Mashup gets semantic

I attended Mashup at the BT Centre last night, hosted by Vecosys who have taken over from etribes in managing the event. Being stuck mostly in the real world of trying to make the current web work better for users, this was an interesting diversion into the future which was entirely welcome.

Sam Sethi chaired a panel which included Mark Birbeck from X-Port Ltd, Paul Walsh from Segala, and Tony Fish.

With the title "What's next, Web3.0? - The coming semantic web", I was expecting some strong definitions of what the semantic web aspires to be and why I should care and was a little disappointed that from the start we were led into demonstrations of existing web technologies, including microformats. More specifically, we were demonstrated Firefox extensions such as Tails & Webcards which identify hCards & hCalendars embedded in web sites such as upcoming.org. With the benefit of feedback from Sam, we have been looking at Microforats for BIO for some time but with over 90% of our users visiting via IE, it currently doesn't feature as a high enough priority. If IE incorporated a microformat parser, watch that change! I'm sure they will come soon.

Although not yet widely adopted, these technologies certainly do not represent the semantic web but are one of many building blocks, according to Sam, that need to be in place to get there. As was exposed later by questioners, using meta data to better identify information for read access is a concept that pre-dates the web and does not necessarily contribute to machine understanding which is where Web 3.0 is destined to take us.

Nevertheless, the demonstrations of Sidewinder (by Mark Birbeck), Content Labels (by Paul Walsh) and an explanation of why the Sensory Web is more relevant than the Semantic Web (in Tony Fish's opinion) were all somewhat interesting and informative in their vastly different ways.

Mark Birbeck's company Sidewinder claims to be building the 'next generation semantic web browser'. He has been heavily involved in the development of RDFa as a simpler way to mark up RDF. Overall, the demonstration of Sidewinder technology was not well delivered. It was very difficult to see the user benefit and it was not slick (as a demonstration of a new technology needs to be to win support).

Paul Walsh talked informatively about his work at Segala and the development of Content Labels. I found Paul engaging and passionate about his work, striking the right balance between persistence and consideration for the audience. Because his presentation was clearer and easier to understand than Mark's, he succeeded in generating more interest and, as a result, many of the questions were directed at him. They mainly focused on the challenges Content Labels have for widespread adoption (e.g. increasing web development effort and policing policies) which most seemed to agree are significant. I am ambivalent about the value of Content Labels and their contribution to our march towards a more semantic web. On the one hand, I think Paul is right that they represent an opportunity to make the web more intuitive and understandable. However, that is counter-balanced by the extra effort required to make them work well enough, a challenge which I believe represents a significant barrier to widespread adoption.

Tony Fish said that there isn't a need for a semantic web and that it misses the point altogether. He believes that inevitably the web will gravitate towards providing a greater sensory experience because that is what the user wants. Currently, the web is visual and slightly auditory. Tony argued, using gourmet food as a metaphor, that ultimately we want all our senses to be richly invaded by the right combination of pervasive stimuli and that meta data, RDF and microformats fail to deliver what the Internet user ultimately wants. This resonated with ny Psychology and NLP background and I agree with him that the web is far too two dimensional. This will change but I do also disagree with Tony that the user doesn't want a greater level of machine understanding. Us humans are a lazy bunch and technology that reduces clicks and delivers more relevant information will be hungrily consumed (pun intended).

Others blogging about the evening include Piers Jones, Paul Miller and David Lenehan.

Thanks to Vecosys, etribes, BT and the panel for an enjoyable evening.

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