At the end of last year we presented our list of the top 10 Semantic Web Apps of 2008. ReadWriteWeb reader Zoltán Andrejkovics wrote in to us afterwards, suggesting that we do a post looking at what Semantic Web apps we’d like to see emerge in 2009. Zoltán gave us 5 apps he wants to see this year, and we also asked our Twitter friends for their views (you can follow ReadWriteWeb on Twitter here).
We at ReadWriteWeb are tracking the Semantic Web space closely – so far we’ve identified 20 products (see our first 10, then 10 more) that we’re paying particular close attention to. But we know there is a lot of opportunity yet for commercializing the Semantic Web, so we encourage you to add your wish list in the comments.
At ReadWriteWeb, we look for more commercial Web apps – whether they be consumer or enterprise. So here are 5 of those we’d like to see emerge and/or grow during 2009:
- Microsoft makes a very bold play with Powerset technology and starts to challenge Google in search (despite Google’s attempts to use semantic web technology, we’d love Microsoft to ramp it up in search – competition is good for consumers!).
- Semantic Web advertising apps for publishers – we have our eye on Dapper MashupAds in this sector, but we’d like to see others take up this challenge too.
- Semantic apps for managing your finances – makes connections between transactions, things that you wouldn’t normally pick up.
- Semantic apps for health industry – there are many opportunities here, but in general there is much the Semantic Web could do to organize the maze of data in the health indsutry.
- A Personalized Memetracker – Techmeme founder Gabe Rivera would be astonished if this happens, but we’d love to see a product that can give a Techmeme-like organization and layout to one’s RSS feeds. So at a glance, you can see which stories in your own set of RSS feeds are hot and who’s linking to them. Whether Semantic Web technology can achieve that, we don’t know 😉
Zoltán Andrejkovics, who suggested this topic, is a PhD student at Corvinus University of Budapest and his 5 wishes as a researcher are:
- Smart notes; easy to find/browse notes, using NLP search.
- Smart RSS; automatic article-collecting app based on my own interests.
- Mind writing; using not only words, but “thought” objects, that the NLP engine puts into words.
- Assistant; “my mirror”, learns from my words, behavior on the net, and supports my work, handles calendar, etc.
- Smart bookmarks; works like smart notes.
Here are some reactions from RWW readers on Twitter (it was very short notice before this post was published, so if we missed you please add your wish list to the comments):
superphoebe: “I’d love to see more semantic blogging tools like Zemanta, but with more sources, really great search and a super simple dashboard.”
Marcelo Sánchez: “Zigtag for bringing real semantic tagging and Freebase as the next Wikipedia”
garlin: “I’d like an app that uses semantic tech to identify/analyze the political bias in a particular article/piece of writing.”
kevin grandia: “would love to see a better way of submitting content to conversion services like Calais.”
Rama Mamuaya: “language based search engines like Hakia or Powerset should be rising fast. Should evolve from search engine, to answer engine.”
Jean-Jacques Halans: “mobile safari reading microformats, for adding to calendar, contacts, lookup address on map”
Stephen Edgar: “More on the Semantic Wiki app’s and API’s such as http://tinyurl.com/27vnno“
Chris Saad: “my hope is to see APML import AND export from more apps ;)”
Tell us your Semantic Web App Wish List for 2009.
