The semantic web, a network of
machine-readable information, is a proven concept and organisations
should begin exploring how to use it.
That was a message from a panel of luminaries
from academia and commerce at the World Wide Web Consortium’s
conference.
Currently, HTML pages on the web are designed to
be read by humans, and information is found using internet search
engines. But Clare Hart, executive vice-president in the
enterprise media group at Dow Jones, said searching for information
was not a good use of people’s time.
With changes under way on the web, she said,
“Individuals will [in future] be able to use their PC or mobile
device to access information in a seamless way, based on who they
are.”
Enterprises are looking at information
strategies, Hart said. “Search engines are one component and will
sit alongside the rich applications enterprises need to conduct
business.”
Some of this information will arise from data
tagging standards that are being developed for the web. The concept
called the semantic web is now ready for software companies and
users to start implementing.
Jim Hendler, a professor at the University of
Maryland and the author of the original semantic web paper, said,
“We originally had a 10-year vision, but a lot of the pieces
[required] fell into place sooner than I expected.”
Companies can get started now, according to web
inventor Tim Berners-Lee. With relatively little investment, using
experimental, commercial open source tools, he said it was possible
for an IT director to demonstrate the business value of semantic
web techniques.
He said the return on investment of the semantic
web was the ability to enable the company to be reactive, using
applications that can draw on semantic web data, in order to
improve decision-making.
However, for the semantic web to go mainstream,
businesses will have to categorise their information using agreed
vocabularies known as ontologies, according to Richard Benjamins,
director for research and development at Isoco, a spin-off from the
Spanish National Research Council, which specialises in the
semantic web.
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Prepare for a revolution of the web,
says Berners-Lee