This week, I learned a lot about interactive marketing, innovation and “how to keep ahead of tomorrow’s customer” at the Forrester Consumer Forum in Dallas, TX; however, one of the highlights of my trip was experimenting with Twine, a semantic Web application.
Thanks to my new bud, Jonas Lamis, I decided to put aside my Google notebook and quit posting to Del.icio.us at the conference. Instead, I put all of my bookmarks and notes in a twine. I created called Forrester’s Consumer Forum 2008. While so far, I’m the only member and the only person posting, I’m finding great value in the online service. It’s a great way to collect and share online content, such as Web pages, articles, videos, photos and notes, in an organized manner. The best part – Twine is wicked smart to quote “Good Will Hunting” (BTW, do Bostonians really say this or is it a stereotype like all Texans ride horses?). Anyway, the more content you put on the site, the more the service “gets to know you,” and the more useful it becomes.
So, let me take a step back. As I discussed at NIWeek, no matter what you call it – semantic Web, intelligent Web, Web 3.0 – the future of “the internets” (as my granmda likes to say) is cool. Take a look at these quotes:
“I have a dream for the Web [in which computers] become capable of analyzing all the data on the Web – the content, links, and transactions between people and computers.” Sir Timothy John Berners-Lee (inventor of the WWW, URIs, HTTP, and HTML; director of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C); chair at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laborator)
“I really want to see us build a product that lets you really feel a person and understand what’s going on with them,” Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook.
According to W3C, here are some key components of semantic Web:
- Shift from text to data
- Application that determines meaning and creates connections for users
- Variety of application areas:
- Data Integration
- Resource classification
- Cataloging
- Intelligent software
When I take a look at all of this and apply it to National Intruments, my mind almost explodes. I can’t wait for a day when I pull up a product page on something like the PXI 4130 and my computer will understand the following things.
Relations: PXI is a product and is part of catalog
Organizations: PXISA is a group that cares about PXI
Industry Terms: PXI has associated terms like modular instruments, engineering, hardware, SMU, measurement
Company: National Instruments makes PXI boards and chassis but so do companies like Keithley
Person: Eric Starkloff is an expert in PXI
Country: National Instruments is based in the United States, but has a manufacturing facility for PXI in Hungry
Now, back to Twine. It is extremely easy to use. By adding a simple bookmarklet to your browser, you can do the following:
http://www.twine.com/
The next time you are researching a complex topic or at a conference, I highly suggest testing out this great, Semantic tool
meta meta meta meta meta
i love semantics, and i really believe that the companies that take the time and expense to work out the attributes that should be attached to their information are going to flourish, and sooner than we think.
the tools that enable this are going to be in high demand.
its such an exciting time to be a part of our industry.
Erin, I couldn’t agree with you more! Not enough people are thinking about semantic Web or the impact it will have on our businesses. Reading about this emerging area is my new addiction!!!