Given my entrepreneurial background, I was shocked at the open exchange of ideas in Sanibel. Most projects I've worked on have had non-disclosures. Most of my colleagues hold their cards close to the chest. My amazement reached its peak on the demos & posters night as I walked from station to station, hearing one breakthrough after the next. "This is way too easy," I thought. Given adequate funding, I could probably turn at least six of those projects into lucrative ventures. If you're doubtful, call me up. I'll rattle off the how and who, brainstorming market, branding, and sales potential....

In Shelley Power's "The Value of Human on a Humanless Web", she talks about the mom scenerio in the Scientific American article: "Mom needs therapy? Oh no! Well, we'll work together and make sure she's taken care of!" In this picture, I search for available plans in the area and then call the hospitals and I talk to the people to see if I can trust them to take care of mother; neither I nor [my sister] is so busy as to begrudge the time taken. " While I agree with most of her article, this part rang false for...

I read somewhere that in the early days of telephone, early adopters had a tough time selling the technology to city businesses. Back then, it was standard practice for executives to dictate messages to secretaries, who typed them up to be sent to the mail room, where they would then be rushed by bike messengers across town to the mail rooms of other businesses, which would then deliver them to the executives upstairs. When presented with the idea of a telephone, executives thought, "Why bother? We'd just be saving the bike messenger a trip, and they're cheaper than the telephone...

Imagine you're at a party with people you don't know and you walk into the following conversation (a terrific summary by Peter Van Dijck, btw). You listen politely, not wanting to interrupt, all the while wondering "Just what in the hell are you people talking about?" To a newcomer, we must seem like blind men describing an elephant, debating the semweb's essential nature from our differing vantage points, but rarely addressing the most basic questions: what is the Semantic Web and why should anyone care? If you're new, and you're nodding your head, hoping someone will put the pieces together...

(what follows is an imaginary conversation between Angela Tesoro, billionaire founder of a fictious women's health club franchise, and Timothy Falconer, advocate for the Semantic Web) Angela: Hi Tim, it's Angela. Got a minute? Timothy: Hey Angela. Sure, what's up? Angela: This morning I was approached by a startup company that's looking to make and sell some computer software. They're convinced they're gonna make millions of course, and they need an angel investor, which is why they met with me. Their ideas sound pretty good, but you know me. I'm not the most computer literate person, which is why I'm...

(continued imaginary conversation between Angela Tesoro, billionaire founder of a fictious women's health club franchise, and Timothy Falconer, advocate for the Semantic Web) Angela: Okay, now that we've ordered lunch, tell me about the Semantic Web. What is it? Why should I invest in it? Timothy: Let's start with some definitions. There's basically two pieces to the Semantic Web puzzle: 1) annotating content with metadata, and 2) doing stuff with that metadata. Angela: I'm already lost. You sound like those guys from yesterday. Timothy: (smiling) I'll explain. By "content", I mean anything you can make with a computer or put...

(continued imaginary conversation between Angela Tesoro and Timothy Falconer, now sitting in her office in front of her computer) Angela: Yesterday at lunch you were telling me the world needs more metadata, and that metadata is a kind of one-off description of "real" data. What I don't understand is why this is new. Isn't just about everything we do with computers related to metadata? My friend Julie uses annotation in Word all the time. And isn't every form we fill out on the web like this? I type in "Angela Tesoro" in the "Name" field. Isn't "Name" meta to "Angela"?...

(continued imaginary conversation between Angela Tesoro and Timothy Falconer, sitting with a laptop at their local WiFi equipped bookshop) Angela: Since yesterday, I've been doing "page source" on a bunch of web pages like you showed me. Sure enough, lots of them have these meta keywords. I even gave some thought to our keywords and had our webmaster change them after looking at some competitor websites. Timothy: Meta keywords are just a small example of where we're headed with the Semantic Web. They're baby steps at best. To do better, we need to annotate stuff using shared metadata vocabularies. Angela:...

(continued imaginary conversation between Angela Tesoro and Timothy Falconer, now sitting in her board room with her financial advisors) Angela: Everyone, this is Tim Falconer. He's been helping me understand this Semantic Web stuff in the last few days. I'm now convinced there's a need for the technology, but I still haven't heard the most important part: will this make us money? Timothy: I'm convinced it can, particularly given the ideas in the prospectus you gave me. Your startup company essentially wants to create a worldwide technical talent search system, like Monster.com, only decentralized. I showed you FOAF yesterday so...

Even if you're not from Missouri, it's easy to say "Show me" when first told about the Semantic Web. Maybe we've all become skeptics in the wake of so much failed dot-com exhubarance. Maybe it's the way semweb advocates sometimes sound, describing it as this self-evident holy grail, forever in the future, but arriving any moment. Maybe it's the word "semantic", which to most people gets prefaced by "just", as in "let's drop this pointless argument, it's just semantics." Maybe our society loves to see successful people fail. Who better to take a dive than the founder of the last...

