Web 3.0 & Semantic Web

Web 3.0 describes the next evolution of the World Wide Web. The term "Web 3.0" has been floating around for quite a while now, but what does it exactly mean? The true definition of Web 3.0 has been unclear ever since it has been created. When trying to get a hold of the concept it is important to keep in mind that Web 3.0 is rather a buzzword and doesn't clearly define anything.

The semantic web
The term Web 3.0 is very often mentioned together with "the semantic web". Some people refer to the semantic web as an equal to Web 3.0, others consider the semantic web part of Web 3.0. What does "the semantic web" mean though?
A clever example in an attempt to make sense of the semantic web has been made by Peter Berkel. Take the words Paris Hilton; is there actually anybody who's thinking of the Hilton Hotel in Paris? The meaning (semantics) of these two words can be interpreted in multiple ways.
In order to understand semantics on the web we also need to look at the syntax. If we use the sentence "Mike loves Kate", the syntax refers to the composition and structure of the sentence. The semantics indicate that Mike really likes Kate. If we change "loves" into a heart symbol, the syntax will change but the semantics will stay the same.
In the example of Paris Hilton we see a reversed situation, in which there are multiple semantics but only one syntax.
In the communication between computers on the net, the syntax has an important role. When you request a website to show up in your browser, you're actually doing a request to a web server. This server looks up your request and returns this in HTML format. Your browser reads the HTML syntax and translates this into a designed page. The meaning of what's on this page will stay unknown to the computer.
The same thing happens when we search for information on the internet. A search engine searches through billions of pages to find the keywords that you requested. It will then show you a list of pages that include the keywords you were looking for. The search engine knows which keywords are in these pages, but the real content of the pages remains unknown. This could be compared to learning a parrot a couple words, which it will replicate without knowing the actual meaning of the words.
Using this analogy, the current web can be considered as a "web of documents". These documents are all linked to each other in one way or another, but for web applications the content of these documents is undefined. The content however is what's of interest to us. These documents are about people, history, companies, countries, etc. Right now we're not talking about documents anymore, but about "entities" that are inside of these documents. The goal of the semantic web is to let computers understand the entities within these documents.
So the semantic web gives meaning to entities in web pages and relationships between those entities. In contrast to the current web, this would be a web of entities.
The benefits of the semantic web
So now we got to a better understanding of the semantic web, how can we benefit from this? Take the example of Paris Hilton. If a search engine would understand that I'm trying to find a Hilton Hotel in Paris, all results about the celebrity Paris Hilton could be excluded. This brings us to better, more accurate and faster results. This is still a plain and basic example. A next step would be an application that understands Hilton is a hotel in Paris, which can offer me more services. If you are searching for a Hilton Hotel in Paris, a Hilton Hotel could be found, while a flight to Paris could be booked together with a restaurant to eat at. This makes the results on your request a lot more valuable.
Maybe this sounds pretty familiar; when you book a flight you'll be asked if you want to rent a car as well. This question however has been realized through a cooperation of multiple web applications. In the semantic web no cooperations or agreements have to be made since all information is universally available.
The semantic web will have a huge scale availability of information. Roughly, there are two different approaches that will lead to a semantic web: the bottom-up and the top-down approach.
The bottom-up approach implies adding information to all existing documents on the internet and making them understandable for web applications. This ‘information' describes the entities in a webpage and all their relations. This can be done through RDF or Microformats.
Supporters of the top-down approach consider the bottom-up approach very unpractical. They don't believe in a fully annotated internet. The top-down approach supports the development of applications that are able to have a better understanding of the data in documents. Think of tracking back the meaning of entities out of the context of a page, but mainly applications that can understand natural/logical language. Hakia (www.hakia.com) and (www.powerset.com) are Search Engines that do an attempt on understanding English in the way humans understand it.
Whatever approach will be used, the web will be more meaningful and more valuable. All entities will gather a cloud of attributes and relations. A danger would be an information overload. Ideally we only want to absorb information that raises our interest. The need of ‘personally tailored information' will keep on getting more important.
Personal preferences
Personal preferences could be left under the control of the user. The APML (Attention Profile Markup Language) workgroup has been working towards this concept. Your profile in APML can be seen as a file with your personal preferences. Web applications are able to read this file which results in your information being filtered to your own interest.
An even bigger amount of profile information will be outside of the users' control. At this very moment, organizations such as Google, Amazon and Yahoo are registering the clicking behavior of its visitors. In a semantic web this information will become way richer. A lot more is known about the people that visit their websites. Next to that, the web is becoming more pervasive. We are in contact with the internet all the time and will do so more and more; in our browser, our cell phone, our car, home devices, etc. Web applications will be able to register information everywhere. Profiles will be built full with information about yourself, without you noticing it.
Within this new relationship between the Web and its users, marketers will have to ‘slip into someone else's conversation'. Brands will have to be relevant to the user's situation, setting and desires. When the semantic web is realized and successful, it will create a huge load of information exchange between organizations and individuals, producing a new level of findability and knowledge sharing.

Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_3.0
http://www.mediapost.com/publications/index.cfm?fuseaction=Articles.showArticleHomePage&art_aid=57532
http://www.frankwatching.com/archive/2008/06/09/de-klassieke-benadering-van-web-
http://www.tamingthebeast.net/blog/online-world/semantic-web-30-0707.htm
http://www.chiefmartec.com/2008/03/marketing-in-th.html

Web 3.0 - Semantic Web

The Semantic Web is the extension of the World Wide Web that enables people to share content beyond the boundaries of applications and websites. It has been described in rather different ways: as a utopic vision, as a web of data, or merely as a natural paradigm shift in our daily use of the Web. Most of all, the Semantic Web has inspired and engaged many people to create innovative semantic technologies and applications. semanticweb.org is the common platform for this community.

• Definition: "The Semantic Web is not a separate Web but an extension of the current one, in which information is given well-defined meaning, better enabling computers and people to work in cooperation." It is a source to retrieve information from the web (using the web spiders from RDF files) and access the data through Semantic Web Agents or Semantic Web Services. Source: "The Semantic Web" by Tim Berners-Lee, James Hendler, and Ora Lassila, Scientific American, 2001

 According to the W3C, "The Semantic Web provides a common framework that allows data to be shared and reused across application, enterprise, and community boundaries.

Definitions of Web 3.0 vary greatly. Some believe its most important features are the Semantic Web and personalization. Focusing on the computer elements, Conrad Wolfram has argued that Web 3.0 is where "the computer is generating new information", rather than humans.

According to some Internet experts, Web 3.0 will allow the user to sit back and let the Internet do all of the work for them. Rather than having search engines gear towards your keywords, the search engines will gear towards the user.

Timeline and Definition

Web 1.0. Web 1.0 was the first generation of the Web. During this phase the focus was primarily on building the Web, making it accessible, and commercializing it for the first time. Key areas of interest centered on protocols such as HTTP, open standard markup languages such as HTML and XML, Internet access through ISPs, the first Web browsers, Web development platforms and tools, Web-centric software languages such as Java and Javascript, the creation of Web sites, the commercialization of the Web and Web business models, and the growth of key portals on the Web.

Web 2.0. According to the Wikipedia, “Web 2.0, a phrase coined by O’Reilly Media in 2004, refers to a supposed second generation of Internet-based services — such as social networking sites, wikis, communication tools, and folksonomies — that emphasize online collaboration and sharing among users.”

I would also add to this definition another trend that has been a major factor in Web 2.0 — the emergence of the mobile Internet and mobile devices (including camera phones) as a major new platform driving the adoption and growth of the Web, particularly outside of the United States.

Web 3.0. Using the same pattern as the above Wikipedia definition, Web 3.0 could be defined as: “Web 3.0, a phrase coined by John Markoff of the New York Times in 2006, refers to a supposed third generation of Internet-based services that collectively comprise what might be called ‘the intelligent Web’ — such as those using semantic web, microformats, natural language search, data-mining, machine learning, recommendation agents, and artificial intelligence technologies — which emphasize machine-facilitated understanding of information in order to provide a more productive and intuitive user experience.”

Web 3.0 Expanded Definition. I propose expanding the above definition of Web 3.0 to be a bit more inclusive. There are actually several major technology trends that are about to reach a new level of maturity at the same time. The simultaneous maturity of these trends is mutually reinforcing, and collectively they will drive the third-generation Web. From this broader perspective, Web 3.0 might be defined as a third-generation of the Web enabled by the convergence of several key emerging technology trends:

Ubiquitous Connectivity

• Broadband adoption
• Mobile Internet access
• Mobile devices

Network Computing

• Software-as-a-service business models
• Web services interoperability
• Distributed computing (P2P, grid computing, hosted “cloud computing” server farms such as Amazon S3)

Open Technologies

• Open APIs and protocols
• Open data formats
• Open-source software platforms
• Open data (Creative Commons, Open Data License, etc.)

