The Semantic Web – Prove It to Yourself in 5 Minutes

 "The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their right names” (Chinese Proverb)

Part 2 of a 3 part series.

If the semantic web is the web that talks to itself, then it’s important that everyone speak a common language, a language of "standards." Under development by volunteer groups around the world these standards" describe the name and translation of  data.  They include:

• Resource Description Framework (RDF)
• Web Ontology Language (OWL)
• Gleaning Resource Descriptions from Dialects of Languages (GRDDL)

Unless you are a hardcore web-head it’s hard to get excited about  acronyms like GRDDL. But standards make it possible to read this article in a RSS feed, to syndicate your podcast and to make your website look good on desktops, laptops and mobile phones.

Seeing is Believing

One way to demonstrate the power of standards is to take a stroll through the CSS Zen Garden.  Here you can see the starting impact of just agreeing on what a headline is, how text should flow around images, and what a background does. Here’s how to impress yourself in 5 minutes.

1. Go to Zen Garden and navigate to the Design Gallery
2. Click on any thumbnail to pull up the site with a whole new look and feel.
3. Click the "Back" button and repeat step 2 with a different thumbnail.
4. Notice how the words on the page are exactly the same, but the look, feel and flow all change. Notice how quickly the page loads.

All of this is made possible by a group of web-heads creating style standards ("Cascading Style Sheets") as far back as 1999 and as recently updated as last month. Purists will point out that CSS in not a true semantic web standard.  I would have to agree. But for those of with business deadlines looming, an appreciation of why we should even consider standardization precedes all else.

Next

In the final installment of this series, we’ll take a look at some standards you can put in place immediately to improve your business and how you can begin to "future proof" you work.

Related Posts

1. What is Semantic Advertising? Who Are The Top Vendors?
2. What is SEO 2.0?
3. Twitter Experiments With Verified Accounts: You Avoid Brand Hijacking