This conference is being held September 16-18, 2013 at the Hyatt Regency Irvine, California. The Seventh IEEE International Conference on Semantic Computing (ICSC 2013) is an international forum for researchers and practitioners to present research that advances the state of the art and practice of semantic computing, as well as identifying emerging research topics and defining the future of the field. More information can be found here: http://www.ieee-icsc.org/. The deadline has been extended so there is still time to send in technical paper or demonstration submissions.

Bill Gassett presents an article by David Amerland providing the benefits and steps to take advantage of semantic search technology and to be recognized as a trusted realtor and matched up with prospects online. How Real Estate Agents Can Benefit From Semantic Search provides step-by-step instructions for realtors to get noticed and trusted online. Other service providers looking to establish a trusting online presence and new leads for their business can easily adapt the steps listed to take advantage of semantic search.

Search Engine Land columnist Barbara Starr writes about the pace of semantic search adoption.   There is a fast and focused effort to get out front using semantic search and graph-based search to provide useful and accurate information to users.  The race is on.

According to GCN bloggers, the Department of Energy has released a semantic search service taking a step toward the Holy Grail of search and  research. SciTech Connect provides access to full text documents of two DOE scientific reference resources, the Information Bridge and the agency’s Energy Citations database.  The two resources comprise 65 years of energy-related scientific citations including 2.5 million citations and 1.4 million journal articles.  SciTEch uses a semantic search approach called keyword-to-concept mapping, mapping keywords in the query to other associated terms, to produce a taxonomy of narrow and related concepts.  You can try it here.

GCN delivers technology assessments, recommendations, and case studies to support Public Sector IT managers.

Planning a vacation to a new destination is not easy.  While online booking is freely available, travel agents remain in high demand.  Travelers’ desires frequently can’t be translated into the perfect set of keywords to get good results on travel search sites. Semantic search will go a long way to correct these problems. Carsten Kraus, CEO of Fact-Finder, discusses the future of travel site search here.

I-SEMANTICS 2013 is the 9th International Conference on Semantic Systems. The conference brings together researchers and practitioners in the areas of semantic technologies, linked data and the semantic web to showcase cutting-edge research, demonstrations, and applications for the corporate and social semantic web. The conference will be held in Graz, Austria on September 4-6, 2013.  To foster synergies among the research fields of knowledge discovery, social computing, and semantic technologies, the I-SEMANTICS Conference will be held together with the I-KNOW Conference, the 13th International Conference on Knowledge Technologies.

The Semantic and Social Media Adaptation and Personalization (SMAP) workshop is the evolution of the Semantic Media Adaptation and Personalization initiative, to discuss the state of the art, recent advances and future perspectives for semantic media adaptation and personalization.  SMAP covers different issues of semantic technologies and social semantic technologies in their use for content creation, media adaptation and filtering, and user profiling.  SMAP 13 is being held in Bayonne, France on December 12 & 13, 2013.

Marcia Lei Zeng and Gale Hodge present a summary of Semantic Search: Magnet for the Needle in the Search Haystack, a Joint NKOS/CENDI Workshop held December 6, 2012. The report can be found in this month’s Magazine of Digital Library Research (D-Lib Magazine). More information on the workshop, including audio recordings of the presentations, is available on the NKOS site.

Gartner has included semantic technologies in the 2013 top technology trends impacting information infrastructure.  You can see the full list here.  Semantic technology is the foundation of smarter tools, providing information analytics to assist with the monetization of assets and/or eliciting trends to help position your organization for the future.

Jim Hendler and team at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have big plans for Watson.  A grant from IBM has provided RPI with their own Watson.  Hendler lays out their plans for improving and learning from Watson here.

Need to learn more about semantics and big data?  Head to ESWC 2013 May 26th, 2013 to May 30th, 2013 in Montpellier, France. While there you can participate in the AI Mashup Challenge.  Semantic Technology and Business 2103 (SemTechBiz) is in San Francisco June 2-5, 2013 and will also cover big data, security, and many other topics. If your conference budget still has a positive balance, STAIR’13: Semantic Technology and Information Retrieval 2013 is in Selangor, Malaysia August 28-29, 2013.