Open Identity

• Open identity (OpenID)
• Open reputation
• Portable identity and personal data (for example, the ability to port your user account and search history from one service to another)

The Intelligent Web

• Semantic Web technologies (RDF, OWL, SWRL, SPARQL, Semantic application platforms, and statement-based datastores such as triplestores, tuplestores and associative databases)
• Distributed databases — or what I call “The World Wide Database” (wide-area distributed database interoperability enabled by Semantic Web technologies)
• Intelligent applications (natural language processing, machine learning, machine reasoning, autonomous agents)

Resources :

• Wikipedia
  • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_3.0#Web_3.0
  • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_Web
• W3C
• http://www.w3.org/standards/semanticweb/
• http://semanticweb.org
• http://semanticweb.org/wiki/Semantic_Web 
• http://lifeboat.com
• http://lifeboat.com/ex/web.3.0

CSS3,HTML 5 & Cross Browser

It is about time we blogged some more, it is true about getting so busy with client work we forget about spreading knowledge and keeping those interested in what we do informed, we shall try to do better in 2011!!

Well I am going to write about some web development that will eventually help us designers in easier styling and basic animation using CSS. There have been many articles written about whether flash in websites will die a death and CSS will take over. It amazes us that this conversation is even raging considering CSS3 is not supported in many browsers, and IE the most used browser still (change if it you have it please!!) does not support CSS, the IE 9 new browser is better - but still building websites that are not supported with IE is dangerous to say the least.
Also flash animation provides a much better stable platform for brand animation in details CSS will never achieve, certainly not in the next 5 years. Being honest Apple should "get a grip" and support flash so certain bias developers who are "in bed" with apple stop condemning flash. Indeed android and windows based mobile technologies are supporting flash, so apple should stop there ring fencing it is a real bore.
We have to point out that we moved away from developing full flash websites several years ago as they are too bandwidth dependant, not great for SEO and generally were too interactive meaning the message of our client could be easily missed. This really benefited our Cheltenham & Gloucester Web Design Clients. We do however like some professional flash animation for top banners or areas where images are dominant as it really enhances a website done well.
Back to the subject!!
HTML 5 is supported in the new IE9 explorer and most other major browsers however there is still differing support for various elements of HTML5 which web developers need to understand so they do not leave web surfers or clients customers with a mess of a website.
Please view our table at the bottom of this post for a cross browser support table of HTML5!

My View of IE - Internet Explorer: Those of us web developing for clients who's target audience use mainly IE as their browser find the whole process annoying and frustrating. There will be a few posts about IE explorer and why people should dump it as a browser, but we are looking forward to IE 9 which is supposed to be more compliant and able to utilise CSS etc better than ever before. Those along with a much faster browser in terms of flash and frames per second - so we shall certainly test drive IE 9 and provide a detailed report probably by Prash our technology blogger!!
Microsoft and Apple are certainly dominate Companies that influence the internet, how it is accessed and used as they both provide the platforms most people use, this gives them both an advantage when it comes to which browser people use. Many people with a lower degree of knowledge of such things accept what they are given with their new PC or Mac. This gives both Microsoft who like there own direction of browsing and Apple who want everything their own way to make life difficult. I for one don't like either Company, although when it comes to browsers Microsoft are the worse and no one should use it. Apple is a Company you either love or hate, my opinion is the latter :)
CSS3 is flash Dead?
There is a buzz right now that CSS3 will allow animation of sorts and will compete against flash (oh I can hear the Apple execs rubbing their designer gloves) to the point that some think flash days are numbered. However the fact is many browsers still do not support CSS3 certainly not those versions that need updating to which there are many! Also CSS3 will provide limited animation which will be great for certain applications (possibly) but could not replace flash animation and what is achieved by those with experience, such as the flash animation by for us by Yugo for AS Design.
I do agree that pure flash websites days are numbered (if not gone – hopefully) with many of us web developers moving away from that type of website. Using flash animation in place of images to enhance a website will provide a positive enhancement, in our view, but full flash websites are resource intensive, more complicated to use and just not necessary.
So our view is that CSS3 will never replace what flash can do, Adobe can rest easy and Apple should support flash :)
Well that's about it I hope this blog post has provided some useful info

CSS3, Media Queries

Screen resolutions nowadays range from iPhones (320px) to large monitor displays (2500px+) and as a web designer this means we have to consider the fact that the sites we create will be viewed on anything that can access the web. Web design consequently needs to be adaptive and layout needs to be able to adjust to fit all screen resolutions.

