Reuters (NASDAQ:RTRSY)(LSE:RTR), the global information company, today announced the release of an open Application Programming Interface (API) for its new Calais Web service. The API, which provides commercial and non-commercial parties with free access to state-of-the-art semantic tagging capabilities to enhance their applications and content, is available at OpenCalais.com (http://www.OpenCalais.com).
The Calais Web service enables publishers, bloggers and sites of all kinds to automatically metatag the people, places, facts and events in their content to increase its search relevance and accessibility on the Web. It also lets content consumers, such as search engines, news portals, bookmarking services and RSS readers, submit content for automatic semantic metatagging that is performed in well under a second.
The Calais Web service returns content in an open, interoperable and entirely portable format, with a unique identifier that can be easily integrated into social networks, widgets and semantic applications like Powerset, Freebase, Twine, Hakia, Wikia, Blue Organizer and more.
Calais is a new Reuters initiative that supports the interoperability of content and the development of the Semantic Web – a layer of contextual intelligence that enables computers to ‘read’ content, detect connections and even make new ones. Calais leverages Reuters’ substantial investment in semantic technologies and Natural Language Processing (NLP) to offer free metadata generation services, developer tools and an open standard for the generation of semantic content.
“The world is still suffering from information overload,” said Gerry Campbell, President, Search and Content Technologies, Reuters. “Web 2.0 applications have set content free to a great extent, but the explosive distribution of information doesn’t always help users find exactly what they need, when they need it,”
“Semantic tagging offers superior sorting and filtering of content for more targeted and timely delivery,” he added. “Calais eliminates the cost of manually creating those tags while giving publishers an effective means of metadata transport. We look forward to working with developers on creative means of extraction that can help usher in the next great wave of innovation on the Web.”
The Calais Web service:
Automates the generation of semantic metadata;
Incorporates any additional publisher-developed metadata; and
Transports that metadata across the content ecosystem via a persistent URI (Uniform Resource Identifier).
To get started:
Publishers and developers can go to www.OpenCalais.com to secure the Calais API key and download instructions for how to create and integrate a customized metatagging application for their content, commerce site or online community.
They can then programmatically submit their content to Calais to identify many types of semantic entities (people, places, organizations, etc.); facts (person ‘x’ works for company ‘y’); and events (‘a’ occurred at place ‘b’ on date ‘c’).
The metadata results are stored centrally and returned to publishers in industry-standard RDF format with a unique identifier1 (URI) to that ensure easy content retrieval by any downstream consumer.
Today, Reuters also announced the first Calais Web service contest with a bounty for applications developed using the Calais API. The company will award $5,000 to the developer who builds a Calais-based plug-in for Automattic’s WordPress™ Personal Publishing Platform. The applications must use the Calais Web service API and:
Offer automatic blog content scanning;
Support rich meta-tagging;
Create and maintain a semantic tag cloud for each blogger to post; and
Embed the related Calais URI.
For more information, please go to www.OpenCalais.com
About Reuters’ Search and Content Technologies
The Calais initiative (www.OpenCalais.com) is a product of Reuters’ Search and Content Technologies (SCT) group, a global center of excellence comprising top information architects, developers and engineers. SCT brings deep expertise in content technology, text analytics and user experience to existing Reuters’ products while driving breakthrough progress in the delivery of relevant information & insight to customers and consumers alike.
About Reuters
Reuters (www.reuters.com), the global information company, provides indispensable information tailored for professionals in the financial services, media and corporate markets. Through reuters.com and other digital properties, Reuters also supplies its trusted content direct to individuals. Reuters drives decision-making across the globe based on a reputation for speed, accuracy and independence. Reuters has 17,500 staff in 94 countries, including 2,400 editorial staff in 196 bureaux serving 131 countries. In 2006, Reuters’ revenues were £2.6 billion