A Guide to The Contextual Web - Page 3
Browser Add-Ons
Widgets and markup technologies are making inroads into the contextual web, but an even bigger inroad is being made by browser add-ons. Since Firefox introduced its platform for delivering additional features to the browser, many thousands of browser extensions have been developed. A lot of these extension focus on enhancing the browsing experience by leveraging context. Probably the granddaddy of them all is Greasemonkey, an extension that allows users to install bits of JavaScript that alter the look and content of web pages they visit. We wrote an introduction to this popular add-on and recently followed up with a post on 7 New Greasemonkey Tweaks.
While Greasemonkey scripts are mainly regarded as experimental tools for power users, quite a few other extensions are aimed at building a business around contextual enhancements to the browser. One example is a company called WebMynd, which focuses on enhancing Google search results. WebMynd's extension automatically pushes down Google ads (clever!) to insert its contexual gadget. It allows users to simultaneously search posts on Twitter, book matches on Amazon, video matches on YouTube, and many other sources. An example of what shows up when searching for "semantic web" using the gadget is shown below.
We have mentioned Cooliris several times already. The most popular Cooliris product is the browser add-on that shows stunning 3D views of photos and videos around the web. Cooliris works contextually by automatically recognizing popular photo sites like Flickr, Google Images and Photobucket. Another contextual add-on that works by recognizing content on pages is Glue. This add-on shows you friends and other users who have visited the same book, music, movie, restaurant, wine, and other pages around the web. The context here crosses the content you are viewing with your social graph. Unlike lifestreaming applications that deliver you information about your friends out of context, Glue only brings to the surface information that is relevant to your current context.
A very different example of a contextual web add-on comes from Slovenia-based Zemanta. Its add-on makes it easy for publishers to add contextually relevant links, photos, and video to their posts. Zemanta works by applying its semantic engine to the body of the post and automatically recommending related content. Using Zemanta, bloggers are able to instantly add relevant content to their blog posts, in turn creating a relevant web experience for their users.
Our last two examples of contextual add-ons are Zentact and App Discover, both recently launched. Zentact -- developed by the folks who brought us another contextual phenomenon, MyBlogLog -- aims to solve a problem of staying in touch with people who matter to you. First, you import and tag your email contacts with different tags that reflect their interests. Then, as you browse, Zentact pops up a reminder to contact a person if it deems the page relevant based on the tags. It is a simple yet powerful example of the contextual web.
App Discover works by recommending related applications to the sites that you are visiting. Today, it requires publishers to add markup to their sites, but one can easily imagine how this technology could work top-down. The example below shows App Discover recommending TweetDeck when the user navigates to Twitter.
Browsers
Without a doubt, web browsers are in the best position to deliver the user's contextual web experience. While add-ons are taken in a variety of directions, the two dominant browsers, Internet Explorer and Firefox, have already incorporated the basic contextual experience: shortcuts. Internet Explorer 8 features technology called Accelerators.
According to Microsoft, Accelerators give you ready access to the online services you use everyday, from any page you visit. Accelerators are defined as little chunks of XML based on pre-defined variables and defined by the browser. Some examples of variables available to Accelerator are the active URL, the active domain, and selected text. The most common action that Accelerators do is perform contextual search based on the user's selection. Another common Accelerator function is the in-place lookup, such as looking up a map based on a given address.
The problem with Accelerators is that they are not really based on a selection; that is, they lack semantics. When you highlight an address, you still have to decide which Accelerator to use. If you have dozens of Accelerators installed, this quickly becomes hard to manage. Firefox has recognized the issue with the menu-driven approach and instead offers its contextual technology via text. Called Ubiquity, this contextual technology is still only available as an add-on today but is likely to be a part of Firefox core soon.
Marketed as user-generated mashups, Ubiquity is actually a contextual technology based on language. As with Accelerators, the user is able to select a piece of text and then invoke Ubiquity and type a command. In the screenshot above, Ubiquity is used to insert a map into an email. Hundreds of Ubiquity commands have been implemented to date. ReadWriteWeb has already written about Ubiquity commands.
Will Context be the Future of the Web?
So where is all of this heading? Are these technologies signal or noise? We believe we are witnessing the birth of a fundamentally new kind of web, a smarter one, a contextual one. Unlike the old web we are used to, this one understands what we are doing and helps us. It is a web in which we search less and find relevant content faster. This new contextual web is still very young and unevenly distributed, but it is definitely here.
