Those kind of applications should not be confused with “semantic web” end-user-applications like Google´s Wonderwheel or INTSPEI´s Cloudlet: To add some semantics to existing user-interfaces can be helpful and obviously users are ready for such experiments, but of course this is NOT the innovation which the semantic web will bring but it is a very important step to be taken in parallel with the linked data initiative.

Let´s take a look at Cloudlet: This tool is an easy-to-use free Firefox extension that adds context-sensitive tag clouds to the most popular search engines and helps people more efficiently navigate through their search results. The previous version of Search Cloudlet worked with Google and Yahoo; the new version also works with Twitter. It adds Tag Clouds, Author Clouds, Recipient Clouds and Hashtag Clouds to Twitter search, Twitter user profiles and home pages. See some reviews on this popular tool.

Cloudlet is a child of the Web. INTSPEI has learned all lessons from Web 2.0 especially how to promote ideas using the blogosphere and how to identify market trends as early as possible, and it generates some added value for the users which is obvious. Sure, it doesn´t make use of linked data yet, but as a typical representative of the fast growing “semantic search evolution” it reminds me on Chris Welty´s famous insight: “In the Semantic Web, it is not the Semantic which is new, it is the Web which is new.”

Web 1.0 was the WWW without tons of network effects. Web 2.0 changed that a lot.

Linked Data is not the Semantic Web, it´s the basement for it. From a software developer´s and an IT archictect´s perspective it might seem as those two concepts were the same. But this community represents a very small percentage of all web-users.

So where is the User´s Web in the Linked Data architecture? If you´re looking at TimBL´s Linked Data principles one can clearly see that this is a “Web” for developers.

But things evolve. And some Web companies will jump on the bandwagon and will, for instance, improve their tagclouds, their semantic search, their recommender systems (Twine?) or their similarity search a lot by making use of linked data.

Like semantic search becomes mainstream (or call it “semantic search 2.0″) right now, then (in about three years, I guess) linked data will become part of a lot of mainstream applications. Linked data will generate tons of new network effects, maybe even new business models, it won´t be avant-garde anymore. It will be part of the Semantic Web.

Looking back a few years, I don’t think many people working on the Web could have predicted the remarkable rise of blogging, the revival of DHTML and ancient Internet Explorer tricks such as Ajax, online social networks, Wikis, the whole Web 2.0 thing. It’s worth noting that these developments have been consistent with Tim Berners-Lee’s vision of the Web as a system in which people are the key component.

Shifting to the Semantic Web perspective, for a long time I have believed this approach is on track simply because it offers improvements to the Web for which there are no obvious alternative techniques. Personally, I was relatively late to realise what those improvements really were – moving from a Web of Documents to a more general Web of Data. Expressed like that, and looking at existing Web architecture, the Semantic Web is the path of least resistance.

Remember? AJAX, when it cropped up and caused a big buzz in 2005, was nothing new, it was just a new term for an old thing, i.e. the Internet Explorer tricks Danny mentions (see also A Brief History of AJAX: “Browser asynchronous hacks have been possible since 1996, when Internet Explorer introduced the IFRAME tag, passing through a number of techniques such as pixel gifs, Netscape layers, Microsoft Remote Scripting, Java/JavaScript gateways, stylesheet hacks, image/cookies, and most recently the XMLHttpRequest.”)

Sometimes it takes a while until someone (society, industry, what have you) starts to notice that this or that, something, could actually be useful. Sometimes technologies that everybody thinks are silly become a huge sucess – think text messages!

And sometimes you have a great (piece of) technology and it just never really catches on, and if that is the case, then mostly because some forces in the market (trusts, monopolies, corporations who force you to use their software/technology and at ridiculous price, people who would do anyhing they can to undo the natural laws of the digital world) won’t let it happen. What happend to Video 2000 and Betamax? Nixed by JVC’s licensing strategies for VHS. Just wanted to make this point before moving on to the next quote. Danny:

Regarding possible obstacles, there are many ways the Web could suffer, probably most dangerous being interventions from national governments or commercial interests, tilting the table on which we build these systems – such as software patents and threats to net neutrality. The Web works because it’s more or less the same to everyone, everywhere.

So if you think that the Web should continue to be the same to everyone, everywhere, if you would like to liaise with other people interested in the SemWeb and the Web of Data, but most importantly, if you do not know a whole lot about the SemWeb yet but would like to learn more, then please come and do attend the Web of Data Practitioners Days in Vienna, Oct 22-23.

It is going to start with a “Web of Data 101″, i.e. a low-threshold introduction given by Keith Alexander (Talis, UK) and Yves Raimond (Queen Mary University of London, UK) to Semantic Technology in the context of the Web. Here is the full program – please mind that there is a deadline for the registration also (6 Oct 2008!).

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And that says a lot about the semantic web both as a technology and a movement: The semantic future is made happen not behind closed doors or in some ivory tower, not thought up by some secluded genius, but by people, companies and research institutions that are as close to the heart of the web as one can be.

I learned a lot about the upcoming new release of UMBEL (Upper Mapping and Binding Exchange Layer) thanks to Mike Bergman (who you can see in the picture below, sporting Semantic Web Company gear). UMBEL (in the words of the project itself) has two purposes:

1) to provide a lightweight structure of subject concepts as a reference to what Web content or data “is about”;
and 2) to define a variety of binding protocols for different Web data formats to map to this “backbone.”

You might want have a look at the UMBEL subject concepts explorer provided by Mike’s Zitgist: Start exploring here, with a preset concept search for ‘Manager’.

I also learned more about the huge variety of possible applications which can be built on top of the Talis platform – thanks to Ian Davis. One example is the Lancashire Lantern WiCI – WiCI because it is a service providing Community Information.

And finally I met Richard Cyganiak in person who gave me a thorough overview of the Semantic Web index Sindice – try a search for Richard Cyganiak to see how it works (and to learn more about him, of course).

I ended up discussing possible applications using linked data with Tom Heath, Mike Bergman, Gregory Williams, Eric Hoffer (picture on top, see also his blogpost where he features the SWC “Escape from the Data Silo” logo) and Marco Neumann, both from Semantic Web Meetup NYC. It was a great evening!

Thank you, folks!

Read also pt. 1 of our conference report: LinkedData Planet in New York: A great community event for all things semantic

Far from being a cynical marketing exercise, use of terms such as ‘Linked Data’ and ‘Web of Data’ simply represent a clarification of the intentions behind the Semantic Web vision. The label ‘Semantic Web’ has itself been a victim of semantics, which has not aided adoption of the underlying ideas.

How the Semantic Web develops over the next ten years will remain to be seen, but in the meantime it’s essential that we use terms that speak to people in clear terms, and convey more of the key features that can lead to a more meaningful Web. ‘Web of Data’ does just that, and ‘Linked Data’ is the means by which we are reaching that goal.

You can read the whole interview here.

The screen below – a visualization of the currently available Linked Open data – is taken from a talk Tom Heath gave in February 2008 in Amsterdam, at the occasion of the CATCH Programme and E-Culture Project Meeting on Metadata Interoperability. This snap shot of the LOD cloud documents its size in May 2007:

Now compare this to its size one year later (snap shot provided by Richard Cyganiak on May 8, 2008):