10 More Semantic Apps to Watch - Page 2
Evri
Evri is a Paul Allen (of Microsoft fame) backed semantic search engine that launched into a limited beta in June. Evri is a search engine, though it adds a very sophisticated semantic layer on top of its results that emphasizes the relationships between different search terms. It especially prides itself for having developed a system that can distinguish between grammatical objects such subjects, verbs, and objects to create these connections. You can check out a tour of Evri here.
UpTake
Semantic search startup UpTake (formerly Kango) aims to make the process of booking travel online easier. In our review in May, we explained that UpTake is a vertical search engine that has assembled what it says is the largest database of US hotels and activities - over 400,000 of them - from more than 1,000 different travel sites. Using a top-down approach, UpTake looks at its database of over 20 million reviews, opinions, and descriptions of hotels and activities in the US and semantically extracts information about those destinations.
Imindi
Imindi is essentially a mind mapping tool, although it markets itself as a "Thought Engine". Imindi was recommended to us in the comments to our previous post by Yihong Ding, who called it "an untraditional Semantic Web service". Yihong said that traditionally Semantic Web services employ machines to understand humans, however Imindi's approach is to encourage humans to better understand each other via machines.
Imindi has met with a fair amount of skepticism so far - and indeed it appears to be reaching big with its AI associations. However we think it's worth watching, if for no other reason than to see if it can live up to the description on its About page: "By capturing the free form associations of user's logic and intuition, IMINDI is building a global mind index which is an entirely new resource for building collective intelligence and leveraging human creativity and subjectivity on the web."
See also: Thinkbase: Mapping the World's Brain
Juice
We've all been there. You started reading something on the Web, saw something interesting in the article, searched for it, wound up somewhere else, and after about 12 hops you've forgotten exactly what it was you were looking for. If only there were some way to select that topic midstream and have the information automagically appear for you, without disrupting your workflow or sending you traipsing off into the wilds of the Web.
If that sounds familiar, you may need a shot of Juice, a new Firefox 3 add-in currently in public beta from Linkool Labs, that makes researching Web content as easy as click-and-drag. In our review of Juice, we concluded that it avoids some of the more traditional stumbling blocks of Semantic apps by taking a very top-down approach focused on a distinct data set.
Faviki
Faviki is a new social bookmarking tool which we reviewed back in May. It offers something that services like Ma.gnolia, del.icio.us and Diigo do not - semantic tagging capabilities. What this means is that instead of having users haphazardly entering in tags to describe the links they save, Faviki will suggest tags to be used instead. However, unlike other services, Faviki's suggestions don't just come from a community of users and their tagging history, but from structured information extracted straight out of the Wikipedia database.
Because Faviki uses structured tagging, there is more that can be learned about a particular tag, its properties, and its connections to other tags. The system will automatically know what tags belong together and how they relate to others.
Conclusion
The Semantic Web continues to inch closer to reality, by being used in products such as BooRah, Inform.com and Juice. Let us know your thoughts on the above 10 products, and of course any that we missed this time round.
Comments
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When did ReadWriteWeb start using multi-page posts? That is so disappointing.
Posted by: Rob Diana
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November 20, 2008 10:19 AM
Hi Richard,
Thank you for including Imindi in the watching list. I am sorry that the last comment was not complete due to some reasons I am not sure. I was in hurry to a meeting before posting the comment.
Imindi is certainly a unique one. To me, Imindi points out a better and probably more natural path how the Web may gradually approach the Semantic Web from Web 2.0.
"Semantics", the term itself represents certain subjective judgment by individuals. Many of the mainstream Semantic Web approaches try to avoid this issue since it is too hard for machines to handle. By contrast, Imindi believes that this issue is inevitable. At the same time, Imindi also agrees that by the current technology machines truly cannot solve the problem well. Therefore, Imindi suggests much more human intervention into the construction of Semantic Web than many other Semantic Web researchers have suggested. From the research point of view, it is less machine-automated. From the practice point of view, however, we believe it is m
Rob, why is it disappointing? It makes total sense to put long articles over 2 or more pages. Jeez, give us a break. Sometimes I get tired of whining from people about little things like that. It seems to be cool to dislike pagination, like the Friendfeed crowd gets brownie points for saying "ohhh, pagination is evil". But if you think about it logically, pagination splits up long content so that it becomes more readible. So you have to make an extra click, so what?!
Juice screwed up my browser, I think.
Richard, please don't get me wrong, I love ReadWriteWeb. I have always disliked multi-page articles because it breaks the flow of reading. Nothing more than that. I just like reading on one page. It won't matter to me long term because I will continue to read it regardless. Just personal preference really.
Posted by: Rob Diana
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November 20, 2008 11:12 AM
Bring back anchor tags! :P
Posted by: Aram Zucker-Scharff
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November 20, 2008 11:14 AM
Congratulation to all companies that were mentioned in this post. I am happy to see that the space is so active. In particular I am a big fan of dapper and I wish the dapper guys all the best.
At the same time, I was disappointing to see that our startup, SemantiNet did not make the list. I strongly believe that our product (www.headup.com) should be considered as a promising semantic web application. I guess that the proof is in the pudding, and only time will tell.
In the meantime, I'd like to offer those that might want to give our product a try to use the invite code TALCODE.
Tal Keinan
The "Semantic Web" seems like all hype. It's just a geeky buzzword that the mainstream will never care about. As the saying goes, "Technology of the future and always will be".
Nice post, but where I would add Zemanta (http://www.zemanta.com) to the list. To me they look like a promising startup with a great product.
I agree: this is a great post. If I may, I'd also like to add the company I'm consulting with, Daylife. As a partisan, I've spent a lot of time comparing Daylife against many of the companies on this list and find they're at least as good or better in every instance. Moreover, they've also managed to get at something others have a tougher time with: their output is visually compelling, organized in an intuitive fashion and invites a virtually endless click-stream (publishers who integrate Daylife and some of the other services on this list love this last benefit a lot).
I'd also like to put my vote in for Zemanta, which I use on my personal blog and which has been (for me) a lovely complement to the Daylife service. It's a terrific tool.
Great List,as before,I also create another screenshot or snapshots list for these websites you mentioned in post,have a look here:
http://www.sitegif.com/gif/10-more-semantic-apps-from-readwriteweb/
Hi,
yeah, I'd like to see Zemanta on the list also. But Richard probably knows there is no way to make everybody happy. :)
However, we are at least partly present through Faviki which is using Zemanta API for one part of their service - recommendation of semantic tags.
Faviki are great guys BTW and I expect a lot from them in the future, I am glad Richard knows about them!
bye
Andraz Tori, Zemanta
Richard,
Thank you for including Imindi in the your list for this year. This in an honor that our hole team will work hard to live up to.
As you mentioned we got - shall we say - some tough love when we appeared as finalists at TC50 this year.
The feedback we got at that event was very importantant in that it helped us to focus on some fundamental issues relating to the product and the business and for the past 10 weeks we have been busy in development incorporating these changes.
I would agree with you that Imindi could be viewed as a mind mapping application - but only superficially. That is - the mind map is the visual interface between our database and engine and the individual user.
The power of Imindi is not the mind mapping interface - frankly we could and might use other types of interfaces. It is the fact that once you start to collect your thoughts with Imindi it wil help you to expand your mind by recommending and helping you to discover the thoughts of like minded thinkers.
Again thank you for your support.
-Adam
Richard,
As is the case with SemantiNet and Zemanta, I would also like to mention our company ThoughtExpress. We use our own forms of expression for semantics/knowledge that are deeper than the currently available structures to actually run enterprises (even some large insurance ones). ThoughtExpress is probably worlds first semantic enterprise management platform.
We are soon going to launch Semantic Human Interface in deep social graph where people and enterprise will be able to express their own semantics and actually exist in this space to conduct business, sharing of knowledge, etc. They will no longer need their systems or IT personel. Processes are actually going to be constructed from semantics expressed in human terms.
Regards
Pawel Lubczonok
However, we are at least partly present through Faviki which is using Zemanta API for one part of their service - recommendation of semantic tags.
Thanks for useful information.
But I've noticed that you've included only single apps from 10 different semantic application categories. So article seems to be incomplete somehow. For instance, you may part it into serveral articles: semantic advertising or targeting apps, semantic search engines, and so on. And more applications and semantic technologies will be listed and available to readers' view.