The fact that these contextual technologies are springing up is not accidental. The Contextual web is made possible by our push into semantic web and the rise of web services/API culture. The combination of basic semantics and API is fueling all of these contextual applications. Bit by bit, the web is getting smarter, friendlier, and more enjoyable.
Web browsers are in the best position to deliver these new contextual experiences to users because of their wide reach. The fact that Microsoft made Accelerators its flagship feature for Internet Explorer 8 and that Mozilla is putting much effort into Ubiquity tells us that contexual browsing is a priority. This is really good news, because these technologies bring great benefits to the user.
It is great to see that in these tough economic times, evolution is brewing. The tremendous effort that all of these companies are making with contextual technologies is beginning to come to fruition. It may be that we are seeing glimpses of what the next generation of the web will be like.
And now, as usual, let's turn the tables. Tell us examples of your favorite contextual browsing technologies. Do you think context will be play significant part in the next evolution of the web?
Comments
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Hi Alex, too bad Juice (covered on RRW earlier) didn't make the list, as I think it's quite competitive with the other companies listed. Anyway, just chiming in on an otherwise excellent article on the state of the Semantic Web.
We have some new (intelligent discovery) tricks up our sleeve for 2009, that we feel will bring another exciting contextual layer to your browser. The problem we're aiming to tackle is how to make "contextual power" part of your regular browsing experience, without disrupting that same experience.
Problem: These pieces do not add all up to a coherent whole; there are some good add-ons and such, but the hype of semantic has far outpaces the actual delivery of the implied promise. I'm all for being optimistic about cutting edge, but I have yet to see a real, can't do without semantic application or web extension that I just can't do without. They have all been interesting, but not compelling.
Maybe the real breakthrough will be when I'm wowed by a web application, and someone has to tell me that some clever use of RDF and OWL made this all possible. Having read the specs, and also having been monitoring the hypeosphere for going on five years, and having worked for a semantic web tools company, I hope that the big thinkers lay ground work for real stuff we can use.
Wonderful add-on descriptions, thank you. I deduced some time ago that browsing FF extensions is like going down an exceptionally long rabbit hole, so I tend to find them only via recommendation these days.
Pondering: one individual's web experience is so different from another's, and so different across (his own) uses... do you foresee the "contextual web" being sometimes more of a hindrance than a help in the nearer future, before this technology comes to fruition?
And when it does, it will sure be interesting to see how the web world reacts to (truly) uncannily well-targeted advertising.
Great summary of extremely interesting space. Good job Alex!
I think the most important point to note in the whole article is that contextual technologies can remove need for search in certain situations.
You can also look at contextual technologies as search done differently (not through keywords).
I also agree with Alan's comment that most of the solutions are hype and that only a few deliver true value. Test of time will show which ones.
I'd add another one to the list - Aka aki. Quite local to Germany, but definitely showing where the contextual technologies are going in mobile.
I am looking at all this developments as the groundwork for the new paradigm of how computers are going to help in the future.
Andraz Tori, Zemanta
Semantic web and context will replace search, then Google will be facing problems.
Disclosure: Our company is very interested in building smarter, better links, but we tend to think of the space as "Discovery" instead of "Contextual".
A drawback of the many of the existing services is they don't deliver new information to the user, or provide substantially more value than opening new tab.
- "Look up this term on Wikipedia!"
- "Buy on Amazon!"
- "Preview this page in a hover!"
etc.
There's no new information in any of these & it strikes me as a lot of "overhead" for saving an infrequent search on wiki/amazon/netflix etc. AFAIC, the "Preview this site" concept died with "Open in new tab".
On the other hand, those who do offer NEW information and surface data that was otherwise unavailable will enjoy the most success. i.e. "Discover" things you didn't know to search for.
And by the way, that's exactly why I love your posts--thanks to your links I always discover new companies and ideas I didn't know to look for by myself.
So there's no doubt that something like context/discovery/sematic etc. will eventually become a big space. And we can certainly enjoy and try to learn from the many interestesting approaches along the way. Thanks for posting.
Well written article but I am surprised to see the glaring omission of LOCATION - quite possibly the most important context of all. From the post:
The Key Properties of The Contextual Web: Relevancy, Shortcuts, Personalization and Remixing...
OMFG location is not listed? WTF?
Here's hoping everyone at RWW will wake up and shake off this "chain to the desk" view of the world.
I agree about Todd's comment about location being a key element. Already some standards are emerging around providing location from the client to the server which will make location based applications much easier for developers.
