Headup

The Semantic Web

We are all familiar with the Internet. Browsing the web has become such second nature to us that we rarely stop to ponder about the mechanics behind it all, but these mechanics are worth discussing, and we at headup also believe that they can, and should, be questioned.

What is “The Web”?

For a full definition of the World Wide Web I suggest you check out Wikipedia, however for our purposes suffice it to say that the World Wide Web is essentially a huge collection of documents that are linked to one another by hypertext links. Hypertext links suggest to us fixed predefined routes that lead from one document to another. Our freedom of choice when navigating the Web is basically limited to selecting whether or not to follow any of the predefined paths that the document’s author prepared for us in advance, without any regard for what actually piqued our interest in the original document.

Semantic Web Browsing is the freedom to follow what interests you

We envision semantic web browsing, sometimes also known as “associative browsing”, as an experience that is devoid of any dependence on the predefined hypertext link routes that currently map the relationships between the documents that compose the web. Instead of following the predefined routes mapped out by hyperlinks, semantic web browsing allows users to navigate at will between the objects that interest them. The rigidity of hypertext links connections is replaced by a constantly evolving chart of semantic, associative and contextual relationships between the objects and entities that compose the Web. Semantic web browsing is the experience of navigating the Web without being confined to the architecture of hypertext links. It allows you to navigate the web according to your interests, and your interests alone.

How Semantic Browsing differs from “traditional” browsing

Here’s a simple example to help clarify the difference between traditional and semantic web browsing:

Let’s say you’re browsing a friend’s facebook profile. You notice that she’s a fan of The Beatles, a band you adore as well. Seeing The Beatles mentioned on your friend’s profile page gives you a craving for some Beatles music, however since your friend’s profile page is devoid of a hypertext link to Beatles music your only recourse is to either navigate away from her profile, or open a new browser window and search for the music you want to hear. This is the fundamental limitation of “traditional” browsing I described earlier – it limits browsing to traversing along the existing infrastructure of preexisting hypertext link.

The Semantic web browsing experience headup allows you to use the mention of The Beatles on your friend’s profile page as a point of origin leading you directly to their music, regardless of the hyperlinks existing on your friends profile page. The reason we can do this is because we identify the object “The Beatles” as being “A Band” – a class of object where it is pertinent to offer users with the band’s music as semantic/associative/contextual information.

Semantic web browsing with headup

headup’s semantic web based engine differentiates between certain types of objects and understands that each one of these objects has characteristics unique to it’s class. A city is different from a band, a person is different from a movie, and so on. Trivial as this may seem, the implications are far reaching. Identifying an object’s type allows us to offer for each type of object the pertinent semantic information that is most relevant to this object’s class. Not only can headup identify object’s classes it is also aware of the relationships between the different types of classes it identifies.

Browsing the web with headup you are no longer confined to the predefined hypertext link routes normally required for traversing between web-pages. You are now free to choose whether you want to read about a band, listen to its songs, watch its videos or check out which of your friends likes this band and whether they recommended any similar artists. You can check out where the band will be playing its next gig and possibly even purchase tickets to the show. Any object that headup’s engine identifies becomes a point of origin for a whole new form of browsing experience – one that relies on the contextual and semantic relationships between objects as opposed to the existence of hypertext link between them.

Have your own thought about the Semantic Web and Semantic Browsing experiences?  I’d love to hear them – comment below or contact me via  @headup or miked[at]semantinet[dot]com

Mike
Creative Marketing
headup.com

headup works just fine with friendfeed

I’m very excited about the great new screencast user Hao Chen put together for us.

The demo explains how the add-on works and how headup interacts with friendfeed in order to deliver users with fresh semantic web content related to whatever or, in friendfeed’s case, whoever they are browsing. In the demonstration Hao uses headup in order to discover semantically related information about Robert Scoble’s friends, the companies they work for, their locations, and more. This wealth of semantically related information is displayed in the headup panel without Hao having to browse away from the friendfeed page he used as the source for is discoveries.

Tell us about your headup experiences

Have a headup experience you’d like to share about friendfeed or one of the other sites that headup interacts with?

Great!

Why not share it with us and with a little bit of luck we just might publish it right here on the headup blog.

You can reach out to us on twitter (@headup) or send an email to me directly – miked[at]semantinet[dot]com

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