I've watched the blog phenomenom from afar these last three years, but really haven't staked my claim until now. Yeah, I got a company blog, which even was linked by Ev a few years back. I've got a personal blog, which I share with my wife, where I occassional get creative. I even posted my writing in the early days, before the Web had search engines. My Letter to Jack Kerouac had some readers, as did Gravity Notes and The Nine Principles, which have a few pre-Web predictions that are still coming true. But up till now, I haven't done...

Yesterday's post was a bit tongue-in-cheek, but it's a real concern of mine. I can say the right things, I can answer the naysayers, I can champion the grannies, but my words won't be worth much if no one reads them. So how's it going so far? Well, I launched with an email to 33 people, most of whom I met in Sanibel. I got a very nice mention in Shelley Power's blog. I've had a half-dozen supportive emails. Otherwise, no blog comments, or trackbacks, or website links as yet. The stats show that readership is slowly increasing. I'm getting...

He lives below the senseless stars and writes his meanings in them - Thomas Wolfe In Shelley's starlings post, she talks about the URI debate, and how some think we can sidestep the word "resource", since we've gotten this far without precisely considering it. Usually, while reading debates like this, I begin to feel like a kid with his hands to his ears, yelling, "na na na na na" to block out the sound. Thankfully I was a philosophy minor, which means I've developed a tolerance for this "what's in a name" nonsense. I once wrote a paper on Russell's...

Today I've been working on my company's updated business plan, outlining the features of our two new products, describing their competitive advantages in the current market. I went to Sanibel to determine if we should use Semantic Web technology. I came away with a "Yes" from a technical standpoint, but a "Maybe" from a business point of view. Much of my writing here, particularly the Angela Talk, is motivated by my current need to make the business case for the Semantic Web. I really do believe there's money to be made in this space. The tough part's describing how to...

Today I tried to do something I've been meaning to do for a long time: get my websites to validate as strict XHTML. Till today, I haven't rated it enough of a priority to take the time. Giving myself thirty minutes for the first site, I made it most of the way, but bailed because I couldn't get the layout to work easily in all browsers. Now don't get me wrong. I'm a standards conscious guy, and I believe strongly in refactoring. I'm always taking that extra five minutes (or thirty) to make things more readable, more flexible, and more...

I started this blog in response to the many terrific conversations I had while at ISWC in Sanibel, many of which centered around the social implications of the Semantic Web. On the last day, I talked with Dieter Wolf. After some time, he half-jokingly said in surprise, "You are an American, and you care about these things?" Yes, I do, and there's a lot of us, though you wouldn't know it by watching our television. Last week was an exception, though. There was an episode of ER that blew me away. Doctor Carter, one of the main characters, was treating...

Okay, we've got RDF, we've got OWL, we've got Jena, we've got ontologies. Now what? What can we do with them? Let's take the semweb for a spin. In Sanibel, I did lots of brainstorming with folks. Seemed like most there were hunting elephants: big grants and big business. My focus was on a different market: the small and the many. Horizontal markets are harder to reach; you gotta really know marketing. It's not just board rooms you're pitching to... it's everyone. So what semweb products could succeed with the many? Well, there's my own company's products, which I'll talk...

In 2000, my wife and I wanted a new house. We drove all over, we talked with our realtor, we went to open houses, we looked online. Nothing felt right. We decided to write up our "top ten" lists of what we wanted most. My list led with "space" and "light" and "land". Hers included "jacuzzi" and "closets" and "great kitchen". We both wanted "fireplace." These lists became our informal search profile. Such profiles are the stock in trade for real estate agents, whether they're helping you buy or sell a house. The better a realtor can predict whether a...

The word "semantic" is one of those words people sort of understand, but not completely. Like "humility," it's a word that's hard to pin down. Most people don't really know what it means, which is ironic because it means meaning: "of or relating to meaning in language." So, are we trying to build a "web of meaning"? Well, here we run into a similiar problem: "meaning" has many meanings. We use it to show intent ("I mean to please") or purpose ("I was meant for this job") or significance ("you mean everything to me"). We also use it when connecting...

Today my company, Immuexa, formally begins "Project Realize", our own attempt to bring Semantic Web goodness to everyone. Our plan is to develop and market two software products that share the same purpose: helping people organize, explore, and share their digital memories. Tidepool™ (formerly Akimbo and Waveplace) is a desktop application that can be run on any computer. Storymill™ is a web application that's used through a web browser. Both do much the same thing -- they're similar but separate interfaces to the same shared functionality and codebase. Each product will play to the strengths of its interface. Tidepool, the...

