The Semantic Web – Are you ready for Web 3.0?
“Oh No” I hear you cry, not something else I’ve got to get my head around! Something new, something different and something that definitely sounds expensive. Ok ok don’t worry, before you rush off to trade in your old computer equipment (as surely this will mean further upgrades), let me give you a brief history.
In the beginning there was the web, sometimes called the Internet or anything in between. Most of us managed to “get online” and get reasonably happy with e-mails web pages and all the things that the Internet brought to us. Then someone came along with something called web 2.0, (this certainly sent me into a blind panic thinking I’d have to learn a whole new set of standards and terminologies), but I found the explanation strangely comforting. The original web, Web 1.0 if you like, was about connecting machines Web 2.0 was about connecting people.
Facebook is an obvious Web 2.0 product, with the business network Linkedin being the more business orientated example of how the Internet is now used to connect people, rather than simply their computers.
So are you ready for Web 3.0? Let’s have a look at the explanation, those of you will have an iPod or i-tunes may have used the “genius” feature. It’s a fascinating little gadget which looks at the tunes you have loaded on your device and automatically suggest other tunes that are similar in style and content. If you like, based on what music you have already it will suggest music that it thinks you will enjoy. There are other applications that do similar things, for example buy a few books from Amazon and you will find that it begins to have “suggestions” for your reading list, interestingly drawing on information gleaned from other purchasers who had bought the same book as you. So Amazon is not just learning about you, it’s learning about everybody!
If you’re getting scared now, I think that’s a natural reaction, yes the machines are learning and so is the web. Think about this scenario: your alarm clock is connected to your computer, and your computer has your diary, based on your appointments the web decides what time to wake you, it knows where you live and using Google maps it can calculate your journey time (even allowing for traffic conditions). Whilst you’re on the road new information can be delivered to your mobile device/phone, in the ultimate scenario your fridge can remind you that you’ve run out of milk and tell you to buy some on the way home, even telling you who has the best price at the moment! OK at this point let’s call Mr Schwarzenegger and tell him the machines have taken over!
Well Collabor8online we can’t set your alarm clock and we don’t know who has the best price for milk, but we can tell you when there have been significant changes to project documentation that you have said you’re interested in, we can send you one line e-mail saying “the specification has just been changed”, or “a new version of this drawing has been released”, or even “your boss has commented on your interim application document”.
If you’d like to move (a little) toward the Semantic Web, call 0161 920 6491 or click Here
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