Screenshot from Semantico's Dictionarium app

Semantico’s Dictionarium app is available for download from the app store now (short link at http://bit.ly/dictionarium)

We’re really pleased with how quickly we managed to get this live in the app store. The app was approved on first submission – a testament to our internal QA.

Creating a dictionary has given us the perfect opportunity to refine a number of important concepts we use when developing mobile apps.

Throughout the design process we’ve taken care to optimise the display for both the iPhone and the new iPad devices. Delivering an app for both devices is not only essential for publishers, who don’t want to develop the same content twice, but also for end users who don’t want the complication of downloading different apps in order to access the same content.

We’ve built the app to take us through some of the core concepts that publishers will need when taking their content to mobile devices, whatever the subject matter. The essential functionality of Dictionarium is that of a search engine with an integrated e-content reader. Text with hyperlinks allows the user to navigate through the the content and jump from one concept to another.

Semantico’s bespoke publishing platforms deal with large amounts of complex information: putting together the dictionary has allowed us to create and deliver an app with a large data set behind it of 107,757 headwords and 123,742 definitions.

Data compression and application speed optimisations are essential to create a great end user experience and an app that publishers can be proud of. By compressing the database we’ve halved the size of the app from 105MB to 51MB.

The Dictionary is designed so that the main way users find the information they need is through search. Search functionality is important for all online publications. Users expect to be able to find the information they want through keyword searching at the very least, and there’s been no problem with implementing this in the iPhone / iPad environment.

After a successful project it’s pleasing to have had 2,000 downloads in the first week of the app going live. Take a look at the work we’ve done – and make it 3,000! http://bit.ly/dictionarium

SAMS

The Semantico Access Management System (SAMS) is our success story of 2010. Our sophisticated approach to the complex relationships between publishers, librarians and end-users has led to more and more major publishers using SAMS as their access management solution.

The success of the system is based on its responsiveness to the needs of publishers and librarians. We’ve worked hard to implement technology solutions that enable new business models and strengthen revenue. Major updates this year include:

• E-commerce component
  Allowing publishers to sell to individuals, accessing a more diverse marketplace for subscriptions.
• Shibboleth 2 Compliance
  Implementing the latest update of the single sign-on access that users trust
• Inherited access rights
  Making it easier for publishers to reach the purchasing power of libraries, faculties and individuals

Mobile Development

Find out about our Apps and discuss how we can apply our bespoke expertise and rigorous development process to your mobile resources.  To see what we can do download Dictionarium our dictionary app optimised for iPhone and iPad.

Bespoke Development

Semantico develop publishing projects for some of the world’s most innovative publishers. If you know what you want to do next but aren’t sure how to go about it, then we’re more than happy to find you an answer.

Consultancy

Our bespoke work keeps us at the leading edge of online publishing and makes us uniquely placed to help you through some of the trickier questions created by the fast pace of change. Whether it’s data consultancy, the creation of taxonomies, or helping you towards Shibboleth authentication, Semantico can help.

SIPP Rapid

As online publishing begins to splinter across a multitude of mobile devices it becomes more and more important to have a stable, central online publishing platform that is entirely under your control. SIPP Rapid is a proven solution, a cost effective platform to put your publications online.

And coming in 2011…

Among other projects and updates we’re planning new mobile apps and the Semantico Search Connector, to make your content more findable, no matter where it is. Come and have a chat to Richard and Gareth about these new initiatives and be the first to take advantage of these technologies when they’re ready.

Email now to book a meeting with Richard or Gareth to tell us about your latest publishing project and catch up with Semantico.

Dictionarium is now available from:

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/dictionarium/id385922023?mt=8

Dictionarium is an encyclopedic English dictionary. The app brings GNU Project’s publication of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English (GCIDE), to Apple mobile platforms in fully searchable form.

‘The app has been an exciting experience that really shows our commitment to mobile development,’ said Richard Padley, Managing Director, Semantico. ‘We’re now in talks with several major publishers about the development of smartphone apps for their content. We decided it was essential for us to go through the process of developing an app all the way through to submission to the app store. We’re delighted with how smoothly the project has gone and now take great pride in announcing the successful launch of our own app for the iPhone and iPad.’

This will be good news for those librarians who are concerned that the figures publishers provide after the first year of compliance might be inaccurate. An annual audit should ensure that no software errors suddenly appear.

However this will be bad news for those wanting to see costs kept down in a sector which is already hugely challenged by budget cuts. Publishers must bear the extra costs of the annual audit, and it’s hard to imagine that these will not be passed on to libraries in some way.

