A good example of the Semantic Web (a.k.a. Web 3.0 ugh…)

Recently, I discovered this example of what the Semantic Web is about through Neville on Muti. I think this is probably one of the clearest examples I’ve seen to date. Lets look at it.

The problem:
Consider the following sentence:
Voters are heading to the polls
The word heading in this context is an action. Unfortunately in natural language, heading is also a noun which could also mean: a division or section of a subject; a class or category.

So how do we teach a machine that heading in that context is an action and not a noun? Sure, it might be possible to try and parse the sentence and try and couple the word heading with other words that might identify it as an action. For example: condition: if word heading are preceded by an auxiliary verb (i.e. is, are, etc…) then it is an action. Can you imagine though how many possible combinations there would be in only the English language alone?!

The solution:
Enter the Semantic Web. By using simple markup, we can now enable machines to “understand” the context of the words. No need for machines to go through rigorous routines to establish whether or not a word is an action, name, location, etc., the machine is simply told what it is!

I hope you can see the actual advantage of it and how it could improve our online experience tremendously. To see this example in action please visit:
http://www.cortex-intelligence.com/tech/

For a long time now, we have been speculating whether or not the Semantic web would be adopted or not and how long it would be until the big guns start adopting it. Finally, Paul told me, that Yahoo adopted some microformats in a big way! Exciting news! Paul, you asked what I thought and I think it is FANTASTIC! Now it is simply a matter of time. So start adopting and taking this serious folks!

7 Comments to "A good example of the Semantic Web (a.k.a. Web 3.0 ugh…)"

• pamsykes said: On 03/19/2008 at 11:53 am

  It’s an appealing idea but that markup looks like a LOT of extra work - and not the kind of work you can easily automate either. Either nobody will bother or it will spawn a massive outsourced markup industry dependent on Chinese and Indian wage slaves

• Good example of Web 3.0 | StrategyOnline.co.za said: On 03/19/2008 at 12:37 pm

  [...] Stii just posted a link to this site, which shows off some of what’s possible with Web 3.o. Very impressive, but feels like a heck of a lot of work to me.. Who’s got the time!? [...]

• Stii said: On 03/19/2008 at 1:05 pm

  Hehe, I hear you guys! Thing is, the tools to make it easier will definitely come at some stage. There is already a Wordpress/Movable Type plugin (unfortunately it is very buggy) called structuredblogging that allows you to publish certain key microformats. http://structuredblogging.org/

• Mobile Marketing SA » Blog Archive » Tired of those overhyped buzzwords? said: On 03/25/2008 at 10:06 am

  [...] to previous other buzzwords like join the online conversation, Web 2.0 / 3.0 / Semantic Web, Generation X / Y or whatever fancy term you’ve come across, it tends to become a tad annoying, [...]

• Martin Whipp said: On 04/02/2008 at 1:28 pm

  Hi There! Just thought i’d have my bit to say!

  I went to the University of Manchester (Great Britain), and got a Bachelors degree in artificial intelligence.. We covered this stuff in our final year.

  Whilst this example is a really cool way of trying to demonstrate to people who don’t understand the semantic web, I would like to point out that the work involved in producing the page wouldn’t require a lot of extra effort. What you see in this example is a graphical representation of what the search engine would infer about a particular page (i.e. what it understood about it’s meaning).

  If you look at where we are at now you’ll realise that we are all trying to move over to xhtml (and if you’re not then you should be!). the semantic web relies on splitting the content, presentation and behavior layers and storing the sites content in an XML schema. This schema is a lot more complex than the ones used today for your RSS feeds (for example), but in essence it’s similar.

  The great bit about it is after you’ve finished writing your site this way (which people are already trying to do in the most part - using xhtml, CSS and javascript to split up the layers)…Agents (i.e. sophisticated search engines) will be able to read the content of a page as we Humans do. This is VERY important! because no longer will you have to come up with a search term that points you to a long page that contains the answer you’re after - You can simply ASK the search engine a question in ENGLISH (or another language - my Professor made a simple one that could handle up to 13 different languages!)… and the search engine reads the pages available on the net until it finds the one that best answers your EXACT question.. probably with the possibility of scrolling you down to that specific piece of content!

  So will people get around to doing this? Yes THEY 100% definately will… It’s only time… thats why it’s called Web 3.0 (although i hate that phrase too)

• Stii said: On 04/02/2008 at 6:08 pm

  Interesting, thank you Martin! We’re moving into some interesting times again just as the whole Web2.0 movement is cooling down.

• jeiv fage reyes said: On 07/02/2008 at 1:58 pm

  CaN YoU MaKe aN IlLuStRaTiOn oF A SeMaNtIc wEb???

  I NeEd iT In sChOoL…

  ThAnKs

Spit it out!

Filed in: Semantic Web by: Stii