Language Technology News for 2009

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Ventura to licence Nexidia Speech Analytics for service improvements
2009/03/23

http://www.speechtechmag.com/PressRelease/Ventura-Licenses-Nexidia-Spe(...)
Nexidia, a provider of audio search and speech analytics solutions, announced that Ventura, one of the U.K.’s leading outsourcing specialists, has signed an enterprise license agreement to deploy Nexidia’s Enterprise Speech Intelligence (ESI) application to drive improvements in service and quality in its call center solutions. Ventura’s clients include some of the largest global blue-chip and U.K. government organizations. Thus, delivering the highest level of service and driving improved value for money is of paramount importance in ensuring high levels of customer satisfaction. Being able to offer a robust and credible speech analytics solution is central to this and it was Nexidia’s ability to handle huge call volumes and deliver accurate meaningful analyses in very short timeframes that proved decisive for Ventura.

Microsoft to invite developers to test website translator
2009/03/22

http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasi(...)
Microsoft Research released a Web application that can automatically translate Web sites into other languages. The Microsoft Research Machine Translator is based on a new API Microsoft, the Microsoft Translator AJAX API, and can translate a Web site into 12 languages, according to a posting on Microsoft's Via Windows Live blog. The Microsoft Translator AJAX API allows people to integrate translation functionality into Web applications and sites.(...) Currently, the translator has the ability to translate a Web site into Arabic, Chinese (Simplified & Traditional), Dutch, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish. Microsoft is working on adding new languages as well, it said.

Search Engine for Business News rolled out
2009/03/19

http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Search-Engines/Search-Engine-for-Business-New(...)
Google, Yahoo and other search-engine companies have cornered the market on search via keywords. However, other organizations have seen opportunity in pushing their own search engines that either sift information through alternate means or focus on a narrow subset of subject matter—such as The Financial Times Group, which is rolling out Newssift.com, designed to search through thousands of global news sources through algorithms based on meaning and context. Newssift.com, after sorting through those news sources, presents its search results in a granular fashion. Say you type "Bill Gates" into its search bar. The site will then allow you to further narrow the search by presenting a number of secondary topics (listed under the categories "Business Topic," "Organization," "Place," "Person" and "Theme") that are cross-indexed with the term "Bill Gates," such as "Global Health," "World Economic Forum" and "Google."

Financial Times group launches semantic search tool NewsSwift.com
2009/03/19

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/ae0a5d4c-14b8-11de-8cd1-0000779fd2ac.html?nc(...)
The Financial Times Group is entering the field of semantic search with an online product aimed at bringing the business community more accurate information. Newssift, which launched in beta version, is the first project backed by an innovation fund of Pearson, the parent company of the FT news organisation. It aims to differ from traditional search engines, which rely on the correct keywords being entered to return findings, by offering more relevant searches based on meaning and context. Robin Johnson, chief executive of Financial Times Search, a division independent from the FT that created Newssift, said it was a response to two trends. “How people are conducting their dance with the news is changing; and financial markets are in complete retreat, so the wisdom of crowds turns out to be deeply wrong and the minority report becomes pretty important.”

An Innovative Solution for Multilingual Drupal Websites
2009/03/19

http://www.pr.com/press-release/139854
ICanLocalize has introduced ICanLocalize Translator, a new web site localization system for Drupal powered sites.Thousands of small businesses, nonprofits, universities, and government agencies are using Drupal as their web sites' content management system. ICanLocalize Translator automates Drupal localization, making it easy and affordable for the smallest of businesses. Drupal's ability to build multilingual sites plays a major part in its success in becoming the standard for website content management. ICanLocalize takes this a big step forward by automating the entire translation process. Website owners can create contents in their language and ICanLocalize's translation system builds all translated contents. All translation related work, including page contents, navigation and even visitor communication is handled by ICanLocalize Translator.

