The OWL Web Ontology Language for Services (OWL-S) has been officially submitted to and and accepted by the W3C as a member submission. The submission is described as

This submission contains a proposal for a Web Services description language, the Web Ontology Language for Services (OWL-S), which builds on Semantic Web technology developed at W3C. OWL-S is an OWL-based Web service ontology, which supplies a core set of markup language constructs for describing the properties and capabilities of Web services in unambiguous, computer-interpretable form. OWL-S markup of Web services will facilitate fuller automation of Web service tasks, such as Web service discovery, execution, composition and interoperation.

The real content of the submission is included in two key documents:

• OWL-S: Semantic Markup for Web Services
• OWL-S’ Relationship to Selected Other Technologies

and in a set of eight ontologies encoded in OWL: Service, Profile, Process, Grounding, Logical Expression Constructs, List Constructs, Profile Additional Parameters, and Actor.

Dr. Gruber was well known for his definition of “ontology”. In this interview, he sticks with that definition and stressed the importance of “design ontology”. He also mentions several terms like “semiformal ontology”, which consists of both an informal textual description and formal terms. That provides authors the freedom of encoding knowledge between fully formal and purely infomal. The success of an ontology should be evaluated by its followers and adoption but not its theoritical expressiveness.

In the Mind of the Enemy — The Artificial Intelligence of Halo 2 describes the AI related techniques that have been incorporated into Halo 2, the new version of the popular xbox first person shooter game. (Not that we approve of games that encourage people to participate in mindless violence and aggressive behavior.) In this article, Chris Butcher, the software engineer responsible for making Halo’s agents more intelligent, describes some of the requirements and the techniques used to meet them. While there is not a lot of technical detail, the piece does a good job of motivating how game companies are using AI techniques. There is probably an even bigger role for intelligent characters in MMORPGs (massively multiplayer online role-playing games) like Middle-Earth Online. These games are much more about interactions among groups of players and artificial agents (mobiles). Moreover, the primary interactions are not always shooting, slashing and exploding. Given the way people are, I expect that interactive computer games will turn out to be one of the most important application areas for much of AI. Adding more AI to these games does involve scaling issues that are not present in PC or console games like Halo2. A successful MMORPG game uses a server farm to maintain a large and complex artificial world in which there may be on the order of ten thousand human players simultaneously interacting with an even larger collection of artificial agents.

As seen on ComputerWorld:

Sir TimBL talks about multiple standards for the same purpose — for instance BPEL, BPML, WS-Choreography .. for Web Services. How do we connect these together ?

I think the largest liaison may be in the area of core ontologies for specific applications, which could seed a lot of connectivity. Calendar events are standardized in iCalendar at the IETF, and the RDF community is figuring out what they mean for conversion to RDF and then integration with other data, and the same is happening with media metadata as well as financial information.

Sir TimBL thinks core ontologies might finally bring together all bodies working on standards. The same holds for the Semantic Web in general.

Core ontologies are clearly gaining steam. We are now beginning to see the effects of how some core ontologies(structured information) are changing the way we use the Web. My earlier *static* bookmarks are now becoming obselete. Enter the *live* bookmarks world.

OAKLEY THUMP is the world’s first digital music eyewear. No more wires. Just high-performance optics forged with an integrated, state-of-the-art digital audio engine. Listen to music virtually anywhere. Change the way you see and hear the world. OAKLEY THUMP comes in seven color combinations and two types: a 128 MB version and a 256 MB version with polarized lenses.

The third AIS SIGSEMIS bulletin (v1n3, October 2004) is available. SIGSEMIS is the official quarterly newsletter of the Association for Information Systems Special Interest Group on Semantic Web and Information Systems. It features an interview with Tom Gruber, whom the interviewer calls the Ontology Man, who has some interesting perspectives on what kinds of ontologies are really needed to support useful systems. It’s shaping up to be a useful venue for information and news on applications of semantic web technologies to building information systems. While the format looks great and probably requires publication in pdf, it would be even better if SIGSEMIS can eat from the common dog food bowl and publish the bulletin in HTML, maybe even annotated in RDF. After all, tomorrow is another day.

I gave up on my PDA because it was hard to enter long text using the stylist. Palm did come out with a mobile keyboard awhile back. But, it’s not as cool as this Nokia wireless keyboard.

The Nokia wireless keyboard connects to compatible phones via Bluetooth. Plus, it has an “automatic power-off when folded” feature.

Check out the Flash demo.

Reported by News-Medical.Net

“UK scientists have designed a knowledge management system which could enable medical practitioners to make speedy, informed decisions about breast cancer patients. The project pulls together information which was previously held in separate locations and it has the potential to revolutionise patient diagnosis and management.”

This is work by the MIAKT project (Medical Imaging with Advanced Knowledge Technologies). The story further reports –

“The system uses Semantic web technologies, enabling information from X-ray mammograms, MRI images, biopsy results and data from the clinician to be made available …. Semantic web technologies allow information to be linked in such a way that it can be easily processed by machines. Practitioners can then view different types of images and scans, call up patient information, and automatically generate reports. It is also possible to investigate, annotate and analyse the data using web and Grid services.”

Analyzing data intelligently is the key.

Gizmodo has an excerpt of a new o’Reilly book Smart Home Hacks. O’Reilly has some addtional material from the book online. There is also a short interview (by IM!) with the author, Gordon Meyer. It looks like the book mostly focuses on X10.

Sun invites outside involvement with Java 6. Java 6 is expected sometime in the first half of 2006.

“The new version will be easier to manage, exposing information that outside management software can use to make control decisions, said Mark Reinhold, chief J2SE engineer. And it will be easier to find problems, with an “attach-on-demand” feature that can let debugging software graft onto software while it’s running instead of just before it’s launched. … Another item on the list is support for a basic set of Web services called WS-I, Hamilton said. That basic set, standardized through the Web Services Interoperability organization, had been scheduled for the Tiger release. … And Mustang [1] will have better integration with graphical user interfaces, including Microsoft’s upcoming Longhorn version of Windows, Reinhold said. “

[1] Mustang is the codename for java 1.6. Tiger was the
codename for for Java 1.5.

The CMU Softagents Lab has released a beta version of the OWL-S
Development Environment. OWL-S is an ontology providing with a core set of markup language constructs for describing the properties and capabilities of Web services in unambiguous, computer-intepretable form. CMU’s development environment helps a developer through the process
of publishing a semantic web service — from the Java generation, to the
compilation of OWL-S descriptions, to the deployment and registration
with UDDI. A brief introduction and description of the editor is available.

According to the BusinessWeek, the following are the top 10 technology trends:

1. Web services will evolve and create new businesses
2. Patients will demand online medical records
3. Corporate computing won’t see big changes for at least five years
4. The next big tech innovation will come out of China
5. Blogging and other online content will force traditional media to change
6. California will lead the world in embryonic stem-cell research
7. Text messaging will become more pervasive
8. New consumer technologies will appeal to more than just young hipsters
9. Every consumer-electronic product you own is about to become obsolete
10. Utility computing will keep tech spending strong

The Mobile Technology Weblog has some interesting comments.