The winners have been announced for the Semantic Web Challenge which took place at the International Semantic Web Conference in Karlsruhe, Germany, from October 26-30, 2008. Determined by a jury consisting of leading experts from both academia and industry, the three highest ranked applications in each category were awarded cash prizes of Euro 3500 in total, sponsored by Elsevier.
The Semantic Web Challenge has been set up with the aim of showcasing the latest in semantic web technologies by having innovative demos compete with each other for the Semantic Web Challenge Awards. The event is organized by Jim Hendler, a world renowned web pioneer and currently the Tetherless World Senior Constellation Professor at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), and Peter Mika of Yahoo! Research. Supported by presentations and written documentation the winners were rated on, amongst other things, technical skill, user interface, the novelty of their idea and mobile readiness.
The Semantic Web Challenge consists of 2 categories - 'Open Track' and 'Billion Triples Track.' Open Track requires that the applications utilise the semantics (meaning) of data and that they have been designed to operate in an open web environment, whilst the Billion Triples Track focuses on dealing with very large data sets of low quality.
