After another aggressive round of review by both internal and external judges and consultation with finalists, it’s been determined that none of the entries could move forward without comprehensive reworking of the strategy in order to realize any significant commercial potential.

As a result, we have decided to officially close the SemanticHacker Innovators’ Challenge. While we were gratified and impressed by the effort that went into the entries, we have concluded that we will not fund the remaining finalists.

The Challenge Team at TextWise would once again like to thank all the participants for their time and effort.

After the close of the SemanticHacker Innovators’ Challenge, we began a rigorous vetting process with 17 entries.  A combination of internal teams and a group of 10 external, independent judges were organized to review and score the entries. Through this process, we have eliminated a group of entries from consideration.

A small remaining group of entries were deemed to require “further review.” In light of this, we have found it necessary to extend the deadline to reach a decision.  We anticipate that this final process will be completed no later than the first Friday in October. During that time we will contact the remaining entrants for more details on the submission to determine if any of the last round entries might qualify for the reward as submitted. All entrants will be contacted by the end of the day today notifying them of their submission status.

The Challenge Team

If you’re attending KMWorld & Intranets in San Jose this month, please stop by our booth to hear about what we’ve got going on.

We’re located at booth #320 and we look forward to meeting you!

Research Scientist Position Overview

TextWise LLC is actively undertaking research, development, and productization of semantic technologies. As part of this effort, we have an immediate need for a research scientist to perform the following duties:

• Investigate and elaborate techniques for representing the semantic content of natural language texts.
• Develop language-specific and language-independent algorithms and heuristics.
• Develop software prototypes in order to test these algorithms and heuristics using real world data.
• Corpus analysis for the discovery of linguistic patterns and features.
• Develop and maintain content databases for development and testing.
• Design and perform evaluations of algorithms and prototypes.

Required qualifications for this position are as follows:

• Masters or PhD in linguistics, computational linguistics, or closely related area.
• Competence in programming in one or more of the following: C/C++, Perl or Java.
• Experience in developing and applying corpus-based methods in text analysis.
• Fluency in English.
• Experience creating taxonomies and/or ontologies extremely desirable.
• Experience in machine learning techniques a plus.
• Fluency (speaking, reading, and language theory) of one foreign language preferred.

TextWise is a small company with a start-up atmosphere. The team style is collaborative and high energy. You will work daily with a team of scientists. In addition, you will also interact with the Software Engineers, Quality Assurance, and Project Management, and Sales.

This position reports to the Chief Science Officer. Salary is commensurate with experience.

Please send resumes and cover letters to job_ref_500 [@] textwise [DOT] com.

TextWise will be speaking and exhibiting at the 2008 Semantic Technology Conference in San Jose, CA. We would like to invite you to attend with a $200 discount off the full registration fee. The discount expires May 9th. MORE INFORMATION. The tutorials, sessions, etc. run from May 18th – 23rd.

Join our conference session on Wednesday, May 21st from 9:45 – 10:45am.

Also, look for us at booth #302 and we’ll have some of our beta applications up (internet access permitting) that you can play with and plenty of representatives to chat with. Hope to see you there!

The doors to the SemanticHacker API and SemanticHacker Innovators’ Challenge officially launched today at 9am EST.

TechCrunch broke the news first.

Official Press Release

Unlocking the intellectual capital trapped inside organizations that deal with enormous amounts of text is a major challenge. To accelerate the development of new semantic business applications tackling this problem, TextWise LLC, a pioneer in semantic application development, today announced the SemanticHacker Innovators’ Challenge (SHIC). TextWise is offering a $1 million incentive for each useful and inventive implementation of the firm’s open API for semantic discovery.

“Organizations need to cut through the noise and see what really matters both in their information archives and on the Web. They need systems that can help them process masses of information and understand what it all means,” said Connie Kenneally, Textwise CEO. With a system that can automatically discern the meaning of text, it becomes easy to bring relevant, related information to the surface from huge volumes of text, with little or no prior organization and no keyword search.

“We get paralyzed by the scale of what we find online and in our corporate networks,” stated Ms. Kenneally. The TextWise SemanticHacker open API uses patented technology to decode and distill the meaning of any piece of text by creating a Semantic Signature®. A Semantic Signature® can be thought of as a representation of the ‘DNA’ of that text.

TextWise’s multi-million dollar challenge is designed to showcase the power of the firm’s patented Semantic Signature® technology and to accelerate the development of breakthrough applications for Semantic Discovery. The overall goal of the SemanticHacker Innovators’ Challenge is to encourage the development of software prototypes and/or business plans that demonstrate commercial viability in specific industries. Information-intensive businesses in the legal, pharmaceutical, and financial markets are all good candidates for Semantic Discovery applications, but other industries are also of interest.

TextWise is making its open API available for immediate use and inviting developers and business innovators throughout the U.S. to submit software prototypes and/or business plan ideas. The new site also includes a simple demonstration of the use of Semantic Signatures. “We know that there are brilliant minds out there, looking for ways to crack the infoglut epidemic, and we’re ready to fund the best and most inspiring solutions with up to a million dollars each,” said Ms. Kenneally.

An expert judging panel composed of industry experts, venture capitalists and representatives from TextWise and its advisory board will assess all entries to the TextWise SHIC program. Once selected, the winner or winners of the Challenge will each receive $100,000 immediately, with the potential for revenue share up to an additional $900,000 over the first year after the chosen application reaches the market.

The SemanticHacker Innovators’ Challenge is open to Individuals who are legal U.S. residents and over the age of 18 at the time the entry is submitted. Full details on SHIC including rules, entry requirements and judging criteria are available online.

TextWise is busy extending its application reach beyond its successful beta in contextual advertising to other semantic applications including an ad replacement plug-in using semantic matching, a discovery tool for eBay auctions, a blog organization service that uses semantic bookmarks, and a Facebook application for sharing conversation and organizing links among users.