Open Calais – a new and smart APIAn application programming interface (API) is an interface implemented by a software program to enable interaction with other software, similar to the way a user interface facilitates interaction between humans and computers. APIs are implemented by applications, libraries and operating systems ... from Reuters – finally does what critics say to be the greatest obstacle to the Semantic Web: Taking the metadata burden from the enduser by providing an automatic meta-tagging tool. The principle behind Open Calais is easy: Put in some unstructured text and get in return nicely structured RDF-data. Backed by powerful Text MiningText mining, sometimes alternately referred to as text data mining, roughly equivalent to text analytics, refers to the process of deriving high-quality information from text. High-quality information is typically derived through the divining of patterns and trends through means such as ... and machine learningMachine learning is a scientific discipline that is concerned with the design and development of algorithms that allow computers to evolve behaviors based on empirical data, such as from sensor data or databases. A learner can take advantage of examples (data) to capture characteristics of ... techniques the API automatically detects entities like persons, events, countries and other facts.

Open Calais takes account of the fact that the added value of content is hidden in its structure. Uncovering that structure and representing it in a interoperable format makes existing ressources more programmable and reusable.

But what is in for Reuters? Nothing less than the biggest structured content repository on the web. Should not we talk about this little fact aswell?

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