 pm

Social Media in Strategic Communication (SMISC)

From the Synopsis:

DARPA is soliciting innovative research proposals in the area of social media in strategic communication. Proposed research should investigate innovative approaches that enable revolutionary advances in science, devices, or systems. Specifically excluded is research that primarily results in evolutionary improvements to the existing state of practice. See the full DARPA-BAA-11-64 document attached.

Important Dates
Posting Date: see announcement at www.fbo.gov
Proposal Due Date
Initial Closing: August 30, 2011, 12:00 noon (ET)
Final Closing: October 11, 2011, 12:00 noon (ET)
Industry Day: Tuesday, August 2, 2011

Contracting Office Address:
3701 North Fairfax Drive
Arlington, Virginia 22203-1714
Primary Point of Contact.:
Dr. Rand Waltzman
DARPA-BAA-11-64@darpa.mil

From the Funding Opportunity Description:

DARPA is soliciting innovative research proposals in the area of social media in strategic communication. Proposed research should investigate innovative approaches that enable revolutionary advances in science, devices, or systems. Specifically excluded is research that primarily results in evolutionary improvements to the existing state of practice. (emphasis added)

I think topic maps could be part of an approach that is revolutionary, not evolutionary.

I don’t have the infrastructure to field an application but if you do and have need for a wooly-pated consultant on such a project, give me a call.

PS: I first saw this in a tweet from Tim O’Reilly.

September 20, 2010

Cost/Benefit of Semantics

Filed under: Funding,Marketing,Semantics — Patrick Durusau @ 6:34 pm

The cost/benefit ratio of imposing semantics on data is an open area for research.

The cost of creating an index for a technical book is something O’Reilly, for example, can estimate quite closely.

What I haven’t found is a way to estimate the benefit of having such an index?

I deeply appreciate a good index but that isn’t the hard stuff that goes into a cost/benefit calculation.

Imposing semantics at a journal article level and imposing semantics on the contents of articles are two very different costs.

What measure should be used to justify either one?

July 20, 2010

DARPA Funding for Topic Maps?

Filed under: Funding,Topic Maps — Patrick Durusau @ 5:19 pm

Research Announcement DARPA?RA?10?76 July 2, 2010 seeks applications to the Computer Science Study Group.

Who is eligible?

An eligible participant must be a junior faculty member at a U.S. Institution of Higher Education. Participants should be no more than seven years beyond receiving a doctoral degree, pretenure junior faculty, with demonstrated exceptional potential for world?class contributions to the field of computer science. Each participant shall have intense research interest in a computer science topic of relevance to DoD and demonstrate novel ideas that lead to fundamental advances rather than incremental work in the field….

Topic maps fit the bill for being fundamental rather than incremental advance in the area of semantic integration.

Ask yourself: “Do I want to propose another ‘…teach the world (agency, government, etc.) to sing in perfect harmony‘ proposal, or do I want to submit something truly different? Something that makes sense out of a cacophony of data streams, while preserving the cacophony for later review?”

For what it’s worth, I don’t think terrorists will use vocabularies designed by intelligence agencies so they can “sing in perfect harmony.”

Pass this along to junior faculty members at U.S. Institutions of Higher Education and urge them to propose research based on topic maps.

******
This announcement is US-centric but I am more than happy to post notices of funding opportunities from other governments or organizations that may be of interest to topic map researchers.

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