I also think that personalization, while mentioned, isn't focused upon enough. I believe we only tap into a small percentage of the information we know about a person (their browsing history, likes, dislikes, etc) while serving them up the web. Different types of AI can be used to make inferences based on data and improve these guesses over time.
Informative, dense & thoughtful piece. Interesting no mention of how/where/whether Chrome or Safari are also driving in this same functional direction. A post-search world --- hard to fathom, but provocative.
Fascinating read
Isn't contextual just another way of saying that the search and the browser integration are the same thing, like a marriage between the two. A lot of the big players like Google and FaceBook are doing this contextual content rendering along with intuitive Browsers that have social integration that are contextual, for instance Delicious and Diigo are basing their browser extensions on users actions thus the contextual element is used again.
It's an ever increasing intelligent or as you say contextual web that is driving the innovation and along with semantic attributes we are in for a richer browsing experience. One thing’s for sure the big players will reap the reward. I also believe that everyday users like bloggers and active social network users can tap into this vast oasis and better serve their visitors.
Thanks' for the read
Alex,
In a nutshell, I assume you are trying to unveil an Web incarnation that uses context to facilitate:
1. Serendipitous discovery of relevant "Things" (moving from SEO to SDQ [1] )
2. Less subjectivity and more objectivity
3. Less obtrusive style of advertising (i.e., we will soon be able to actualy read Web content from traditional media behemoths without those poorly located Ads)
4. Expose pathways to other potentially relevant things (i.e., HTTP based Data Source Names aka. URIs, will not be obscured by opaque Web pages and Web Services)
Links:
1. http://tinyurl.com/9ny5qx -- post about Serendipitous Discovery Quotient (SDQ)
Kingsley
I knew that above comment was K. Idehen before I even read the signature line!!! I knew it!
Agree that contextual is not the right word, we're talking about semantic web still.
Regardless of how effective they are, plugins are fine for early adopters, that's about it.
Ubiquity is going to be great, kind of like moving Spotlight to the web.
Actually web pages are not data, they are human-readable information. Data is the in the more or less inaccessible databases that lie behind the websites.
When web pages stop being static, much of the inherent value of the web as a set of indices vanishes. Search engines lose their relevance when pretty much anything can wind up on a given URL. The HTTP protocol also has well known problems with managing state, and the various standard approaches to dealing with this problem are all inadequate in various ways.
It's certainly the case that providing dynamic web page content, backed by some understanding of what the user is doing, will increase the value of a given user interaction, but doing this pervasively will also diminish the value of the web itself.
So it's a trade-off. Providing "contextual" or "dynamic" or "personalized" or "customized" (whatever your current buzz-phrase is) info is great, but it has its place, and shouldn't be a universal approach to site design and implementation.
Great article. I think content has been dethroned, context is the new king!
Quite surprised to see no mention of APML under markup though, this is game changing in the search for context IMHO.
angus
Miramon makes a very important point, which is how we deal with the bridge between current methods & technologies for discovery (search) and the types of content we find and contextually consume.
This gets at the - so far - enduring & painful tension between SEO friendly web pages and the types of user engagement realized by enriching contextual content, data & experience.
So we either wait for the search bot algos to keep apace or we run out ahead and wait for them on the frontier.
When we turn to the grid humans want discovery, experience and distribution interlaced and seamless. And, perhaps, to the point of the original piece - the browser seems to be the medium for this delivery. But we need to figure this out people...I am NOT getting any younger.
And I want it too.
thanks..
I'm sorry, I don't see how you can speak of discovering relevancy of unknown content from local context when it follows that all that can be possible to "discover" is more of the same (things already in local context)- spread out over the web. That does not lead one to what ought to be relevant. It only leads to what is already been judged only possibly relevant in the past.
Like when you are just exploring, as on a tangent, that turns out to be a dead-end; all that is gathered up in what these programs "infer" from the data -- to use Alex's word. It is also used in the heuristic -- or blind guessing -- at what is relevant. What utility that?
Yet what a parade of products there are. Any of them are apt to gather the notions of what is relevant to you from your own bookmarks, from the messages in your in-box, from all your devices. I have to admit; it is smart. It may surprise some people to find out what all those notions are and how they possibly fit into their personal framework. But all of those notions combined or "inferred" are not the substance of relevance, nor are they the sum total of all that is relevant. They are only some artifacts littering one's environment.
So, imo, people should lower any expectations that these products are going to discover what ought to be relevant. And I would caution anyone to dispel any notion that these products have any sort of power of inference, within their programs. People use their powers of inference to judge when something is relevant *especially when* it does not appear to match any previously gathered facts, matters or artifacts in their existence.