As a standard, web designers, for the most part, create a design at about 990 pixels wide, giving enough room for vertical scroll bars when they appear on a standard 1024 screen. In the past, fluid css layouts have managed to render the content in accordance to screen width, but the downside is that for screen resolutions wider than the preferred size, negative space is added in order to align elements on the page. This leaves the design looking empty and your eye wanders around the page, rather than being directed to products / information.
Javascript then came along and helped improve these layouts by dynamically altering stacking orders. This is shown superbly on the ever popular pintrest.com website. By re-sizing the viewport / browser window, you can see how the elements on the page get re-arranged, leaving consistent spacing.

But what if you don't happen to be a javascript guru?

This type of script can get very confusing very quickly! With the introduction of CSS3 to a majority of browsers and with standards constantly being improved, there is an alternative way around this issue.

CSS3 Media Screen

Essentially the media query looks to see if the viewport size is less than your defined width and if so renders a different set of css rules. With this knowledge it is possible to generate different css rules for different sized screens and it gives you the ability to change your design to suit. This is a big help as you can sort all your layout requirements straight from your stylesheet.
Unfortunately Internet Explorer 8, or older versions, do not support CSS3 media queries but you can enable it by adding the css3-mediaqueries.js Javascript file that is held within Google's database

< ! - -[if lt IE 9] > < script src="http://css3-mediaqueries-js.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/css3-mediaqueries.js" >< /script> < ! [endif]- - >
You can either create a section within your main CSS file for your new styles to live, or create a completely new CSS file to keep everything separate. In order to check your viewport / screen size, you use the CSS value of:

@media screen and (max-width: SIZEpx){}
Then simply add in your new CSS values if the viewport is less then your set size:

@media screen and (max-width: 990px){ #siteContainer{width:600px} } We use this method on EAOM to show and hide the ‘back to top' button and the ‘Offer' section so the elements don't run over or under the main content. With this small css value, you then have the ability to show or hide, re-size or re-arrange any element on the page, giving you more options for all screen sizes.

HTML5 application development

HTML5 is taking a lot of attention these days as a thriving platform in web development and is becoming a favorite amongst big IT giants. It assures the user with an enjoyable web experience and it is expected that in near future HTML5 application development is definitely going to boom the entire web development market.

The demand for HTML5 application development is rising as many clients are waiting for their sites to get it upgraded by HTML 5 developer. Also there are many HTML5 developers who can offer the services of HTML5 application development. 

HTML5 development is proposed to come up with such an open source platform that assists in enhanced browser applications across the internet through several vendors as a result of which anyone can be a part of the development of innovative applications and a single user will not have all the control over the aspects of internet. HTML5 application development can possibly create plug-ins like JavaFX, Adobe Flash, and Microsoft Silverlight obsolete, with the new platform which will incorporate streaming video capabilities into browser applications.

HTML5 application development has turned out to be a booming platform for the reason of its huge variety of hybrid & native applications which is formed using it. The best part is that it has its influence in all the sectors of industry from retail services to financial to healthcare. 

HTML5 developers have the ability to come up with distinct applications which consists of distinguishing interactive features, to assure a better user interface. An evidence of its rising popularity is that it has surpassed Flash in popularity. The latest version of html is more convenient in usage as it no more consists of the drawbacks which were noticed in the earlier versions. It is also considered as a great platform which offers cross-platform mobile applications. On top of it, it can easily be easily incorporated on smart phones and tablets which are low powered.

Below are the few benefits of using HTML5 application development services:

• Superior Ease of Access
  
• Offline Application cache
  
• Support for Geo location
  
• Support and Neat Forms
  
• Enhanced Code
  
• Improved Semantics
  
• Great Uniformity
  

Why should you opt to hire HTML 5 developer for HTML5 application development?

• HTML5 developers can bring you enhanced and interactive web experience with flawless navigation.
  
• HTML5 developers incorporate great features in HTML5 application development giving quick responsiveness.
  
• HTML5 developers provides with improved functionality in your HTML5 development with rich multimedia support making better websites.
  
• HTML5 developers are experts in mobile Web development which will give you great browsing experience on various devices like iPhone, iPad with simplified solutions to complex videos and graphics.
  

Hire HTML5 developer from a professional outsourcing company to witness the advanced browsing experience in HTML5 application development and keep pace in this highly competitive world.