ReadWriteWeb

Probase is a Microsoft Research project described as an "ongoing project that focuses on knowledge acquisition and knowledge serving." Its primary goal is to "enable machines to understand human behavior and human communication." It can be compared to Cyc, DBpedia or Freebase in that it is attempting to compile a massive collection of structured data that can be used to power artificial intelligence applications.

It's powered by a new graph database called Trinity, which is also a Microsoft Research project. Trinity was spotted today by MyNoSQL blogger Alex Popescu, and that led us to Probase. Neither project seems to be available to the public yet.

These and other projects shed some light on Microsoft's search and big data ambitions.

The Semantic Web is all about structuring data so that humans and computers can more easily interpret the Web and discover relevant data for a wide variety of purposes. Google, a company built on the ability to advertise based on contextual data, announced today a major acquisition in the Semantic Web space. As of today, Metaweb, maker of Freebase and a leader in the Semantic Web, has joined forces with Google.

There is a thing and there are ways to describe a thing. But why stop there?

FluidInfo is a startup company that has built a new information architecture that positions databases as an open-ended way to describe the world, with access by anyone to add entirely new fields of data to describe a given phenomenon and open to sorting by any combination of parameters. The company announced today that after years of development, it has found a home and some incredibly high-profile investors to back it. Expect this company to go from confusing obscurity to one of the most talked about back-end startups on the web.

Factual, a new open data project founded by Gilad Elbaz, just launched its public beta today. Elbaz's last company, Applied Semantics, was acquired by Google in 2003 and became one of the core components of the search giant's AdSense contextual advertising product. Factual, which is mostly geared towards developers, is somewhat similar to Freebase, though Factual allows for a more free-form approach to building a database than Freebase. Factual provides users and developers with tools to create, contribute and mash up open data on any subject.

Staff researcher David François Huynh has created an interesting tool for browsing semantic database Freebase, called Freebase Parallax. Written up by ZDNet's Oliver Marks, the video Huynh recorded demonstrating Parallax (below) will knock your socks off.

Unfortunately, actually using Parallax demonstrates just how far from solid Freebase, one of the semantic web's poster children, really is. The idea is to allow you to apply multiple filters for your searches and embed live charts in a blog. It's a beautiful idea, check out the video.