ReadWriteWeb

This week ReadWriteWeb will run a series of posts detailing what we think are the five biggest, most cutting-edge Web trends to come out of 2009. We'll be posting one trend analysis per day. Then at the end of the week we'll publish a major update to our standard presentation about web technology trends.

The first major Web trend we're looking at is Structured Data. In prior presentations, this has sometimes been referred to under the umbrella term of 'Semantic Web'. However the way 2009 has panned out so far, it's become clear that this trend is much more than the Semantic Web. In this post, we'll analyze the developments in Structured Data this year and provide you with 3 product examples: OpenCalais, Google, Wolfram Alpha.

This week ReadWriteWeb will run a series of posts detailing what we think are the 5 biggest, most cutting edge Web trends to come out of 2009. We'll be posting one trend analysis per day. Then at the end of the week we'll publish a major update to our standard presentation about web technology trends.

The first major Web trend we're looking at is Structured Data. In prior presentations, this has sometimes been referred to under the umbrella term of 'Semantic Web'. However the way 2009 has panned out so far, it's become clear that this trend is much more than the Semantic Web. In this post, we'll analyze the developments in Structured Data this year and provide you with 3 product examples: OpenCalais, Google, Wolfram Alpha.

In part 2 of my one-on-one interview with Tim Berners-Lee, we explore a variety of topics relating to Linked Data and the Semantic Web. If you missed it, in Part 1 of the interview we covered the emergence of Linked Data and how it is being used now even by governments.

In Part 2 we discuss: how previously reticent search engines like Google and Yahoo have begun to participate in the Semantic Web in 2009, user interfaces for browsing and using data, what Tim Berners-Lee thinks of new computational engine Wolfram Alpha, how e-commerce vendors are moving into the Linked Data world, and finally how the Internet of Things intersects with the Semantic Web.

During my recent trip to Boston, I had the opportunity to visit MIT. At the end of a long day of meetings with various MIT tech masterminds, I made my way to the funny shaped building (see photo right-below) where the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and its director Tim Berners-Lee work. Berners-Lee is of course the man who invented the World Wide Web 20 years ago.

This was my first meeting with the Web's creator, whose work and philosophy was a direct inspiration for me when I launched ReadWriteWeb back in 2003.¹

Trying to explain ThisIsLike to a friend ends up sounding like a junior high locker conversation: "He photographed a model, who is also a performing artist, who was in this band, and one of her bandmates was this other girl, who now writes for this website, which is actually similar to this other site, which was founded by this guy."

That's one way to explain the degrees of separation between two people. Another way would be to click through the photos, videos, links, and descriptions on ThisIsLike.com or watch our screencast of that process.

Today, at the Semantic Technology Conference, Rob Larson and Evan Sandhaus of the New York Times announced together that the Times will soon be publishing its copious index as Linked Data.

The Times' data will join content from Project Gutenberg, a vast online library of text from public domain books, data from the U.S. census, and information from many other formative and vital entities in the semantic web space. Larson and his team intend to make available hundreds of thousands of tags for content dating back to 1851. This will providing give developers an invaluable, automatically navigable roadmap for the publication's vast directory of knowledge and will link that data to existing pages, people, and content around the web.

The latest implementation of OpenCalais, the Semantic API by media company Thomson Reuters, has just been announced. It's with 'new media' stalwart CNET, which has signed up to use OpenCalais for semantic analysis of its tech product reviews, news, and blog posts. CNET has also joined Thomson Reuters as one of the first commercial media companies to publish its data to the Linked Data community on the Internet. This basically means that external companies can use that data for their own purposes. While CNET won't be releasing all of its commercial data, it will expose certain sets of product and editorial data.

The Web 3.0 Conference in New York last week was a visible success. Attendance was good, and so it seems that the organizers are making money. That is significant in a recession, when many conferences that were announced have had to be suddenly canceled due to lack of interest. At a more qualitative level, the Web 3.0 Conference had a good mix of different types of people. It was not an echo chamber. Personally, I found the conversations more stimulating than average for a conference.

Last week we discussed some of the new trends we're seeing on the Web in 2009: open data, structured data, apps that filter content effectively, real-time, personalization, mobile (especially location-based), and Internet of Things (the Web in real-world objects). We asked for your thoughts on these trends, along with your suggestions on what we should add. Also we were interested to know what products you've seen this year that are doing something new and 'beyond Web 2.0'. In this post we look at some of your responses, to try to define further what defines this current era of the Web.

In this edition of the Weekly Wrapup, our newsletter summarizing the top stories of the week, we report on why and how Facebook has opened up to OpenID, explore the rising popularity of Linked Data, analyze the current trends we're seeing on the Web, look at the future of the iPhone, and more. We also update you with the latest from our new channel ReadWriteStart, dedicated to profiling startups and entrepreneurs.

Last week we discussed how the current era of the Web is evolving. One of the concepts we noted was Linked Data, an idea whose time has come in 2009. Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the Web, gave a must-view talk at the TED Conference earlier this year, evangelizing Linked Data. He said that Linked Data was a sea change akin to the invention of the WWW itself. We've gone from a Web of documents, via the WWW, to a Web of data. Berners-Lee is now on a crusade for everyone from government departments, to individuals, to open up their data and put it on the Web - so that others can link to it and use it. In this post we give a high-level overview of Linked Data. Read on to stop and smell the roses.

I've been following a fascinating 3-part series of posts this week by Greg Boutin, founder of Growthroute Ventures. The series aimed to tie together 3 big trends, all based around structured data: 1) the still nascent "Web 3.0" concept, 2) the relatively new kid on the structured Web block, Linked Data, and 3) the long-running saga that is the Semantic Web. Greg's series is probably the best explanation I've read all year about the way these trends are converging. In this post I'll highlight some of Greg's thoughts and add some of my own.

On March 13th, 2009 the World Wide Web will turn 20 years old. Sir Tim Berners-Lee invented this world-changing layer on top of the Internet on this day in 1989. It's hard to overstate the impact this young technology has had already and it's even more exciting to think about where it's going in the future.

Berners-Lee has some great ideas about where the web should go next. His vision is of a major advance that could serve as the foundation for innovations that we can't even imagine today.