"Hi Charlie, This is good conversation on important topic. A couple of things: - There is a question of what exactly is being annotated. Several formats address the issue in a different way. AB Meta is focused only pages that are about things. RDFa and other semantic standards offer a way to embed semantic meta data into pages. So do microformats but in a more limiting way using CSS classes. Andraz from Zemanta and a few other folks have been working on semantic tagging. All of the above refers to publisher annotating the pages. At AdaptiveBlue we believe that getting publishers to annotate is not easy, because of the lack of direct benefit to them. This is why we developed technology that recognizes stuff in pages in a top-down (algorithmic) way. Regardless, whether the page is annotated by the publisher or content is recognized the next question is what do tools do with this information? StockTweets wants to link to their site, but another stock service might want to link elsewhere...." - Alex Iskold
"Yeah, its def not simple. It seems to me that a lot of the infrastructure that was solid in the past is now in question. I am hoping that we are evolved and smart enough to quickly adapt new laws and regulations that makes sense and actually in modern times." - Alex Iskold
I wasn't invited to foo this year but towel+Werewolf, and plan ahead what sessions you want to lead/contribute to. Share stuff. - Don MacAskill
Allen, it's a super-l33t invite-only geek fest. Sort of like BarCamp. Only not as open. - Cyndy
well thats a pile of crap - im totally full of foo! - Allen Stern
I had to Google that to make sure it didn't have anything to do with the Foo Fighters... unless they're hackers too. - Larry Kless
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you might put some thought into a session or ignite talk that you want to share. and maybe a tasty alcoholic beverage for late night sipping. - mike harrington
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alex you have much pull - sean "liked" the fact that you are going to at some point in the future make a post - that's power! - Allen Stern
I know sometimes this power scares me. - Alex Iskold
Please be gentle with all that power. :) I am especially curious to understand how Microsoft intends to develop the entire field of Semantic Web technologies. Is there a brilliant guiding vision or are they only poking around? - Sean McBride
If you'd like, I'll re-share here a little ... Of course, I will bill you weekly :) - Charlie Anzman
Dude you where in Japan? Me "sushi" jealous!!! - Alex Iskold
Marshall you are complaining. RWW like many big sites believes (assuming here) that if they build it they will come and that just isn't true. You need to be more active within the Room and you need to have RWW more tied into FF. Give the room a chance to grow, but don't treat it like its a hollywood movie (field of Dreams) remake. :) - Roger Kondrat
Good point Roger, we've made a start by integrating FF comments into RWW comments (and vice versa), but looking for more ways to integrate. - Richard
"“Why do I have to get a yahoo account to be part of RWW visitors community? Ridiculous!”" - Marcin Grodzicki
Its because MyBlogLog is own by Yahoo! Would you rather have MyBlogLog account? - Alex Iskold
Alex: it's pretty obvious. My point is that Yahoo requires full profile setup to be able to use one simple service. I want to use it, but I always scared off by the registration process... - Marcin Grodzicki
Yeah I hate to setup new profiles! The most services is kind and gives you just a couple of fileds to enter but yahoo! Nope... :( - JegerPhil - Phil
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Respectfully disagree, Alex. There is no semantic search with traction currently. Waiting around for one that does could put it behind the pack. - Carla Thompson
I agree, Alex. It does nothing to solve their market share problem and it's not going to scale to the point that it can be part of their LiveSearch. So, it's a $100M lab experiment, perhaps to keep it out of Google's hands as I blogged earlier on www.contentmatters.info - Barry Graubart
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I'm waiting for someone to start a sentence with "I disrespectfully disagree" :D - Fraser
I disrespectfully disagree with Fraser. You'd had have to be a buffoon to start a sentence that way. - Andy Roth
I disrepectfully disagree agreeably. beat that. - Micah Baldwin
Please do not invent new language over my friend feed. Please use Twitter. - Alex Iskold
"Fraser,
I do not remember when was the last time that I was so excited about discovering new music. I buy a lot of it via iTunes at least once in a couple of weeks and I peak stuff that I really like from the stream of NEW.
But the 4 songs that I bought from the last album I listen to over and over again. There are magical bits about them that I can't pin point, but I love them." - Alex Iskold
"Good thoughts, as always, Fraser :)
I have two distinct points about this
1) Its not really about what is the right way. Increasingly it is more about what makes people happy. People are going to consume information in heterogenous, odd ways that make them happy.
2) The idea of pulling different conversations into 1 place is a solid one. In programming there is a concept of Model-View pattern, where a model is an underlying data set and the view is one way for looking at the data. We have evolved to the point where distributed conversation on the web is the model, and each of us is looking for an individual view - a lens, or perspective through which to view it.
We need aggregators that aggregate and let us seamlessly emit thoughts back that end up at the right places across the web. The problem? Its hard to do technically and there is little incentive because fundamentally every business wants to be the owner of the bits." - Alex Iskold
"Hi,
We said that either dc.creator or book.author is supported. Frankly, people find book.author much more simple and understandable compare to dc.creator when talking about books. The language matters. We already have specific semantics and instead of re-inventing it with commonly shared obscure terms, we should use concepts that we use in our everyday life. this will make publishers more amicable to publish meta data." - Alex Iskold
"Hi there,
While meta tags are indeed 1-1 we have plans to expand this into microformats, and then you will be able to express more than one thing per page." - Alex Iskold
"Hi Andy,
Can you please point out what specifically in Dublin Core exist to support basic everyday things? Also, the book.author or wine.winery format is meant to exactly extend things in the right way." - Alex Iskold
"Just want to add my 2cents on this - the party rocked in so many ways! There was this great vibe and smooth tune to the whole long evening. What a wonderful way to make us feel welcome as a company. We have so much good will and friends around us! Thank you, this helps us succeed." - Alex Iskold
"Here is a simple one - make a decision for me, just tell me - watch this movie. And if you are right all the time, then I love ya. But you know how recommendation engines pan out..." - Alex Iskold
"Hey Fraser,
This is an awesome post! The relative number is certainly important - velocity. But you can't dismiss the absolute number. The question needs to be asked in the context of what you are trying to figure out? More useful to who?
What is interesting is that trend information is much more sophisticated than a lot of people would care about, cause it is a derivative. In your example, the whole card game was based on that and so it made sense, but for example in Netflix case, absolute place is simple info and the ones that you are mentioning are quite complex.
Note that in case of music charts for the example, there is that time information you are mentioning, but the trick is that Top of the chart - so absolute is fixed.
To me this is the key - there is only 1 metric that people can focus on, not many and sometimes it is relative, sometimes it is absolute." - Alex Iskold
"Hey Ewan,
As it turns out not a lot of people incentivised by these because you can't make a lot of money unless your blog is highly trafficed or unless you are on many blogs, like we are.
In terms of handling stuff via PayPal - that would be hard for us to do because then we need a lot of tracking infrastructure like LinkShare, etc. We are just a connector or a pipe right now." - Alex Iskold
"Hey Ewan,
As it turns out not a lot of people incentivised by these because you can't make a lot of money unless your blog is highly trafficed or unless you are on many blogs, like we are.
In terms of handling stuff via PayPal - that would be hard for us to do because then we need a lot of tracking infrastructure like LinkShare, etc. We are just a connector or a pipe right now." - Alex Iskold
