Author / First Retail

It’s been an interesting twelve months for First Retail – starting from zero with just a smart and dedicated team – first one client, then another and now we have five great organizations whom we are proud to be working with. And above all, the support network of our friends and ex-colleagues who provided people,…

Revenue-funded startup First Retail, whose principals Anne Jude Hunt and Simon G. Handley will be speaking at the upcoming Semantic Technology Conference in June, thinks the answer is semantic ETL. Article by Jennifer Zaino on February 25, 2011 republished from SemanticWeb Extract, transform, load (ETL) is a widely known concept in the well-charted terrain of…

Giving individuals the tools to create personal demands on the open market: Project VRM Lowering the barriers to sharing data: Linked Open Data Entity extraction and other cool semantic technologies: Open Calais and Freebase Web scale structured information: Google Squared and Yahoo! Quest

“The aspects of our business model that hitherto made us successful were crystallized into our operation to sustain and ensure that success. However, as we try to adopt new business models and practices, those hardened beliefs and processes are the very things that will hold us back” Great quote, but it’s not one that can…

In December 1998 Business Week’s cover story described Amazon’s book retailing model where “with a single mouse click, an order can be placed on its Web site, making shopping a friendly, frictionless, even fun experience”. Since that time, Amazon’s range has grown to 10 million SKU’s, incorporating Marketplace, personalization, recommendations and reviews and serving the…