Web 2.1 pre-alpha.

[reddragdiva]

Is anyone actually using the Semantic Web? Does anyone know of working sites that anyone not already in the cult cares about? Is this anything more than vapourware?

I know of no examples whatsoever that anyone beyond Semantic Web geeks themselves care about. Zero.

I am not asking for responses of "I'm doing research in this area, let me show you it" or "SemanticFooWiki will be the coolest thing ever, you heathen, as soon as we get the code written" — I'm asking for examples of sites presently existing, that people are interested by the semantic web functionality of, without having to know or care what "the Semantic Web" is. Anyone?

(prompted by nou asking a similar question)

Comments

[damned-colonial.livejournal.com]

Google for "How did FDR die" or "San Antonio Spurs owner" or "NASA established" and you'll see that they're extracting that information from Freebase (http://freebase.com/). Does that count as "real"?

How about the applications/mashups on the Freebase applications page, like the ArchiPortal (http://dev.mqlx.com/~zak/arch/) mashup of architects and their buildings with Google Maps, or this wine browser (http://ontologyonline.org/demo/connaisseur.html)? Or the stuff that the Simile (http://simile.mit.edu/) project is doing wrt visualisation of semantic web data? Exhibit (http://simile.mit.edu/exhibit/) is pretty shiny and useful.

Or, moving away from there, what about TripIt (http://tripit.com/), which people are calling a semantic web app in the way it handles data wrt travel bookings. I don't personally like it (it doesn't match my kind of travel) but it is pretty cool and useful for those who do rent cars, stay in hotels, etc.

[reddragdiva]

Thank you!

So why don't I ever hear about these with the words "Semantic Web" attached, such that the advocates sound like vapourware salesmen?

(And I see things like Semantic MediaWiki, whose main contribution appears to be to make MediaWiki syntax actually worse.)

[damned-colonial.livejournal.com]

Presumably those sites that are simply *using* SW in useful ways don't need to carry on about it so much, because they are in fact useful and therefore have better selling points.

However, a very quick google for "semantic web startup" shows that yours truly's soon-to-be-employer features in approx. 50% of articles on the topic, so people *are* talking about Freebase in that context, just obviously not anywhere near you.

(And btw I very much need to pick your brane (by which I mean buy you drinks and listen to you rant) sometime re: wikipedia, since I suspect you will have nuggets of wisdom for me. Just have to get to London first, of course.)

[mstevens.livejournal.com]

I remember tim bray challenging people to come up with a useful use for RDF, in return for which he offered the domain rdf.net - I don't think anyone won:

http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2003/05/21/RDFNet

[loopzilla.livejournal.com]

You seem to have hit the nail on the head. Who is asking? Who is answering?

The semantic web is newspeak for an ongoing Artificial Intelligence aim...

And somebody once said "Intelligence is in the mind of the beholder".

[ceb.livejournal.com]

http://www.rsc.org/Publishing/Journals/ProjectProspect/Features.asp # for the spiel
http://www.rsc.org/Publishing/Journals/ProjectProspect/Examples.asp # for some examples