Breezy's Blog
Saturday, December 03, 2005
While reading some a recent solicitation , I started looking at W3C Semantic Web.
The Semantic Web is an idea where by "information is given explicit meaning, making it easier for machines to automatically process and integrate information available on the Web" ( > )
The semantic web also makes use of other technologies such as the Resource Description Framework (RDF) and the OWL Web Ontology Language (OWL).
"The Resource Description Framework (RDF) is a framework for representing information in the Web" (>). It leverages off of web metadata.
OWL provides features to allow better machine content processing. It contains a number of sublanguages (OWL Lite, OWL DL, and OWL Full) used to do so.
These have interesting prospects for advancing application and software understanding of web content.
[Business]
On my continuing quest for knowledge in starting a small business, I have started looking into the Small Business Administrations site, which provides a wealth of useful information for Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) . They have items such as:
I have been investigating DOD SBIR solicitations for SBIR related efforts. This seems like a good oportunity for a variety of ventures.
I first identified some of the stages and limitations during working on said soliciations. The projects tends to be broken down into multi phases (I,II, and II) which basically has inital analysis/prototype, and moves more towards a deliverable usable comercial product. Each solicitation requires a minimum percentage of the work to be done by the small business. I guess this is to ensure that a larger business does not attempt to meet the soliciations, overwelming the small businesses. It still does allow subcontracting though.
In the process of reading some of Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Program elements, I find it makes mention of what it takes to be considered a small business. This is a concern which is discussed on the SB Size page. With limited resources (personal, i.e. myself) at the moment, this may limit the types of solicitations that can be attempted but I definitly believe I would likely meet the requirements for a "small business", but need to confirm that.
There are time frames for solicitations. There is a pre-solicitation phase where those submitting submissions may opening discuss a specific solicitation with those sponsoring the solicitation, to allow additional details. However, after pre-solicitation phase, additional correspondance is possible through SBIR
Interactive Topic Information System (SITIS). It also includes a Quick Scan of currently active topics and correspondance relating to the given topic. This could prove a useful means of investigating topics as well.
