In this Nodalities Podcast, Zach speaks with Jay Myers from Best Buy about how he and his team are working within the retail giant to better harness their data. Jay tells us about his use of blogs and RDFa to better manage “open-box” products returned to Best Buy’s many stores in an effort to surface deals to the public and make savings on otherwise costly problems.

Talis will be hosting a special Open Day about applying Linked Data to the fields of health, medical research and clinical medicine. We will be at No 76 Portland Place, London on 19th August. You can sign up at the events page, and can follow the Nodalities blog for updates on the agenda.

We’ll be hosting our next Platform Open Day this Wednesday, 16th June. We’ll cover topics from “What is Linked Data” through Linked Data in Action and an intro to SPARQL. Slides for the presentations are already online. We will be running from 10:00 to 3:00 at No 76 Portland Place, and there are a limited number of seats, so you can sign up here.

Following the Talis Platform Open Days in Manchester and London, you can now see the slides from the presentations over on the Nodalities Blog. There will be another Open Day in London on 16th June, and you can sign up here.

We’re taking the Open Days to Manchester on 14 May and London on 19th May and 16th June. You can register here, and let us know where else we should have Open Days too!

Today saw the official launch of the UK government’s data.gov.uk. We’d like to congratulate the data.gov.uk team and look forward to the exciting innovation this will foster. More information about Talis’ involvement with the project can be found in our press release.

All available seats have been booked for the January Platform Open Day.

There are still some spaces left in February and March, so please sign up for those over on platform/events.

Join us online for our monthly Datasets webinar this Thursday afternoon (19th November) from 2 to 3. We’ll be showing you how to work with linked data using SPARQL. Come prepared with questions, and register here.

Interested in learning more about Linked Data, SPARQL and working with datasets from the BBC, UK Government, and others? Come join us for a series of free Open Days at the Talis offices in Birmingham. Each day will include presentations on these and other topics, and a chance to work hands-on with public data. If you are prepared to come with questions and challenges for the team, we’ll even throw in lunch. Email Zach to RSVP.

Talis is part-funding a PhD studentship at The Open University’s Knowledge Media Institute (KMi). Ms Chwhynny Overbeeke will be “Supporting the Exploration of Research Spaces” by researching the use of Semantic Web technologies and conventional data sources to enhance and streamline the research process. “The research will build on and be informed by a variety of technologies and approaches developed at Talis and KMi, including the Talis Platform, Talis Aspire, Watson, FLOR, and Hoonoh.” More information on KMI news.