A Smarter Search

Currently if you go to Google and search for "simcoe" you will get results for Simcoe City, Simcoe County and John Simcoe. While the "I'm feeling lucky" button on Google may seem intuitive, the reality is that searching has a long way to go. When you get a million hits for your search term, you're forever forced to experiment in the hopes of finding the correct data.

Reuters are one of the first companies to explore the idea of a "smart web" and present information that has been marked up for meaning rather than structure. A web robot arrives at a Reuters site and as the information is retrieved, a program automatically injects key related words into the data stream. The text of the document is marked up for meaning; if the context is biography then the word "simcoe" would be marked up as "John Simcoe." The text is then more meaningful for future searches.

The program is called Calais and although it is in it's early stages, it is showing a great deal of promise.

The future then, is intelligent web searches - A smarter search.

More info: www.opencalais.com/