Farewell Old Las Vegas

Riviera sold to Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority

On Friday, February 20, 2015, the Riviera Hotel and Casino was sold to the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority for $182.5 million, (total price for the Riviera with closing costs will be about $191 million), a purchase approved by the LVCVA Board of Directors.  A new structure expanding the Las Vegas Convention Center will be built at this site. The LVCVA plans to market the city of Las Vegas on a global level as part of the Las Vegas Global Business District project with an overall cost of $2.3 billion.

http://www.cardplayer.com/poker-news/18459-riviera-casino-bought-to-be-torn-down

Riviera's Doors Closed - Monday, May 4, 2015 

On Monday,May 4, 2015 the Riviera closed its doors for the last time in its 60 year history.The Riviera Hotel and Casino, 2901 Las Vegas Blvd South, Las Vegas, NV 89109, opened on April 20, 1955 and had recently celebrated its 60th birthday. Originally, the hotel had nine floors and 300 rooms. Over the years, several towers were built, increasing the Riviera’s capacity to 23 floors and 2,075 rooms. Built on 26 acres of land, the Riviera was Las Vegas’s first high rise hotel.

http://www.cardplayer.com/poker-news/18758-the-riviera-casino-ends-storied-60-year-run 

Web 3.0

Are you ready?

Web 3.0 is widely seen the natural evolution of Web 2.0.  As the Web has grown and changed so have the technologies that define it. Web 1.0 served web pages to the user with no other interaction, other than reading the pages themselves.  Web 2.0 offers interactivity through software applications which enable users to collaborate across platforms. This is evidenced with social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter among others.   Mobile technology, streaming media, cloud based applications all affect how we access and use the internet.  Web 3.0 is the next step in the evolution of the Web and how we will use it in the future.  One of Web 3.0’s defining features is the Semantic Web which will implement the classifying and storing of information read and understood by both machines and humans.
http://webtrends.about.com/od/web20/a/what-is-web-30.htm

What does the Semantic Web do?  It provides a common framework which permits the sharing and reusing of data over platforms and applications. Web 3.0 is still evolving but holds promise as a platform where automated software will be able to save, transmit, and apply information which is machine readable and can be sent throughout the web. The phrase “Semantic Web” was named by Tim Berners-Lee, who is the inventor of the World Wide Web and director of the W3C also known as the World Wide Web Consortium, which he founded in 1994.  Berners-Lee describes the Semantic Web as  "a web of data that can be processed directly and indirectly by machines."  The W3C is responsible for the creation of the Semantic Web standards which are based on the W3C’s Resource Description Framework, a metadata data model, a language structured for data, and widely used as a means for describing web resources.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_Web

The idea of the Semantic Network Model was created by Allan M. Collins, M. Ross Quillian and Elizabeth F. Loftus to cover information that was structured semantically.  The network of web pages which are hyperlinked and human-readable (documents) is extended when  metadata that is machine-readable (data) is added. Web 3.0 will allow automated agents (bots) to search and read information and execute various tasks on the user’s part, in a more efficient and logical manner throughout the web.  The use of the Semantic Web and its applications is most evident in business or scientific research, and other fields that employ technologies which necessitate the sharing and transmitting of data across domains.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_3.0#Web_3.0