The audit must be carried out by a professional organisation recognised by the COUNTER project. This includes ABC Electronic in the UK, who offer a fixed price for this service. I contacted ABC Electronic to find out their prices but I did not recieve a reply.

It’s hard to imagine a worse time for this change. Although the financial impact will be fairly small, costs and budgets are being squeezed from all sides at the moment. Lets hope there are no more changes like this in the pipeline.

Update: After I published this ABC Electronic saw this blog post and called me to apologise for not replying to my email enquiry, and I subsequently received pricing details for the COUNTER compliance auditing service they provide.

A supplement to the print edition, the online research project narratives outline the steps successful students take in researching and writing papers. Each narrative in the online Handbook includes a sample paper. In addition to the research narratives, sample papers, and the full text of the print version of the MLA Handbook, the online edition offers two hundred extra examples to illustrate the text. Users can search across the full text and the additional content to find the information they need easily and quickly.

Rosemary G. Feal, Executive Director of the Modern Language Association, said, ‘The research project narratives are an excellent resource for teachers and students. We’re excited to offer users more information about the writing process in such an accessible and engaging format.’

Richard Padley, Managing Director, Semantico, said, ‘The MLA Handbook online contains thoughtful additional material that complements the book.  This is a great example of online and print publication working together to achieve an enhanced user experience, and I’m delighted that this update has been completed successfully.’

The new research paper adds value by providing further detailed information to students, including how to use foreign words and English translations in a research paper and examples of the citation of sound recordings and lyrics.

All of a sudden, a development that for too long appeared to be stalled by the chicken-and-egg problem of how website owners could be induced to tag their metadata looks to be in imminent danger of going seriously mainstream.

Marketers, it seems likely, rather than academics, will lead the charge to the VW campers from here on in. And in all probability, publishers and information providers who aren’t already waxing their boards in preparation for this particular wave of technologic change could risk being left behind as it steadily takes on tsunami proportions and thunders beachwards.

Google, Facebook, Twitter embrace semantic technologies

A recent article in New Scientist (subscription required) described how the giants of search and social media are making moves to actualize the semantic web.

1. Google’s recent acquisition of Metaweb’s Freebase, an open-source repository of structured data – or ‘entity graph’ as the company styles it – containing more than 12 million entities, will potentially enable much smarter searching. Entries in Freebase are tagged in such a way that machines can ‘understand’ what they are about and make meaningful connections between them. At the simplest level, computer searches would, for instance, be able to distinguish between David Mitchell the British Novelist and David Mitchell the British Actor, Comedian and Writer (not to mention David Mitchell the Tory politician, David Mitchell the retired American ice dancer, etc. etc.).
2. Twitter has recently released information about its new ‘annotations’ feature, which allows users to annotate a tweet with structured metadata. A tweet about a new book release, for example, might let you link straight to a ‘look inside’ book widget or the Amazon page for the paperback. Launch of a test version is apparently imminent.
3. Facebook is making changes to its Open Graph protocol that have a semantic element. Website owners can add a “like” button to their site, along with semantic tags that tell Facebook’s servers what the page is about. According to Facebook: ‘based on the structured data you provide via the Open Graph protocol, your pages show up richly across Facebook: in user profiles, within search results and in News Feed’. So when a Facebook user clicks the ‘like’ button on a publisher’s site – relating to a particular title, or author, perhaps – a link is established between that site and their Facebook profile.

Advertising goes semantic

Any change in the way Google works has major implications for marketers. If using an entity graph changes the way Google delivers its search results significantly, the dark art of Search Engine optimization will have to respond and weighty volumes of SEO best practice to be revised.

But even more wide-ranging changes will have to be made to practice around online marketing, with micro-writing and metadata tagging becoming ever more critical aspects of the marketer’s art, as websites lose their traffic to Google’s interface, which now not only provides a place for people to enter search terms, but also a place for them to read the answers, with no further click-through taking place.

New Scientist speculates, however, that it is in the Facebook and Twitter changes that the main attraction of these developments may lie for advertisers. With the major players in social media on board, apps are already beginning to be written that can exploit the potential of semantically tagged data.

And – oh dear – here comes another water-based metaphor: mainstream adoption is likely to open the floodgates for such third-party development. This is because it solves the chicken-and-egg incentive problem of how you get website owners to tag their content. There is a clear incentive for any content owner to tag their content appropriately, providing structured metadata, if it means targeted, relevant access to Facebook’s 500 million plus user base.

