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After a two months hiatus, I have just updated AI3's listing of semantic Web and -related tools to version 11; follow the links below.
This version adds 72 new tools — one of the largest additions ever — since the last update on September 16, bringing the new total to 650 tools.
Like prior versions, this new Sweet Tools listing is provided either as:
Background on prior listings and earlier statistics may be found on these previous posts:
With interim updates periodically over that period.
In thanks to Henry Story, whose chat note prompted me to post this long overdue update, I have also included some of the tools breakdowns he enjoys.
Here is a table of tools categories, showing both the last breakdown from about 9 months ago when there were 500 tools in the listing, and today with 650 tools:
| 3/11/2007 | 11/18/2007 | Category |
| 11 | 24 | Ontology Mapper/Mediator |
| 3 | 6 | RDF Editor |
| 2 | 4 | RDF Generator |
| 13 | 23 | Query Language or Service |
| 19 | 32 | Search Engine |
| 23 | 37 | Browser (RDF, other) |
| 20 | 30 | RDF (general) |
| 23 | 33 | NLP/Language Processor |
| 15 | 21 | Visualization |
| 29 | 40 | Composite App/Framework |
| 9 | 12 | Ontology Editor |
| 22 | 28 | Wiki- or blog-related |
| 32 | 39 | Ontology (general) |
| 5 | 6 | Semantic Desktop |
| 22 | 26 | Reasoner/Inference Engine |
| 26 | 30 | Annotator |
| 29 | 33 | Database/Datastore |
| 8 | 9 | Data Language |
| 48 | 53 | Miscellaneous |
| 30 | 33 | Parser or Converter |
| 43 | 45 | Information Extraction |
| 22 | 23 | Wrapper (Web data extractor) |
| 3 | 3 | Description or Formal Logics |
| 4 | 4 | Harvester |
| 25 | 25 | Programming Environment |
| 8 | 8 | Validator |
| — | 3 | Chat-related |
| — | 3 | Data Presentation |
| — | 3 | Mashup/Meshup Framework |
| — | 2 | Rules and related |
| 6 | 12 | NOT ACTIVE (???) |
| 500 | 650 |
The fastest growing categories are listed first, with RDF, ontologies, and search growing the most. Note some categories have been added and others are being re-classified or delisted as time and familiarity with the listing grows. Certain areas of current interest, such as NLP, also see increased listings as a result. Of course, all such categorizations have a degree of arbitrariness.
As with the last survey, Java and JavaScript are dominant languages, with considerable growth. Python and PHP have also shown higher than average growth. Ruby appears to have stagnated, and many other languages are in second-tier positions:
You’ll be pleased to see, Henry, that Java is still holding serve on market share!
Note: Because of comments expirations on prior posts, this entry is now the new location for adding a suggested new tool. Simply provide your information in the comments section, and your tool will be included in the next update. (Hopefully, that will not take another two months!) 
I do not have the physics or math background, but simplicity and elegance (expressed as symmetry) have always appealed to me. In an online paper titled, “An Exceptionally Simple Theory of Everything,” ( arXiv:0711.0770v1 [hep-th], Nov. 6, 2008, 31 pp, PDF), A. Garrett Lisi writes:
Lisi’s inspiration lies in an elegant and intricate mathetmatical shape called E8 — a complex structure with a rank of 8 (the maximum number of mutually commutative degrees of freedom) and 248 dimensions. It was first described in 1887, but was only fully explicated by mathematicians (with NPR audio) this year.
Lisi believes the algebra underlying this shape holds the key to the so-called Theory of Everything, the elusive equation to unite Einstein’s General Relativity with quantum mechanics. Relativity explains how the universe works on very large scales; quantum mechanics describes the world of tiny elementary particles.
BTW, there are some other beautiful shapes in this paper, lucid text and head-scratching equations! Here is also a reference to Lisi’s beautiful visualization that shows projections of various rotations of this E8 root system in eight dimensions: http://deferentialgeometry.org/anim/e8rotation.mov.
BTW BTW, if you really want to dig further into Lisi’s approach to the Theory of Everything, a good posting with background and context is available from Sabine Hossenfelder.
