Hi everyone,

Just came across some interesting examples, which may be the semantic
web in action... It's certainly computers talking to each other,
without, as the article puts it "the intervention of pesky humans"

The examples are from this report about universities, e-learning and VLEs:
E-Learning Frameworks and Tools: Is it too late? - The Director's Cut
http://www.bath.ac.uk/dacs/cdntl/pMachine/morriblog_more.php?id=315_0_4_10_M

Firstly the 'All Consuming' website:
http://www.allconsuming.net/
"a website that watches weblogs for books that they're talking about,
and displays the most popular ones on an hourly basis... [The site]
uses web services from Weblogs.com, Amazon.com, Technorati.com, and
Alexa.com. A web service is basically a system that lets websites talk
to each other, sharing information between each other..."
An article about it here:
http://www.xml.com/pub/a/ws/2003/05/27/allconsuming.html

Secondly, a great idea - Find a book in Amazon and automatically see
if your local library has it. It uses the ISBN number.
http://weblog.infoworld.com/udell/stories/2002/12/11/librarylookup.html

Finally the article talks about a search service called Blinkx, which
it reckons can "contribute to a personal learning environment" I
think what happens is you highlight some text on the web page you are
browsing click on your Blinkx icon and it automatically provides links
to relevant files - emails, word etc - that you already have on your
computer

Are these examples of the semantic web? Is Blinkx an agent or just an
advanced serach tool?

Cheers
Matt