Why should you care about this?

The implications for publishers are obvious. The opportunity exists, through semantic technologies, to massively improve the discoverability of their content online. But they also present a threat. Those who move fastest stand to gain a march on their competitors, while those who lag could well miss out.

This throws down yet another gauntlet to a traditionally conservative industry that may well feel it already has quite a bit on its plate to deal with. Even more reason, then, for publishers to embrace the world of online in a concerted fashion, if they are to reap the benefits and stay ahead of the competition.

Surf’s up!

If you’re investigating the use of semantic technologies, talk to Semantico first. We offer a Semantic Web consultancy service focused on helping publishers improve the discoverability of their content using the evolving semantic web. Contact us today.

SAMS 4.0 makes accessing ebooks simpler by enabling end users to view all the publications they are entitled to with one simple log-in. This elegant solution will help end users identify the publications their library provides access to and the ones they need to purchase as individuals.

Researchers have access to budgets, through grants and awards, that University libraries do not. Inherited Access Rights is an important piece of functionality that makes viewing e-books and online journals bought from different budgets as easy as viewing print publications lined up on a shelf. End users can log in and immediately access publications purchased by their library and their faculty together with publications they’ve purchased as an individual.

‘SAMS helps people to buy e-content,’ said Richard Padley, Managing Director, Semantico, ‘whether they are librarians purchasing institutional access, faculty members who need more specialist works, or researchers who want to use other income sources to help them access the information they need. This update enables SAMS to be even more responsive to the needs of publishers, librarians and end users.’

SAMS handles access control for some of the world’s leading publishers including Oxford University Press and Macmillan Publishers. The system provides a flexible and sophisticated approach that can integrate simply with third-party systems to control access, subscriptions, reporting and contact information across multiple product sites and covers access models for journals, e-books, reference works, directories and scholarly publishing. The largest SAMS deployment handles in excess of 5 million authentication requests per month, and in excess of 20 million API requests.

Mobile Delivery Options, an overview

The current explosion in interest around mobile devices such as the iPad and Kindle raises and the interesting question for publishers. Is it best to create mobile specific websites to deliver content to smartphones, iPads or other mobile devices, or is it better to develop apps targeted at the iPhone, Android and other mobile platforms?

The talk will cover,

• mobile content
• delivery
• bookstores
• apps vs mobile optimised sites

and the challenges for publishers in this environment.

View the full Tools of Change program or  register for the conference.

]]> http://www.semantico.com/corporate/2010/08/richard-padley-to-speak-at-tools-of-change-frankfurt/feed/ 0 http://www.semantico.com/corporate/2010/08/oxford-university-press-release-new-titles-to-the-digital-reference-shelf-powered-by-semantico/ http://www.semantico.com/corporate/2010/08/oxford-university-press-release-new-titles-to-the-digital-reference-shelf-powered-by-semantico/#comments Wed, 11 Aug 2010 11:07:04 +0000 Megan Toogood http://www.semantico.com/corporate/?p=3918 Oxford University Press has released new titles to the Oxford Digital Reference Shelf, in partnership with Semantico, a leading provider of services and technology for online publishing.

The constantly expanding Oxford Digital Reference Shelf (ODRS), the online collection of OUP’s award-winning…

Publishers know they have to innovate to survive in the jungle of online publishing, with the big beasts of technology such as Amazon, Google and Apple all too willing and able, it seems, to disintermediate traditional publishers out of existence.

But two conflicting models of innovation seem to present themselves. One is open, data-driven and responsive, the other more ‘walled garden’ and perhaps even hieratic in character. How should publishers decide which to follow?

This was one of the key points discussed at the inaugural Semantico Symposium, held recently in London to discuss implications of the shift to mobile for publishers and information providers. An invited audience of publishing industry leaders debated the issues under Chatham House rules, covering the following three themes:

• Devices and technology
• Business models
• Future strategy options

It was a stimulating event with a high calibre guest list, delegates attending from organisations including Oxford University Press, Nature Publishing Group, Macmillan Education, Wiley-Blackwell, CrossRef, CABI, BSI Group and the Institute of Engineering and Technology. To do justice to the discussion, we’ve reported it over three blog posts. This final post is on the theme of future strategy options.

Listen to your users

Publishers from a traditional print background have one notable advantage over the tech companies that dominate the online information environment, which is that having been around a lot longer, they know their market very well. As a result, they know a lot about the needs of their readers and their institutional users.

