Semantic Mash-ups ("SMash-ups") are combinations of information from multiple sources using the W3C Semantic Web languages (RDF and OWL) to control merging and filtering of the mashed-up data, explains Dean Allemang (pictured), who will be giving a session entitled "Using RDFa To Build Semantic Mash-ups" at the upcoming AJAXWorld Conference & Expo East, 19-21 March 207 in New York City.

Allemang is a long-time traveller in knowledge science. He was awarded his PhD in AI in 1990, worked at five different AI labs in Europe between 1990-1996, co-founded a company in the mid-90s that tried to invent the Semantic Web when the standards were just a gleam in the eye of a few W3C folks, and is now working as a consultant for TopQuadrant Inc. as their Semantic Web expert.

His laptop is full of semantic web software, and he even knows how to use more than half of it. "It's an exciting time," says Allerman, "for those of us who have been fans of abstraction for the past three decades."

In March 2007 over 1,000 developers, architects, IT managers, and software professionals of every stripe will be converging in New York City to attend the East coast AJAXWorld Conference & Expo - the most comprehensive meeting on the most significant technology subjects of recent time: AJAX, Rich Internet Applications, and Web 2.0.

Delegates will hear first-hand from the creators, the innovators, the leaders and the early adopters of AJAX, and a slew of leading vendors will provide sneak peeks of new frameworks, tools, products and applications during the conference, which will have over 100 sessions and presentations given by 125 different speakers.

In his AJAXWorld session, Allermang will present a system for building Smash-ups from many different kinds of web sources, including RDF source, databases, and web pages (via RDFa, the RDF in HTML proposal).

As Allermang explains, the SW standards allow you to define filters on the SMash-up display from simple to complex: e.g., "all the places I need to be on Saturday", "the times of all my appointments, but the descriptions for only the professional ones."

AJAXWorld Conference & Expo 2007 East will be jump-started with a full one-day “AJAXWorld University Boot Camp,” personally led by Web 2.0 and AJAX guru Dion Hinchcliffe, followed by the Main Conference and Expo over the following 2 days.