7 replies to this topic

[robertclough]

http://www.technewsw...tory/31199.html

Snippet:
Some serious computer scientists, although cautious about the promise of the Semantic Web, are ultimately optimistic that it will be everything developers are hoping for -- an online source for all of the knowledge humanity has created in science, business and the arts.

[Matt B]

IMHO; Keep watching this. Bill Gates and a few others have all acknowledged that this is the future of the web. WC3 and any other information is good to keep up with, as I think SEO will become much more interesting and a much more critically involved in overall website success.

[daniel]

I was discussing XML, RDF and the development of the semantic web with our Technical Director the other day who is a huge advocate of these technologies.

It's definitely the way the web has to go, and although it might take some time and there are a number of 'obstacles' in the way, it should take the sourcing and sharing of information to another level.

We also discussed when we thought search engines would start to utilise RDF and related technologies in order to provide more accurate search results. Again, we agreed that their are issues that might slow any progress in this area, but as he said to me "...there has to be better ways of searching. For example, 'Show me everything written by Tim Berners-Lee before 1995' would be a bit useless at the moment!"

It will open up a competely new arena in terms of SEO, but like SEO Guy said, it will certainly make it a lot more interesting.

There are some great resources about how XML and RDF are taking the web to the next level and how the development of the semantic web will bring about the next quantum leap in terms of the Internet. I'll have a look to see if I can dig them out and I'll post the links here when I find them.

Cheers,

Daniel

[daniel]

Some interesting articles and resources:


Introductions to how the Semantic Web will work
The Semantic Web In Breadth

The Semantic Web: An Introduction

Making a Semantic Web


What's happening now
How XML and RDF are updating HTML (written by our Technical Director)


The future of searching?
Weaving a Web of Ideas


Hope these are of some use to someone!

Cheers,

Daniel

[Scottie]

Excellent links Daniel! Thanks for posting them.

[Matt B]

Thanks Daniel.

From everything I've read about the Semantic web it certainly sounds exciting. It will certainly render rankings reports obsolete. Something that I will really celebrate - not like i run them anyway.

Someday I hope to finish a half-started article on the semantic web, Larry & Sergey, some billionare named Bill and the future of SEO. Damn! That almost sounds like a folk song . . .



I think i found the first relevant use for this smilie.

[dragonlady7]

I'm used to using search engines the way they're supposed to be used, but it's really interesting to watch someone new to the whole game try to figure out how to get the search engine to tell them what they want to know.

I really like the idea (being a sometimes "sci-fi" fan and occasional writer) of computers that understand humans; I've imagined some really entertaining scenes based on the premise that humans and computers interface in a far more comfortable way than they do now. Someone doing for search what the GUI did for operating systems, conceptually, would certainly be a huge step for the computing and Internet worlds.

[dragonlady7]

Just after posting that reply I got this email from my boyfriend, who's working on a project with me-- basically an overgrown personal blog with built-in keyword classification of all data, known affectionately as "Toaster" for now for want of anything else to call it.

I've been reading up on RSS, which is a cool thing.  It seems to be 
most popular among news sites and weblogs, but its applicability is 
widespread.  In its simplest form, it's just a rich metadata platform 
that lets you describe documents and their relationships.  News sites 
and weblogs use it to describe their latest articles.

Where it really starts to get interesting are its extensions.  The 
Taxonomy extension lets you associate items in your RSS file [ie, 
journal entries] with topics [ie, keywords].  What's interesting about 
RSS's definition of a topic, though, is that it's not just a word; it's 
a URL, first and foremost.  It doesn't seem that the URL means anything 
in particular, except that picking a reasonable URL increases the 
chances that other people will pick the same URL, and thus, your 
documents can be classified together.  The examples they give use ODP, 
so that if you write an article about, say, deer, you can say one of 
its topics is...

<http://directory.goo...s/Hunting/Game/
Big_Game/Deer/>

...which would allow any sort of relatively-sentient web surfing 
automaton to gather together all the sites that talk about deer.
[Assuming that the Web standardizes on ODP for taxonomical references.
A Yahoo URL would be just as relevant.  The spec doesn't explain what 
happens if a third of the web standardizes on ODP and another third 
standardizes on Yahoo, and the last third standardizes on something 
else entirely.]

This is a lot like the keyword system that we're going to use for 
Toaster, only better, because it applies to the entire freaking web.
Since RSS is well-accepted and mature [RSS 0.9 was the specification 
for Netscape Channels - remember those?] I have no doubt that Google 
will, in the future, use it to some extent to help classify documents.
Cool {stuff}, anyhow.

I hadn't heard of that, so I think that's pretty darn cool.