I believe producers have an obligation to consumers to be careful not to confuse machine inference from data, for the human inference and induction of the substance of meaning and relevance.
-Ken Ewell
Very nice overview, Alex. A couple more plugins:
http://headup.com
http://mashlogic.com
Excellent article. One minor suggestion, search can be filtered based on context...so sort of limiting to say context can bypass search.
@Alan - Contextual relevance can be achieved when we can infer intent of the user. And we all know how notoriously difficult it is to infer intent of humans. This is not a trivial problem, hence the lack of full-blown applications and experiences. However the pieces are falling in place and like any complex technology it is by many false starts we truly make progress.
@Leadsexplorer - Google wont be replaced. In fact they can provide more targetted results by using context.
@Todd - Location is indeed a key contextual factor
@Ken - You bring up a valid point. People determine relevance not machines. However there are limited use cases where machines can simplify determining contextual relevance.
One factor that needs to be emphasized is this. Once contextual relevance is established the sum of actions that can be layered on them is where effort needs to be spent.
I think this is a nice collection of widgets and applications that add information to web pages based on their content, but I don't see any algorithms here that are about to make the 'contextual' or even the 'semantic' web relevant.
Surely 'context' needs to span more than just additional information and extra links to similar articles? (I can get that all from Google as it is...) Surely true 'context' would require a history, stored and made available to all applications? Even then, when engaging with the web and trying to find something outside of what all these widgets and apps think is your 'context' is going to be really annoying. I see no need for the web to second guess my intentions.
"this [web] understands what we are doing and helps us"
This is nonsense. Other than meta information, this article is still about search. There is no way the collection of widgets and apps mentioned here are going to 'understand' what we are doing. Search, whether you call it that or not is here to stay and my guess is Google is going to lead it for some time to come.
I see the value of defining data for users and browsers but without a universal markup definition will it ever build up momentum?
Derek,
Here are Aldo's points in a nutshell:
1. XBRL is an XML based notation for expressing Financial Reporting Data
2. XBRL is a representation of Data
3. RDF is a framework in which all Data items are Resources (i.e. useful things that have Identity) or Data Objects (or Entities) and these Items/Objects/Entities create a "Mesh" (a Graph) based on their Attribute values and/or Relationships with other Items/Objects/Entities.
XBRL instance data can be presented in RDF Linked Data form such that each item in the XBRL report becomes an Entity endowed with an Identifier.
In the case of Linked Data, the Identifiers incorporate the HTTP protocol such that each Object/Item/Entity is de-referencable over an HTTP network ( which does not always mean the public World Wide Web).
Linked Data is simply about a continuation of the long desired pursuit of platform independent distributed data objects.
Back to XBRL, we already convert XBRL instance docs (XML) into RDF by the use of RDFizer or RDFization middleware. What this means is that right now we can already build Entity/Object graphs from any XBRL document "on the fly" so that you can explore XBRL data object in granular form.
Some live examples:
1. http://demo.openlinksw.com/about/html/http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/40545/000004054508000065/ge-20080930.xml%23GE_CONS_3Q08 - Part of GE's XBRL Instance Data in RDF Linked Data form
2. http://dbpedia.org/resource/Linked_Data - About Linked Data from DBpedia (which is an RDFization of Wikipedia)
I hope this clear up matters. Yes, as you say, you can "Mash" when dealing with XML and the rest of the Web 2.0 stack. Just bear in mind that Linked Data is simply about adding the ability to "Mesh" to the mix since the data is structured at a more granular level.
Kingsley
ı have followed your writing for a long time.really you have given very successful information.
Excellent. Good reading. Great explanation of a complex, and often vague, subject.
.What a post!! Very informative and easy to understand.looking for more such posts..Lets share some information regarding the technology.
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Thank you very much from Romania [Europe]!
Nice Post. Very informative. Thanks a bunch!
I hope this clear up matters. Yes, as you say, you can "Mash" when dealing with XML and the rest of the Web 2.0 stack. Just bear in mind that
I hope this clear up matters. Yes, as you say, you can "Mash" when dealing
I hope this clear up matters. Yes, as you say, you can
One of these evolutions started quietly in 2008. We are witnessing the rise of a new kind of web: contextual. You might not have heard or thought about it much yet, but you are already using it today. Search remains the killer app on the web, but context is quickly become a viable contender. Why? Because context is what happens instead of search.
One of these evolutions started quietly in 2008. We are witnessing the rise of a new kind of web: contextual. You mi
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