Added to this hoard of existing knowledge about their specific niche in publishing is the wealth of data now available to publishers through web analytics. Sales and attitudinal research garnered through focus groups and the like are no longer the only source of market information. Customer behaviour online can be studied in minute detail, across large data sets.

Amazon, the online retail behemoth, which from its inception has had the stated aim of being the world’s most customer-focused company, has made a business out of data mining at large scale. However, Amazon is a generalist. Publishers benefit from highly specific knowledge of their individual niches, a knowledge whose specificity is growing all the time. Surely it makes sense for publishers to play to their strengths by setting their sites on the customer interface, pressing home their advantage of greater focus and beating the behemoths of the tech industry at their own game?

Several around the table at our symposium were clearly of this mind, believing that the roots of true innovation lie in researching customer behaviour and attitudes ever more effectively.

The online culture of openness and its threats

If companies can expect more transparency from their customers online, the reverse also holds true. Publishers must operate with a greater deal of openness on the internet than they might previously have been used to.

This is not an ideological point but a practical one. Unpacking extra value from content may well necessitate making it more freely available, at a lower level of granularity and in an unredacted form – particularly where those information resources have the character of data rather than text. In order that a company can benefit from the highly connected nature of the web it might have to be prepared to let the user use that data in any way they want to; e.g. third-party use of data for mash-ups, open APIs, semantic web etc.

Guardian News & Media was cited as a company trying to build a whole new business online from the data they gather in the course of their normal activities, making it openly available in many different ways for third party use. Clearly, this is a very different view of the online world from that taken by The Times Online, whose experimental retreat behind the paywall is being watched with some interest by The Guardian as well as its many other competitors.

What’s the big deal?

In the academic world too there has been a call for more openness – openness in the way publishers deal with their institutional users. Librarians facing the prospect of further, deeper funding cuts are rebelling against the ‘big deal’, with confidentiality clauses in big-deal contracts often leading to big differences in what universities are paying for their information resources. This tends to make subscriptions prices dependant, to a large extent, on the individual library’s negotiating skills.  At least one of our delegates felt that this was unfair, as in his view, librarians do not have these skills.

This type of practice is not uncommon in the offline world, and no doubt many would see some of Amazon’s online exploitation of its virtual monopoly position as equally invidious. Both seem light years away from the more idealistic tenor of Jeff Bezos’s formula for customer-centric innovation:

‘There are two ways to extend a business. Take inventory of what you’re good at and extend out from your skills. Or determine what your customers need and work backward, even if it requires learning new skills. Kindle is an example of working backward.’

Apple not in the buggy whip business

Not everybody agrees with working backwards. A counter to the call to watch the user in this way is the reflection that best practice keeps you alive, but doesn’t push you forward.

Apple, for instance, has innovated not by giving its customers what they want but by inventing new, cool things for consumers that they didn’t know they needed until they saw them. When this works, so cool are the things they produce; so pleasingly are they designed and packaged, that once consumers actually do set eyes on them, they quickly find them essential, must-have items. Soon they’re wondering what they ever did without their iPod/iPhone/iPad.

Apple has achieved its success in innovation not by watching and following customers, but by being one step ahead of them.  ‘You can’t go out and ask people,’ says Steve Jobs famously, ‘what’s the next big [thing.] There’s a great quote by Henry Ford, right? He said, “If I’d have asked my customers what they wanted, they would have told me ‘A faster horse.’’’

Apple, allegedly, does not do market research. ‘We figure out what we want. And I think we’re pretty good at having the right discipline to think through whether a lot of other people are going to want it, too. That’s what we get paid to do.’

So who’s right?

Opinion was split around the table, with the term ‘Apple Fanboy’ (apologies to all female fans of the company) surfacing as the pejorative of choice – as in ‘I don’t want to sound like an Apple Fanboy, but …’

Others felt there was no inherent contradiction between the two approaches, and that they were both perfectly valid depending on exactly what you were trying to invent and what sort of company you were. A consensus view seemed to be that there has to be a balance between inspiration and observation.

Conclusion

One thing this part of discussion highlighted was how big a culture change publishing faces in coping with the raft of new competitive pressures brought about by the move online. Many around our table were among the vanguard of those bringing innovation to the business of delivering content online – but the picture over all is of an industry still struggling slightly to get off its back foot.

New understandings, new ways of working – and, to a degree, a whole new language – have to be taken on board. We hope that in some way this symposium has contributed to that effort.