Headup

Ever since we launched Headup’s public beta we’ve been getting a pretty steady stream of media attention and positive feedback. Finding new articles and positive reviews in leading publications on a daily basis is fun, but in all that hype it was, of all things, one little tweet from last week that got me particularly excited:

@jahendler: “I’m rapidly becoming a big fan of @headup – very cool little app! Great example of “a little semantics goes a long way!“

So who is @jahendler anyway?

Professor James Hendler - a friendly Semantic Web giant

The reason I’m so thrilled by this particular comment is because @jahendler is better known as Professor James Hendler and he’s no stranger to the Semantic Web…

In fact professor Hendler is considered one of the inventors of the Semantic Web.

His list of accomplishments includes (take a deep breath):

If that isn’t enough Professor Hendler is also the former Chief Scientist of the Information Systems Office at the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), was awarded a US Air Force Exceptional Civilian Service Medal, and is a member of the World Wide Web Consortium’s Semantic Web Coordination Group. He is the Editor in Chief of IEEE Intelligent Systems and serves on the Board of Reviewing Editors for Science.

Getting endorsed this way by Professor Hendler is meaningful to anyone in the Semantic Web space, but as a young startup it’s particularly exciting. As someone in the team put it:

“It’s like getting a compliment from Martin Scorcese after uploading your first video to Youtube…”

.