Evri teams up with 'The Times' of London to support NLP-based online browsing
2009/03/18

http://www.xconomy.com/seattle/2009/03/18/evri-teams-up-with-the-times(...)
Seattle-based Internet startup Evri announced that it has formed a partnership with The Times of London, one of the UK’s leading newspapers, to provide content recommendation software for online articles. For selected stories in the Times Online, Evri’s widget shows up next to the text with a list of links to related articles from the paper’s archives (and some outside websites). The news comes on the heels of a similar deal with the Washington Post.It’s all part of Evri’s continuing efforts to build its audience, says Neil Roseman, the company’s founder and chief executive. Evri was started in 2007, and is backed by $8 million from Paul Allen’s Vulcan Capital. The concept is to use natural language processing to understand connections between entities on the Web—people, products, things—and help you browse what you’re interested in more efficiently. While it’s not intended to replace search engines, Evri does want to change fundamentally how people browse the Web. (Roseman recently wrote about presenting some new features at DEMO 09.)

Clarabridge to offer real-time customer-issue analysis
2009/03/17

http://www.intelligententerprise.com/channels/business_intelligence/sh(...)
Clarabridge has introduced text mining software focused on providing "real-time" analytics and automated reponses to customer feedback and issues. Clarabridge Smart Response analyzes customer-experience information and can route a specific case or other details to a customer service agent, operating unit or customer relationship management system when human intervention is needed. When manual attention isn't needed, the software can generate automatic response letters that acknowledge customers' negative sentiments or frustrations, specific problems and suggestions, and can be configured to attach vouchers, coupons or other forms of compensation.

zAgile to revolutionize Wiki business by semantics
2009/03/17

http://seattle.bizjournals.com/seattle/prnewswire/press_releases/natio(...)
zAgile, Inc., the open source leader in information collaboration, announced the general availability of Wikidsmart, the first application to leverage zAgile's semantic web infrastructure. Wikidsmart's groundbreaking semantic wiki features for Atlassian's Confluence enterprise wiki, enable users to: enter content in a consistent and contextually organized fashion; generate pages of inferred wiki content; automate wiki page and link maintenance; and easily find precise information with context-sensitive navigation and search. Information collaboration is the deep integration of information across teams, tools, and applications, with a common semantic web based infrastructure, enabling comprehensive organization-wide collaboration. The zAgile infrastructure provides a foundation for information integration with other applications in the enterprise.

Microsoft and Creative Commons add ontologies to Word
2009/03/17

http://www.researchinformation.info/news/news_story.php?news_id=448
Microsoft and Creative Commons have developed an ontology add-in for Word. Announced at the recent O’Reilly Emerging Technology Conference, this development should enable authors to add scientific hyperlinks as semantic annotations, drawn from ontologies, to their documents and research papers. This should make it easier for researchers to find peer-related documents and mark up papers as science evolves. 'The web is full of hyperlinks of scholarly articles, but it is nearly impossible for us to find what we need,' said John Wilbanks, vice president for science at Creative Commons. 'The semantic Web tool will help bridge the gap between basic research and meaningful discovery, unlocking the value of research so more people can benefit from the work scientists are doing.'

Google does not plan to include a Welsh language translation in the near future
2009/03/16

http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/2009/04/16/google-transla(...)
IT’S just the latest in a long line of tools designed by one of the world’s best-known internet companies to make our lives that little bit easier. But users of Google Translate – which has followed in the footsteps of the firm’s maps, images and news functions – have spotted one significant flaw: it won’t translate into Welsh. The search engine – which accounts for 90% of all searches in the UK – allows web users to interface in Welsh and was even originally funded by Welsh venture capitalist Michael Moritz. But while its translation service allows phrases from languages including Latvian, Galician and Maltese to be converted to English, Welsh is not afforded the same luxury.

Twine in the course of preparing an Ontology Authoring Tool
2009/03/16

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/twine_could_soon_surpass_deliciou(...)
Nova Spivack's semantic web company Twine is developing a free service to write and host semantic ontologies; the classification trees that enable machines to put concepts in topical context. Ready to play Aristotle and create an ontology of cheese, model airplanes, global anti-hunger organizations or any other topic? What blogging was to publishing, a simple tool that made far more people able to participate, Twine's new ontology writing and hosting service could be to the act of teaching machines about new topics. The company wouldn't let us publish the new service's name but says it is aiming for a launch date this year, as soon as a go-to-market strategy and appropriate partnerships are lined up. The ontologies created won't only work on Twine; they will be referenceable by semantic apps anywhere around the web.

