But the semantic web is pretty much a direct ancestor of these stone age efforts.
FORBES: Another Thing That Can't Arrive Fast Enough In Newsrooms: Algorithmic Layouts
Dr Decker said the advent of the semantic web promised to make a search much more productive.
Some of this activism and activity was relatively uncontroversial, such as work on the semantic web and Creative Commons.
FORBES: Open Data Activist Aaron Swartz Dies Aged 26: 'Uncompromising, Reckless and Delightful'
Perhaps only Facebook, based on genuine identity, could build a real semantic Web that centers around people and what they do.
Dr Decker said the promise of the semantic web had spurred visionaries such as Vannevar Bush, Doug Engelbart and Tim Berners-Lee.
Froogle's product labels are written in a language called XML, which will also serve as the basic language of the semantic Web.
Nonetheless, it's not too early for businesses to start thinking about the semantic Web, or to begin experimenting with tagging their corporate documents and files.
Like the early days of the web, he said, many people were now tagging data with the labels and identifiers demanded by semantic web technology.
Tim Berners-Lee, who played the greatest role in creating the World Wide Web, is now devising "the semantic web, " a kind of intelligence to rest atop his creation.
She added that the move to the semantic web could pose challenges for established companies such as Google which have grown on the back of indexing documents rather than objects.
In a similar vein by starting to include the tags and descriptors defined by semantic web standards into its search index, web users suddenly have better reasons to use them.
Google also currently has some other semantic-search elements, such as the ability to assess what the web collectively thinks are the most significant items associated with certain keywords.
Powerset, the search engine that Pell created in 2003 and plans to open to the public in 2008, is one of a new crop of "semantic search" start-ups that aim to introduce natural language to the process of finding information on the Web.
应用推荐