the Semantic Web

The 'semantic web' is a term used to describe data that can be made sense of and actually analysed by machines, on a global scale. If standardised data is created that computers can interpret, the theory is, that complex questions would be able
to be answered by computers, rather than just retrieving data based on keywords, as happens now. The semantic web is seen as the next evolution of the Web and referred to by some as Web 3.0.

In some applications I'm sure this would be useful, but rue the day that we rely on computers to 'answer' all our questions ( maybe many already do with Google!) Making meaning is such a subjective thing, with so many variants coming into play, so the data would have to be complex indeed. Standardising the data to enable this to happen would inevitably cut out subtleties of meaning wouldn't it? I will watch these new developments with interest to see where this journey leads.

There's an interesting article by Richard Adhikari Revisiting Semantic Web's Pros and Cons that you may like to have a look at. It's also where I got the nifty little graphic from that heads this post.

Voyage RSS

I've explored Voyage RSS & again I do not really like the presentation. I'm beginning to feel that there are generational factors coming into play here! Zooming around on Voyage makes me feel a bit disorientated. Give me good old hierarchical Google Reader any time.

I have added a couple of blogs of interest to me to the RSS feed, along with an Australian news site.

Kartoo +

I've had a look at Kartoo & done a few searches. It does not greatly appeal to me. I find it visually unappealing, with its quirky cartoon characters & although I can see the value of clustering results, I don't find the graphics used here easy to look at. The print is quite small too. I guess younger kids might find it attractive.

I'm quite used to the linear format of Google & for the time being I'm quite happy to continue using it. I also quite enjoy making tangential connections myself from what I find, rather than having a search engine always serving me up its recommended connections.

I've explored a few other Web 2.0 search engines. flickrstorm is great for getting photos on a particular subject directly from flickr & you can save them in a 'tray if you wish. Vdoogle searches multiple video sites & it's good to find things from sites other than the ubiquitous youtube.

Whonu which is described as having the nearest to a semantic web searching capacity is pretty remarkable in that it returns results for an asked question based on that query, rather than just the keywords, where most search engines still operate only on keywords. I'd been talking with a colleague about chocolate & slavery, so asked the question "why use slaves for producing chocolate?" & some very pertinent & useful sites were returned. I was impressed! Roll on semantic web!