“To see the world in a grain of sand,
And heaven in a wildflower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour.”
- William Blake
The New York Times says Metaweb Technologies, announced a “semantic Web” product today. It uses software agents to automate many functions now performed manually in front of a Web browser.
Web pages are designed to be read by people, not machines. The Semantic Web uses XML extensions to define content so that it can be understood, interpreted and used by software agents. It facilitates the finding, sharing and combining of a variety of information.
MetaWeb’s Freebase, the brainchild of Danny Hillis, envisions a centralized repository similar to a digital almanac. The new system can be extended freely by those wishing to share their information widely. That would make it possible for programmers and Web developers to write programs allowing Internet users to pose queries that might produce a simple, useful answer rather than a long list of documents, explains The Times.
Freebase looks to be what Google Base is not: open and useful, says Michael Arrington. “I imagine there will be more than one forehead self-smacked at Google HQ tomorrow, as they think, ‘We could have done this’.”
“We want to make it possible for you to add high quality structured information to your websites, mashups and applications without worrying about restrictive corporate licenses. All data is licensed Creative Commons Attribution. We only ask that you link back to us”.
Contributions already added into the Freebase system include descriptive information about four million songs from Musicbrainz, a user-maintained database; details on 100,000 restaurants supplied by Chemoz; extensive information from Wikipedia; and census data and location information.
How does Metaweb make money? Metaweb provides access to its technology through an API program. Depending on the commercial vs. non-commercial nature, and extent of services required by a developer or publisher, varying fees will apply.
Portland-based Thetus (above) has provided cutting edge tools and a framework for structuring, searching, relating, tracking and integrating knowledge using the semantic web for several years.
Cycorp (wikipedia), founded in 1994 to research, develop, and commercialize Artificial Intelligence, plans to create the world’s first true artificial intelligence, having both common sense and the ability to reason. Cycorp was a participant in Project Halo, a project funded by Paul Allen’s Vulcan Ventures, to model the brain.
Look. Many business already have more on-line storage than the 29 Terabytes stored at The Library of Congress. “Change” is more important than access to databases on the internet. Many databases (like Wikipedia) may soon be stored and interrogated locally.
The National Security Agency may provide a better model for businesses. They monitor change. “Collections managers”, monitor traffic, then connect the dots by interrogating their data base.
That’s new information. Actionable information. The Semantic Web is an enabler of many things (good and bad). It’s not science fiction. It’s alive.
Related DailyWireless articles include; The Semantic Web, Pre-Crime Computer Vision, Motorola: It’s All About ME, The Vision Project, Googleplex in Oregon, Scanners 3D, Supercomputer Cells, Martin: Forgetabout NSA Query, Geocoding Content & Telemetry, Gordon Bell’s LifeBits, Municipal Wireless Flash Applications, MIT’s SENSEable City.
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