Adaptive Blue has release a new version of Blue Organizer, a semantic web add-on for Firefox.

An quick explanation about what the “semantic web” is, might be a good idea. Developers use a mixture of technology to make the semantic web what it is. There are specifications, data exchange languages, and a way to notate information on a page. For example a developer might use XML for data interchange and OWL (web ontology language) for notation of the XML data, the developer than ties it all together using a framework such as RDF (resource description framework). Creating a semantic page allows a machine to understand the content thus making it “smart”.

Tim Berners-Lee originally expressed the vision of the semantic web as follows[6]:

“I have a dream for the Web [in which computers] become capable of analyzing all the data on the Web – the content, links, and transactions between people and computers. A ‘Semantic Web’, which should make this possible, has yet to emerge, but when it does, the day-to-day mechanisms of trade, bureaucracy and our daily lives will be handled by machines talking to machines. The ‘intelligent agents’ people have touted for ages will finally materialize.”

So now we have a basic understanding about what the semantic web is trying to accomplish. Blue Organizer takes a little different approach than what the traditional semantic web approach tries to be. Instead of “telling” the computer how a page is supposed to be interpreted, Blue Organizer aims to allow users to “teach” the computer what they are interested in (the key is the user, not the developer) and Blue Organizer creates a more tailored web browsing experience.

From the BlueOrganizer about page:

Personalization: A Smarter Web is Personalized Web. Personalization is what helps you navigate through the myriad of choices. For example, if you rent movies from Netflix and your friend from Blockbuster, your shortcuts should be different. If you choose Last.fm and your friend likes Pandora, the browser should know this. And if you like buying from Amazon the Browser should help you do that instantly from any page on the web. This is the power of personalization.

I downloaded and started playing with BlueOrganizer and I like the “SmartMenu” feature best. However, there are other useful features such as creating widgets and a “My Things” panel.

As more adoption of the semantic web continues to grow tools like BlueOrganizer will become far more useful and will fit into the work flow of many. The technology is in its infancy.