My first experiences with Twine

Today finally I logged in to Twine the first time. I was reading yesterday about some shortcomings of the system, so I was keen on trying out the system by myself to get my own impression.

It´s true that the system isn´t as easy to understand as del.icio.us or other bookmarking tools. It takes a while until you get used to all those additional ways you can navigate through the system. Remember: “Twine looks at content and parses it automatically for the names of people, places, organizations and other subject tags. Users are then able to navigate between related content, view recommended content and connect with recommended people with related interests.” – But the “shortcoming” mentioned by Marshall Kirkpatrick that “… it’s hard to keep track of all the levels and types of information available” I can´t agree with: This has only to do with a general problem, which arises whenever semantic technologies should enhance the user experience. Either you stay with “simple” user-interfaces like Google or del.icio.us or you spend 5 minutes or so to learn a new piece of software which will help you to save time in the future and which helps you to find related information automatically.
On the other hand I was very surprised, that the automatic recommendations Twine makes on how to annotate or describe a new resource is really unsatisfying. Users will only spend time to tag their bookmarks if the machine comes up with some intelligent suggestions. And it´s true, as Marshall says, “most of the web is made up of ugly, non-standard pages.”

So hopefully Twine will add that feature before it will open up to the public (isn´t there a plan to integrate OpenCalais or something similar?), otherwise there will be no “first mainstream semantic web application” but only another prototype of a yet another semweb-app.

Become a Web Expert!

The Semantic Web has evolved constantly over the last few years. Nevertheless, in many cases I have experienced a huge demand for profound knowledge in this area. Many potential end-users of semantic web technologies have quite a few ideas of how to apply semantic web, but still many software-projects will never happen, because of the lack of knowledge, because of the fear of getting trapped by too complex technologies. Obviously it´s not the technology anymore but the awareness and personal knowledge about the semantic web, which is the actual bottleneck for the semantic web getting real.

The Semantic Web Company (SWC) is offering in 12 daily seminars a training-course for persons who want to become a Web expert. Participants  get step by step advanced in methods and technologies for semantic projects. Each seminar is a stand-alone-module and can also be booked singularly.

From 27th of Mai to 4th of July 2008 the SWC curriculum will take place. A special focus will be on applications and solutions of semantic technologies to support social processes.
The curriculum will provide profound insights into the topics Semantic Web and Social Software. Therefore the seminars are grouped into three comprehensive modules:

* “Next Step”: Social Web & Social Software
27. – 30. May 2008
* “Advanced Level”: Textmining & Enterprise Search
10. – 13. June 2008
* “Expert View”: Semantic Web & Metadata Management
01. – 4. July 2008

The modules will take place at the Austrian Computer Society in Vienna. The main language in the courses is German. English courses can be provided on demand.