Think-About-Tech - User's Blog Feed (RicRoberts) 2010-09-06T22:53:11+01:00 http://www.thinkabouttech.com/ Lussumo Vanilla & Feed Publisher What Is the Semantic Web, and Why Is It Important? http://www.thinkabouttech.com/discussion/71/what-is-the-semantic-web-and-why-is-it-important/?Focus=303#Comment_303 2009-06-03T09:20:35+01:00 2010-09-06T22:53:11+01:00 RicRoberts http://www.thinkabouttech.com/account/52/ Semantics are important. They always have been and they always will be, because they are fundamental to the process of communication. What’s been changing recently is the means that we use to ... Semantics are important. They always have been and they always will be, because they are fundamental to the process of communication. What’s been changing recently is the means that we use to record and communicate information, especially with the advent of the internet.

Currently the web is mainly based on HTML documents, but the content of these documents just tells browsers how to display stuff - other machines find it hard to interpret what the text actually means. It has no context.

The semantic web tries to solve this by allowing people and machines to publish data in formats that are meant to be used for storing, describing and transmitting data... such as RDF and ontologies - a kind of standardised machine-readable way to describe data models. This also helps with the interlinking of data, because different people can easily use standard terminology.

This might sound complicated but it's quite simple really,...

]]> Work 2.0 http://www.thinkabouttech.com/discussion/68/work-20/?Focus=285#Comment_285 2009-05-04T10:18:42+01:00 2010-09-06T22:53:11+01:00 RicRoberts http://www.thinkabouttech.com/account/52/ I run a software company with my co-founder, Bill. We both work from home, but we live over 200 miles apart. About once a month, we meet up for a face-to-face meeting but most of the time, to ... I run a software company with my co-founder, Bill. We both work from home, but we live over 200 miles apart. About once a month, we meet up for a face-to-face meeting but most of the time, to communicate, we use a combination of Swirrl (our company's own service, which provides an online workspace for collaboration and knowledge management), instant messaging, e-mail and an occasional voice chat (over VOIP) if the discussion becomes more involved.

Our in-person meetings last no more than a couple of days and during that time, we plan, review, discuss and make decisions about the direction of the company and product. I often find that after these meetings I’m very motivated to get back to work on what we just discussed.

Outside of these meetings however, it’s great to have uninterrupted alone-time to actually get things done. Bill and I have different times when we like...

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