Commission calls for doubling funding for ICT research and innovation
2009/03/13

http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=IP/09/397&form(...)
"For decades to come, ICT will underpin the competitiveness of our economy, the efficiency of our public services and our quality of life. Europe represents the largest share of the world's ICT market. Our economic performance and jobs depend on these technologies. Our task is to make sure that Europe is well-equipped to harness the potential of technologies like the internet or mobile phones. This means taking concrete steps to ensure that Europe takes pole position to shape and benefit from ICT developments," said Viviane Reding, EU Commissioner for Information Society and Media. "That’s why the Commission is proposing steps to seize the opportunities of new developments such as the Future Internet, web-based services and nanoelectronics. These are key in spurring economic upturn. If Europe wants to be ambitious and take the lead, we should double both private and public investments in ICT research by 2020." ICT represents 12 million jobs in Europe and the ICT sector represents 6% of EU GDP. The sector is driving innovation and competitiveness in all sectors of the economy. But there is an important gap between what Europe produces and what it consumes in this knowledge-intensive field. EU investment in strengthening its capacity to research, develop and market innovative ICT is not only smaller than its competitors but also heavily fragmented. Public and private investment in ICT research in Europe is less than half that of the US and the EU attracts five times less venture capital than the US.

Google announced free Speech Recognition Service
2009/03/12

http://ivr.tmcnet.com/topics/ivr-voicexml/articles/52204-google-launch(...)
The Internet’s search and ad leader announced that it’s launching a free speech recognition service that gives users one number for all their phones and then transcribes voice messages into text.Officials at Google, Inc. say “Google Voice” – currently available for users of GrandCentral, a service the company acquired in July 2007 – will be open to new users soon. According to three of Google’s voice product managers – Craig Walker, Vincent Paquet, and Wesley Chan – users will get transcripts of their voicemails and will be able to archive and search all of the SMS text messages you send and receive.

OpenPublish pairs semantic tagging power of OpenCalais with Drupal CMS
2009/03/12

http://newsbreaks.infotoday.com/nbReader.asp?ArticleId=52991
Building of an open application programming interface (API) for its Calais web service called OpenCalais, Thomson Reuters together with Phase2 Technology announced the debut of OpenPublish, a complete Calais-powered publishing suite for the popular open source platform Drupal. The new publishing suite offers semantic metatagging from OpenCalais and a seamless connection to the Linked Data cloud, while leveraging the power of Drupal as a social publishing platform. Available for free download immediately, OpenPublish is designed to make it easier for publishers to maintain relevance and flexibility at a time when user expectations and technology options are rapidly expanding and publisher budgets are contracting. The service includes a starting kit of modules and configurations specifically designed by for the needs of publishers by Phase2 Technology, a provider of web solutions for nonprofit, commercial, and media publishing clients using open source technology.

Twenty years WWW - What's the score?
2009/03/12

http://www.economist.com/science/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13277389
“INFORMATION Management: A Proposal”. That was the bland title of a document written in March 1989 by a then little-known computer scientist called Tim Berners-Lee who was working at CERN, Europe’s particle physics laboratory, near Geneva. Mr Berners-Lee (pictured) is now, of course, Sir Timothy, and his proposal, modestly dubbed the world wide web, has fulfilled the implications of its name beyond the wildest dreams of anyone involved at the time. In fact, the web was invented to deal with a specific problem. In the late 1980s, CERN was planning one of the most ambitious scientific projects ever, the Large Hadron Collider, or LHC. (This opened, and then shut down again because of a leak in its cooling system.) As the first few lines of the original proposal put it, “Many of the discussions of the future at CERN and the LHC era end with the question—‘Yes, but how will we ever keep track of such a large project?’ This proposal provides an answer to such questions.”