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Who says the Semantic Web exists only in the minds of academics? Last week, at the closing keynote of the Semantic Technology conference, Rob Larson and Evan Sandhaus of the New York Times unveiled their plans of embracing the Semantic Web by releasing their corpus in the form of Linked Data. The vast amount of data owned by the New York Times will be a major addition to the rapidly growing Linked Data map. Larson pointed out:

It’s been fundamental to what we do for a long time. We feel we’re good at it, but our content is an island… This is wholly consistent with our open strategy… to facilitate access to slices of our data for those who want to include it in their applications.

Watch Larson’s announcement:

Good news from the Raw Data Now front. Tim Berners-Lee has been asked by Gordon Brown to help open up access to government data in the UK. Let’s hope this is not just a publicity stunt to boost Mr Brown’s plummeting popularity, but a true effort in creating a more transparent government. If this works, it should point more governments towards this direction.

In the meantime, critics in the UK point out the great obstacles such an attempt will stumble upon. BBC technology correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones comments:

I fear Sir Tim may be in for a bruising few months, as he tries to convince Sir Humphrey et al to let it all hang out.

Clearly, a lot has to change in the idiosyncrasy of state officials for Sir Tim’s vision to fully come to life, but at least he’s been given this chance. Let’s just see how this goes…

Greg Boutin, founder of Growthroute Ventures, recently posted a series of articles about the latest trends on the web: Web 3.0, Linked Data, and the Semantic Web. Greg attempts an in-depth analysis of these concepts, the technologies and innovations behind them, and how they can be combined to form the next generation web. Richard MacManus of ReadWriteWeb has posted a recap of these articles, together with some of his views on the future of the Semantic Web and the role of Google. Richard concludes:

It’s clear to us that the time for structured data has come. We’re beginning to see it in the current wave of Linked Data sets being released, and in the support that big companies, like Google and Yahoo, are showing for structured data. Who knows, maybe the Semantic Web is nearly upon us too.

Tim Berners-Lee, father of the World Wide Web and the Semantic Web, talked in TED 2009 about the origin and evolution of the web. He described how he first came up with the idea of hypertext on 1989 and how difficult it was to communicate this to his boss. Fortunately, he was allowed to work on it on the side as a “play project”

He also talked passionately about the future of the web and Linked Data. He believes sharing data on the web can have so many benefits and that everyone should be contributing to this. He even engaged the audience in chanting: “Raw Data Now!”.

Watch the talk here: