Today AdaptiveBlue released a new version of its BlueOrganizer product, a Firefox extension that aims to provide extra contextual information to you while browsing the Web. Basically after you install BlueOrganizer in your Firefox, it enables you to discover all kinds of relevant content while you're browsing - such as books, music, links, related information, etc. Essentially then, it adds personalization and semantics into the browser (Firefox).
AdaptiveBlue is the company of Alex Iskold, a regular writer on Read/WriteWeb. He is one of the smartest technologists I know and his posts here are a consistent source of inspiration and conversation amongst the R/WW community. Which leads me to say: what's interesting about the new release of BlueOrganizer is that it puts much of Alex's theories about Web 2.0 and the Semantic Web into practice. I'll explain how in this post.
First, what has been released today? Here are the highlights of the release, code-named BlueOrganizer Denim:
BlueMarks and sidebar
Techcrunch has more coverage of the features, but for this post I want to turn now to the Semantic Web elements.
Most of the web 2.0 products you see nowadays use bottom-up content organization techniques. For example, del.icio.us and Flickr use tags from users to organize content, and MySpace and YouTube are based on user-generated content that is mostly discovered via a user's social network along with search. But BlueOrganizer is different - it is a "Top-down Semantic Web" approach.
Alex's theory is that the Semantic Web will arrive gradually, using a top-down approach. In the case of BlueOrganizer, what that means is it adds semantics to basic web elements: pages, links, text. With BlueOrganizer, a user can add a description to a web page (they might note down "web 2.0 blog" about readwriteweb.com, for example). BlueOrganizer then uses "a combination of parsers, web services and analysis algorithms" to take that unstructured content and turn it a structured content - such as related websites to readwriteweb.com. This structure is then retained, as the content is used again and again in BlueOrganizer. Alex has a neat phrase to describe this, saying it "empowers people to re-write the web using automation." Here's an illustration of the concept:
All up, BlueOrganizer is an excellent practical example of how semantic web technologies are creeping into Web 2.0. We forecast this in our 2007 predictions post at the end of 2006, which Alex contributed to. Interesting though that the 'official' semantic web efforts, led of course by Sir Tim Berners Lee, still aren't making much headway on the Web. But when you mix in user-generated content, APIs, "parsers, web services and analysis algorithms" and the rest of the techniques that AdaptiveBlue is using, well just maybe Sir Tim will get his Semantic Web after all.... just not perhaps as he envisaged it.
Disclosure: Alex Iskold, CEO of AdaptiveBlue, is a writer for R/WW.
Comments
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...."AdaptiveBlue is the company of Alex Iskold, a regular writer on Read/WriteWeb..."
Posted by: william | May 23, 2007 3:07 AMCan there be an un biased review of an application by the blog that the application creator has written for.There seem to be no negatives in the review points in the review other than those expressed about possible competitors. Is thiS the perfect application with no flaws ?
william, I made it very clear in the post about Alex's relationship to R/WW. Obviously a review here of Alex's company can never be completely unbiased, but I think the technology stands on its merits. You can argue that if you like in the comments, but you need to do a bit better if you want to go down that route (like actually mention something about the product that you don't like).
p.s. just to make it *super* clear, I have added a disclosure at the end.
Posted by: Richard MacManus | May 23, 2007 4:12 AMCongratulations to Alex and his team.
-Rob
Posted by: Rob Tsai | May 23, 2007 6:50 AMI believe most of you know how I feel about re-tagging the internet by hand just to make it 'semantic'. Bluggh.
Regardless though, AdaptiveBlue is a very cool product and is the best example of how this should be done that I've seen.
Posted by: Phill Midwinter | May 23, 2007 8:18 AMPhill:
I think AdaptiveBlue has taken the approach that I believe is ultimately the most likely to succeed:
1. First, you use computers/algorithms to jump-start the initial analysis and usage of the Semantic Web
2. Second, once that effort gains traction, then you can use the Wisdom of Crowds to refine the results
3. Finally, as the process gains critical mass, individual web masters will jump on the bandwagon and change their web sites out of enlightened self-interest
3a. At that point, the process becomes the status quo (like Google PageRank is now, and dislodging it becomes progressively harder due to network effects)
In any case, I agree with you that AdaptiveBlue is a pretty cool product and I'm very happy to see their foray into the Semantic Web. Nice going, Alex!!
[Disclosure: I also occasionally write for the Read/WriteWeb. I have no connection to AdaptiveBlue.]
Posted by: NitinK | May 23, 2007 10:33 AMThis is fantastic. I'll be using this for work and pleasure. Another great post in this always useful blog.
Posted by: p0ps | May 23, 2007 4:54 PMIt is remarkable experience using browser with Blue organizer. However, we need a small tutorial on how to use it with Zotero, Google Notebook and other tools that will help everyone.
Posted by: Prof.K.Prabhakar | May 25, 2007 4:02 AMProf.K.Prabhakar
Richard, this is really an outstanding description of our approach, thanks for explaining it so well!
Alex
Posted by: Alex Iskold | May 25, 2007 8:24 PM