SearchWiki, Internet Search and Semantic Web

Not long ago, Google published their big vision on the Intelligent Cloud, which is their version of Artificial Intelligence for the future.

That was great and recently they announced SearchWiKi as one of the step moving closer to that vision.

It is not really a WiKi as in Wikipedia... it is a way for users to edit the ranking of search results but that is only relevant to the user themselves. Which means that right now, if you think certain web sites should rank higher for certain key words, you can do that for your own good.

But Google is actually going to leverage on human intelligence to help improve their quest for even better intelligence of search technologies. This is not a catch, it is just a strategy. Like it or not, Google knows who you are in terms of IP address when you are searching for some dirty stuffs, but who cares anyway, life is too short for that. For them (Google), it is more important to improve their technologies than knowing who you are and they are glad that you are part of the help.

Semantic web technologies hasn't been seeing a lot of breakthroughs for this year but there are progresses recorded.

In the general, semantic web technology is the next step of search engine whereby it is supposed to incorporate automation into your search. To make this happen, it requires complicated data analysis functionality and also the support of natural language processing as well as cloud computing as the platform. You can think of cloud computing as the CPU, the natural language processing as the keyboard and data analysis as the output (monitor).

Let's take a look at what is hot in the semantic web arena for 2008.


CompaniesDescriptions
FreebaseFreebase is an open, semantically marked up database of information. It looks similar to Wikipedia, but Freebase is all about structured data and what you can do with it.
CalaisA tool for users to incorporate semantic functionality to the blogs
PowersetPowerset (see our initial coverage here and here) is a natural language search engine. It's fair to say that Powerset has had a great 2008, having been acquired by Microsoft in July this year.
TwineOrganize, share and discover information around your interests
HakiaHakia is a search engine focusing on natural language processing methods to try and deliver 'meaningful' search results.
TripitTripit is an app that manages your travel planning.
AdaptiveBluethe basic idea behind BlueOrganizer is that it gives you added information about web pages you visit and offers useful links based on the subject matter.
TrueKnowledgeUK semantic search engine TrueKnowledge
TalisA semantic web application platform.
SpockA people search engine.
BooRahIt uses semantic analysis and natural language processing to aggregate reviews from food blogs.
SwottiSwotti is a semantic search engine that aggregates opinions about products to help you make purchasing decisions.
Dapper Mashup AdsNew ad network will provide monetary incentive for publishers to have their websites marked up semantically.
InformInform.com analyzes content from online publishers and inserts links from a publisher's own content archives, affiliated sites, or the web at large, to augment content being published.
SiriPersonalized assistant that learns.
EvriA search engine that emphasizes the relationships between different search terms.
UpTakeaims to make the process of booking travel online easier.
IMINDIis essentially a mind mapping tool, although it markets itself as a "Thought Engine".
Juicea new Firefox 3 add-in currently in public beta from Linkool Labs, that makes researching Web content as easy as click-and-drag.
Favikisocial bookmarking tool
ZemantaIs a blogging tool which harnesses semantic technology to add relevant content to your posts.
SearchMonkeySearchMonkey allows developers to build applications on top of Yahoo! search, including allowing site owners to share structured data with Yahoo!, using semantic markup (microformats, RDF), standardized XML feeds, APIs (OpenSearch or other web services), and page extraction.


Thanks to ReadWriteWeb for here and here and here.

So, now we know what the world is moving towards semantic web, still a very primitive step towards full fledged Artificial Intelligence. Personally, I am using Zemanta to help me with my blogging.The biggest benefit is the help of sourcing for relevant pictures into be included in the blog. Zemanta is available as a Firefox plugin which works well with blogspot. And it doesn't work well with Malaysia's very slow speed broadband connection.

This close for semantic web 2008 and let us plan ahead of 2009.

Nevertheless, SearchWiki not available to Malaysia yet.

Comments

Zemantic dreams said…
Hi,

thanks for mentioning Zemanta.

I just wanted to point out that the power of Zemanta is in analysis of text and that blogging tools are just part of it. We also have an API available at http://developer.zemanta.com (more news about that going out soon).

If you have any comments/ideas about Zemanta, please do let us know (by mail possibly)

bye
Andraz Tori, CTO at Zemanta
Brandon Teoh said…
hi,

Yup. It is very useful for blogging.

Thanks.