ReadWriteWeb

David Carr and John Kestner are hoping to raise $35,000 to "connect your things to the Internet, without a nerd degree." The project, Twine, promises "the simplest possible way to get the objects in your life texting, tweeting or emailing." No programming required.

Twine as pictured on the Kickstarter page is a tiny square that has internal and external sensors coupled with WiFi connectivity. According to the Kickstarter page, requires just two AAA batteries that will keep it running "for months."

The semantic web is one of the leading trends we track here at ReadWriteWeb, so it was big news to us earlier this month when Evri announced it was acquiring Twine creators Radar Networks. Following the announcement, Twine CEO Nova Spivack wrote an inspiring and lengthy farewell blog post detailing the acquisition, and the story behind the development and growth of Twine. Towards the end of the post, Spivack outlined some lessons for budding entrepreneurs based on what he learned through his startup experience.

We've chronicled semantic web service Twine's birth, checkered youth, and recent woes in terms of traffic waning and criticism waxing.

We've been given screencasts of the new version of this knowledge management application - screencasts of both the consumer- and developer-facing facets of the site. Take a look, and let us know if the new Twine lives up to expectations. This new version, we are told, will be live by the end of the year.

Since it was first unveiled to ReadWriteWeb back in October 2007, Semantic Web application Twine has traveled a rocky road. The product is a knowledge management service, in practical terms similar to social bookmarking site Delicious. However, almost from the start there have been vocal critics of Twine.

The latest critique is a scathing post by Semantic Web consultant Greg Boutin, entitled Twine in Freefall?. Boutin argues that Twine's traffic has taken a dive recently. We followed up with Twine founder Nova Spivack for his response. He admits that traffic has declined "20-25%," but says that Twine is focusing on an all-new version of its product.

Nova Spivack's semantic web company Twine is developing a free service to write and host semantic ontologies; the classification trees that enable machines to put concepts in topical context. Ready to play Aristotle and create an ontology of cheese, model airplanes, global anti-hunger organizations or any other topic?

What blogging was to publishing, a simple tool that made far more people able to participate, Twine's new ontology writing and hosting service could be to the act of teaching machines about new topics.

In this article, we'll analyze the trends and technologies that power the Semantic Web. We'll identify patterns that are beginning to emerge, classify the different trends, and peak into what the future holds.

In a recent interview Tim Berners-Lee pointed out that the infrastructure to power the Semantic Web is already here. ReadWriteWeb's founder, Richard MacManus, even picked it to be the number one trend in 2008. And rightly so. Not only are the bits of infrastructure now in place, but we are also seeing startups and larger corporations working hard to deliver end user value on top of this sophisticated set of technologies.