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05 June 2008

Motion in the Semantic Sea

The semantic web is evolving quickly; Apple is expected to unveil MobileMe, a revised .Mac with integrated desktop-quality applications, Google is encouraging semantic web development (and does quite a bit itself). Here are some prime examples of great semantic web applications.

  • 280 Slides. This is a great example of what I expect the semantic web to become: Dynamic languages interpreted into Javascript. This one uses Objective C, but Google Web Toolkit allows you to do it in Java. This is a web app that imitates Keynote. I have a sneaking suspicion that the people at this company either work for Apple as part of the MobileMe initiative, or are very soon going to be working for Apple. I also suspect that they are using a WebObjects 4.5 backing.
  • The Waterfall Software Store (WebKit and Konqueror only). Amazing. Astounding. Probably the fastest drag I've seen, and that's because it's operating system-level. This store uses the CSS property -khtml-user-drag and javascript to provide an awesome integrated shopping cart. It degrades well too. Users of Firefox and Internet Explorer will get 'buy me' boxes on the items.
  • .Mac Web Mail Apple really did well here.
  • Acobat.com The concept of VNC inside a browser window is pretty cool, even if the performance penalties may be a bit greater. In addition, the PDF editing and such are... interesting.

After that there are pretty much the usual culprits: Google Reader, Photoshop Express (even if it does use flash), etc.. The semantic web is starting to grow up, and that is a move that could make or break companies.

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