Our lives are what we remember. Our culture, our society, our heritage: it's the knowledge we share that defines us. Memories and imaginings form the substance of our shared humanity. Preserving and publishing our memories, whether the story of our individual lives or the history of our neighborhoods, is a profound and necessary endeavor, for it brings us together as a people. Cherishing our shared heritage helps create and sustain real community, real meaningfulness, which many of us hunger for as an alternative to the soulless singularity of corporate branding and rubber stamp franchises that are slowly erasing the color...

Shelley writes: "She who dares [sing] now does not live to pass her exuberance and spirit on to her offsping, and each new generation becomes more silent in the face of adversity." She's referring to birds outside getting quiet when a hawk is in view, among other things. This made me think of ani difranco, an incredible talent who sings her truth regardless. Sometimes I worry for her safety, since clearly there's danger in this world. By telling the uncomfortable truths, we could be painting targets on our chests. My wife once got hate mail simply by choosing Bobby McFerrin's...

Tonight, while much of the world celebrates Christmas Eve, that magical time when we all remember "true meaning", spontaneously helping our neighbors like Scrooge after his big conversion, I'm reminded instead about the divisions between us, the physical and conceptual neighborhoods that make it possible for us to disregard each other easily. I guess it's no one's fault. Our brains are barraged with the demands of the day. We need to find shortcuts, remembered mnemonics, to help us sift through our choices so we know how to feel about stuff. Without intending it, we slip on our "us and them"...

My last week of postings have been mostly sauce with no meat, which means it's high time I quit with conjecture and start talking turkey. For those new to the Semantic Web, I'm sure you're saying, "How do I use this stuff?" I know how you feel. When I'm learning a new technology, I'm usually relieved when the writer stops talking around things and finally addresses the topic directly. So for my first "tangle yarn," I'll tackle RDF, the Resource Description Framework, since it's the technological foundation for the whole magilla. There's a lot written about RDF and friends. I'm...

In my last post, we learned that RDF is all about describing resources, and that resources are referenced with URIs. So how does it describe them? Let's start by looking at the source of this very page (View / Page Source). There's two snippets of RDF embedded in the HTML. The first helps tools like Movable Type create what are called "trackbacks", links to this post from other people's posts. Here's the RDF: <!-- <rdf:RDF xmlns:rdf="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#" xmlns:trackback="http://madskills.com/public/xml/rss/module/trackback/" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/"> <rdf:Description rdf:about="http://bigfractaltangle.com/archive/2003/12/26.jsp" trackback:ping="http://immuexa.com/cgi-bin/mtype/mt-tb.cgi/80" dc:title="RDF intro, part 2" dc:identifier="http://bigfractaltangle.com/archive/2003/12/26.jsp" dc:subject="Tangle Yarns" dc:description="In my last post, we learned..." dc:creator="timothy" dc:date="2003-12-26T21:49:46-08:00" /> </rdf:RDF> --> First,...

Now that you've seen some actual RDF, we can take a step back to put things in context. RDF is essentially a data model -- a way of describing data, or in this case, metadata. There's plenty of data models out there. The ones we're most familiar with are connected to programming languages and their functional flavors. Algol, Pascal, and C have their records and procedures. Prolog has statements and rules. Smalltalk, C++, and Java have objects and methods. SQL has tables and statements. At their core, each of these systems describe data in the same way: atomic data nuggets...

Last time I talked about "triples", which are the elementary nugget in RDF. What's a triple? Have a look: <rdf:Description rdf:about='http://bigfractaltangle.com' dc:title='Big Fractal Tangle' /> This triple is saying, "The resource 'http://bigfractaltangle.com' has the title 'Big Fractal Tangle." It's a single fact, expressed as an RDF statement, or triple. The three parts that make it a triple are: resource: http://bigfractaltangle.com predicate: dc:title object: Big Fractal Tangle Every RDF statement has a resource, a predicate, and an object. To see it another way, we can take the Grammar Rock approach: each sentence has a subject and a predicate. The subject is...

Why is RDF worth our time? My short answer is "because RDF is loose, but not too loose." RDF has enough order to do useful things, but doesn't require us to rewire the world first. If tech were tunes, RDF would be a jazz trio, not a Bach fugue. It lets players who hardly know each other improvise, yet it holds things together beautifully: the quintessential jam. In this way, RDF is much like the current Web. RDF shares many of the benefits that made the first Web a success. As Dave Beckett said, "RDF allows loose collaboration with little...

Finished the ten-hour HBO series, Band of Brothers tonight. I found it breathtaking, much like From the Earth to the Moon, also by Tom Hanks and HBO. Trust me, if you haven't watched these yet, you're missing out on some of the most engaging, exhilarating, and inspirational hours on film. Both tell the story of a hard-won triumph. Both detail the human effort, the very personal sacrifices and challenges that collectively contributed to the outcome. As each episode ended, as the credits and the theme music ran, I'd get goosebumps every time. With each hour, I felt a sense of...