Semantic Web... And why Google will have to evolve...

[Aradorn]

http://www.vimeo.com/684381/

This goes with the idea that I have had for a very long time. The analogy that the web is stack of hay, and if you wanted to find a needle in that hay stack Google would not be able to help you. It could find a cow in the hay stack, but not the needle.

Nova Spivack is really cool guy.

[Maj]

Thats a lot of whats going on with VML.

[Gnioss]

I've heard a lot about the "Semantic Web" term lately but I still dont understand what it means. from what I understand its some kind of construct that can pick out the meaning of big blocks of text and give you keywords that relate to it? If so then that's cool but it's definitely not a replacement for the type of searching google does. Also, I would be so willing to bet that google has people working on similar projects as we speak.

[Mutt]

As long as google is making money hand over fist, why do they need to changed their core business? Once another algorithm comes along that is better they will be able to switch gears and offer an alternative method pretty quick.

[Aradorn]

Because searching will fall off after a certain amount of data because it because harder to organize and manage. The semantic web seeks to organize data and allow you to map any object found in the web with any other object (Person to webpage to email account to a video to a mp3 so on and so forth). It will probably use a particular type of tagging system and you will tag content with what its about and who wrote it or said it.

This is why google will have to either adapt the technology or die. Watch the video it will explain it much better than I ever will. My idea of a search engine incorporates the idea of a semantic web without it actually being tagged. Instead you would have an AI type bot taht tags the information as its found inside the database/index. This way as information evolves and changes the database can be updated and evolve with society.

For example, Firefighter may mean one thing today. But in 100 years it may mean something completely different, but we need a way to taking the information found on the internet today and linking it to the stuff we find 100 years from now.

Thats a lot of whats going on with VML.

more like RDFa -> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RDFa

I understand its some kind of construct that can pick out the meaning of big blocks of text and give you keywords that relate to it? If so then that's cool but it's definitely not a replacement for the type of searching google does.

Like it said before, google is a complete popularity contest, and its very hard to find relevant information that may not be popular (or contains similar keywords to other popular items).

For example, take the quote

Yesterday in Parliament the Prime Minister said that we will fight them on the beaches.

How you would go about finding out who said this quote using google? Google will return a list of all the current news articles about Prime Ministers, and searching for Prime MInister does not land you even close.

Semantic Markup would wrap this quote and annotate it with who actually said it (Winston Churchill). This way a search engine (or any tool for that matter) can easily search through the database and return categorized results based on relevance.

anyways watching the video will give you a much better idea.

[Mutt]

http://www.google.com/search?source=ig&hl=en&rlz=&q=quote+Yesterday+in+Parliament+the+Prime+Minister +said+that+we+will+fight+them+on+the+beaches&btnG=Google+Search

First link states churchill

[Aradorn]

look at why, because it has been marked up. Notice how the 2nd link is about the Turkish prime minister.

[Mutt]

Problem would be if it didnt give me any information at all. There was more than 1 link that gave me churchill from that.

What other subject do you offer as a test?

[Aradorn]

Ok here read this - http://internet-apps.blogspot.com/2008/02/googles-social-graph-api-rdfa-and.html

it uses that example and explains the thought behind why we need a semantic web for finding information.

Semantic web goes well beyond searching. Its about linking things together that have something in common. Linking a video about Tsunamis to webpages about tsunamis without actually referencing the video. Think big picture.

[Ablate]

Fuck semantic, we need synaptic hookups and the ability to search for shit with our minds!

[Dong]

I always find what I need from Google.

[Aradorn]

yeah but it will become much harder to find information as we store more information online. Which is why they are starting to take steps now to tag data that gets put online.

[Mutt]

Then I guess we just wait for google to get the new system setup once it makes sense to do so.

[Virt]

There was a great article on the semantic web in December issue of Scientific American. Wish I could link it, but you have to buy the issue online... anyway just fyi.

[Aradorn]

Then I guess we just wait for google to get the new system setup once it makes sense to do so.

google really cant do anything to help the semantic web just through their engine. Rather they will have to adopt the markup that creates the semantic web so you can use their search engine to find things.

[Spiker]

I want a Portal gun but I can still find what I need using Google, just string semantically grouped words into your search, the ranking should bring things to the top that you actually want.