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For Immediate Release

Franz Developer Wins Google AI Contest with Lisp Algorithm

 Lisp Reaffirmed as the Preferred Language for AI and Web 3.0

OAKLAND, Calif. — December 7, 2010 — Franz Inc., the leading supplier of Graph Database technology for the Semantic Web, today announced that Gábor Melis, a developer for Franz currently working on the company’s Lisp-based AI database, won the 2010 Google AI Challenge. This prestigious artificial intelligence (AI) competition has traditionally been dominated by entries written in C++.  But this year, Melis’ innovative bot entitled Bocsimacko took the top spot above 4,600 submissions by people in 112 countries.

The 2010 Google AI challenge is a programming contest designed to push the limits of artificial intelligence and game theory. The objective is to create a ‘bot’ (computer program) that plays the game of Planet Wars as intelligently as possible. Two players start with one planet and 100 ships. The goal is to have the most ships remaining after 200 turns. The catch is that you only have one second to complete your turn in a single thread of code.

“Code shapes thinking as much thinking shapes code,” said Gábor Melis. “Lisp excels at being a non-intrusive instrument to quickly jot one's thoughts down, while allowing the abstraction level to rise and the language to get close to the domain. This coupled with a highly interactive development environment provides such a fast turn-around time from thought-to-code and vice versa – it makes writing code feel like writing English. The ultimate result is having a domain so closely modeled that it is only limited by skill – not by the programming language.”

“We are very proud that Gábor won this competition,” said Jans Aasman, CEO of Franz, Inc. “But I’m not surprised that the contest winner used Lisp. Most AI researchers use Lisp and we’re seeing a resurgence of the language, especially in the Semantic Web community with the rapidly expanding public and private Linked Data initiatives. Government agencies, pharmaceuticals, telecoms, as well as the world’s largest search, online advertising and e-retail companies are all committing to standards for Linked Data and Semantic networks. These Web 3.0 networks are built specifically to take advantage of AI and Semantic applications.”

About Franz, Inc.
Franz's semantic technology solutions help bring Web 3.0 ideas to reality. The company is the leading supplier of commercial, persistent and scalable RDF Graph Database products. AllegroGraph RDFStore is a high-performance database capable of storing and querying billions of RDF statements. The product provides solutions for customers to combine unstructured and structured data using W3C standard RDF for creating new Web 3.0 applications as well as identifying new opportunities for Business Intelligence in the Enterprise.  AllegroGraph’s Activity Recognition package provides a powerful means to aggregate and analyze data about individual and organizational behaviors, preferences, relationships, plus spatial and temporal linkages between individuals and groups. Franz customers include Fortune 500 companies in the government, life sciences and telecommunications industries. For more information, visit franz.com.

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