Adrien’s blog
Stuff I like, stuff I do, stuff I make

Have you ever head of freebase? It’s a semantic alternative to the well-known wikipedia.

What are the benefits of a “semantic alternative”? The possibilities of exploration and combination of information are just amazing! For example, this video of Freebase Parallax shows how to list the schools in which republican U.S. presidents have put their children in a few seconds!

Freebase Parallax: A new way to browse and explore data from David Huynh on Vimeo.

When freebase will be as rich as wikipedia (in terms of content), we will never want to use google or wikipedia again!

I’ve just found on Twine a video of a very interresting presentation at Google TechTalks, May 30, 2006, by Dr. Douglas Lenat, the President and CEO of Cycorp.

In this presentation, Dr. Lenat shows to googlers how the OpenCyc ontology make computers able to compute answers to simple questions that Google cannot answer because it does not understand their meaning. It is a very good presentation of semantics, common sense AI with many clear examples and a very good speech. I recommend it to people who are curious about the semantic web, ontologies and stuff.

Aurora is a concept video presenting one possible future user experience for the Web, created by Adaptive Path as part of the Mozilla Labs concept browser series. Aurora explores new ways people could interact with the Web in the future based on projected technological trends and real-world scenarios.

I like the second video which shows how future mobile devices could leverage the semantic social web and context-awareness to find activities in a city. Check it out, it’s in HD!

Aurora (Part 2) on Vimeo

Aurora (Part 2) from Adaptive Path on Vimeo.

I have just found a conference that seems interesting. Unfortunately, I cannot go there to discuss how to discuss science in the 21st century… (should we call that “meta-science”?!)

Science in the 21st Century