Evri and Radar Networks
March 29, 2010
The Semantic Web, as those of you who have read my study Google Version 2.0, may become Google’s wading pool. The company continues to provide easy-to-use services whilst keeping the complications of semantic technology under the bonnet.
Evri, a start up founded by Paul Allen (one of the Microsoft founders), focused on semantic technology. The company’s focus is on the context around a conversation. The company’s said:
Evri is a technology company developing products that change the way consumers discover and engage with content on the Web. Publishers large and small have leveraged Evri’s semantic platform on their websites, including some of the world’s most prestigious news organizations like the Washington Post, Hearst Publishing (www.lmk.com), Ziff Davis, Yahoo! and the Times of London. With over 2 million profile pages across over 500 categories, several content recommendation applications and a feature-rich API platform, Evri is rapidly improving consumers’ access to information on the topics they value most.
In March 2010, Evri acquired Radar Networks, another player in the semantic sector but one with more marketing moxie in my opinion. Radar Network’s service is called Twine, and you can give it a test drive on the Twine Web site. Evri noted:
Twine is an online service for intelligently finding, organizing and sharing information with the people you trust. With the acquisition of Twine, Evri gains an incredibly talented team with proven momentum in semantic search and content discovery to complement our own. By combining the best of social and semantic filtering, we are greatly accelerating our ability to help people cut through the clutter and discover relevant news and information from across the real time web.
Evri offers contextual and topic based widgets. One of the widgets that I found useful is the Popover button. Once installed, an icon appears below a blog post. A click displays related content. Useful.
Evri offers an iPhone app called EvriVerse:
The EvriVerse app from Evri.com let’s you browse through popular people, places and things on demand. Watching a TV show and want to know who the actor is being compared to or curious to find out who your favorite celebrity is feuding with this week? Simply enter the name of the person, place or thing and find out who is connected to your topic. Learn more about them through related news stories and find additional pictures, videos, connections and news on their Evri.com topic pages.
EvriVerse from http://itunes.apple.com/app/evriverse/id312716560?mt=8#
Are semantic companies about to catch fire? The UK’s decision to set up a semantic institute and the number of emails I get about semantic technology suggest that interest is increasing. The challenge, in my opinion, will be to outsmart Google, which has the likes of Ramanathan Guha and Tim Bray drinking Odwalla in the Google cafeteria. Google has traction, lots of customers, and lots of distractions. An upstart could snag the semantic sector, leaving Google looking at another firm’s tail lights as Google is watching Facebook’s tail lights now.
Stephen E Arnold, March 29, 2010
No one paid me to write this article. Because I reference semantics, I will report no pay to the USGS which once had an interest in semantic technologies.
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