April 10, 2007
Semantic Web Technologies Coming
The semantic web - the next upgrade to the web. Neal Goldman, CEO of Inform, speaks to BusinessWeek Online about semantic web technologies and what they may mean for the Web. Semantic search technology analyzes the use of words in text to make it possible to understand "conceptually" what you want. It links words and phrases together and makes more connections in order to fill out meaning. Personalization, as an added component, will use what is known about your interests to further refine results. The process is a blend of human direction to train the algorithms for word connections, and machine learning.
Watch the BusinessWeek video on The Semantic Web. (April 6)
This is part of a special report at Business Week - CEO Guide to Technology.
Taming the World Wide Web - A rising tide of companies are tapping Semantic Web technologies to unearth hard-to-find connections between disparate pieces of online data, Rachel King
Some semantic technologies are in use today for special applications in order to make linkages between data. As the article states, "Those tools are the stuff of the Semantic Web, a method of tagging online information so it can be better understood in relation to other data—even if it's tucked away in some faraway corporate database or software program. Today's prominent search tools are adept at quickly identifying and serving up reams of online information, though not at showing how it all fits together. "When you get down to it, you have to know whatever keyword the person used, or you're never going to find it," says Dave McComb, president of consulting firm Semantic Arts."
ZoomInfo is an example of a semantic search engine. "The engine automatically crawls publicly available business information—from corporate Web sites to press releases and electronic news services to SEC filings—adding semantic tags and organizing information so that it can be easily found later."
Article makes the point that we shouldn't call this Web 3.0 as if it is a software release. But there is a progression from what people are doing with tagging today. "In many user-generated sites grouped under Web 2.0, users often tag their own data, be it photos, bookmarks, videos, or other content. "Web 2.0 is the messy way that the Semantic Web is actually happening," says O'Reilly."
Business Week also has a slide show for Weaving a Web Around Technology and a podcast.
Posted by Gwen at April 10, 2007 12:31 PM