LinkNotes: Reuters Launches API for Semantic Markup of Web Documents

2008-02-12

Reuters Launches API for Semantic Markup of Web Documents

Reuters has launched an API that does semantic markup on HTML documents. Using language processing, AI techniques, and massive databases, the API allows for recognizing people, places, companies, and events on Web pages, allowing for better search and more intelligent browsing.

Open Calais API BasicsThe idea behind Calais is simple - identify interesting bits into metadata in documents. In this implementation the focus is on People, Companies, Places, and Events, but surely the technology can be adopted to other entities. The heavy lifting is done by the combination of a natural language processing engine and a massive hard coded, learning database that Clear Forest has built.
What's In It For Reuters?

Reuters has opened up a generous API, but why? During our interview, Gerry Campbell, the President/Global Head of Search & Content Technologies at Reuters, explained that Reuters wants the world to be tagged. When the world's content is quickly and readily accessible to their customers, Reuters wins. Semantic technologies result in better, faster, more precise and relevant information, and Reuters, as a big player in the information space, wants to be one of the first companies delivering this kind of experience.