Developers: Reuters Has $5000 With Your Name On It!

Reuters has announced their new Calais program today which lets publishers of all kinds (bloggers, web site authors, etc.) to use their API to send data to Reuters to help create "metadata" about the content. It looks like Reuters is using Mashery for the Calais API.

The release, which throws around the term "Semantic Web" for geek bonus points includes information on how the information you provide will be used, "The Calais Web service returns content in an open, interoperable and entirely portable format, with a unique identifier that can be easily integrated into social networks, widgets and semantic applications like Powerset, Freebase, Twine, Hakia, Wikia, Blue Organizer and more."

"Calais eliminates the cost of manually creating those tags while giving publishers an effective means of metadata transport. We look forward to working with developers on creative means of extraction that can help usher in the next great wave of innovation on the Web," said Gerry Campbell, President, Search and Content Technologies, Reuters.

Now on to to the part you came here for. For the $5,000, you must develop a plugin for Wordpress and it must have the following characteristics:

• Offer automatic blog content scanning;
• Support rich meta-tagging;
• Create and maintain a semantic tag cloud for each blogger to post; and
• Embed the related Calais URI.

If you want in, you best do it quickly - here is the application link. I wonder how they will determine which app wins - will time be the only factor?