Recently in Content Category
When I started with DevX, I knew nothing of the Semantic Web and the technologies that surround it. As I researched the subject, I realized that while a segment of the developer community was heavily touting semantic technologies (ST), that everyday use was still three-quarters of a mile out of reach. One of the main issues surrounding ST is a lack of available functionality for the user. Sure, I’ve seen lots of examples, and lots of demos, but nothing grabbed me that made me say, this is way cool, this is something I could use. That is, until now.
Today, DevX posted an article by James Leigh that describes how to get started with OpenCalais and SearchMonkey. These tools offer functionality that could be used by developers and the public. The OpenCalais tool (OpenCalais 2.1 just went live), offers a means to create metadata that describes a document’s content. And who of us in this blogging world, who realizes that content is king, would not find something like that useful? Especially if it means that authors and editors no longer have to manually create metadata, and instead, a tool can extract it for us. To me, that’s awesome.
SearchMonkey, as we all know by now, can enhance how your site appears in search results. And who in this business-minded world does not want control of their marketing and branding; especially in a front-line environment like search engines? Stay tuned to DevX for an upcoming article from Peter Mika entitled, Semantic Search Arrives to the Web.
With the advent of Calais 2.1 and SearchMonkey, it appears that ST can become a must-have tool in a developer’s war chest. I encourage you to read James’ article and to research these tools more.
I’ve been stewing over this one for over a week now. I can’t believe it’s even necessary to write a post on this topic. What am I even talking about? Well, there are folks out there that want to control content on the web. I’m not talking about editors checking for grammar or typos. I’m not talking about YouTube checking for copyright violations. I’m talking about this consultant I met who wants to track the folks that take content off a site, use it for their own purpose, and then continue to track that content to see how it’s used. On the face of it, that does sound interesting to see who does what to your stuff.
The part I’m stewing over is that this consultant wants to be paid for what you do with their stuff. Yeah, it’s financial gain this consultant wants for himself and his clients. No, they don’t care about collaboration, education, and the free-spirit of the Internet. What they care about is getting paid. They want to post their music (or whatever) online and get paid for you listening to it. They want to get paid if you take it. They want to get paid if you change it. They want to get paid if you republish it somewhere else. They want to get paid, paid, paid. And paid some more. It is just greedy behavior.
The consultant claims that the artist’s hard work is stolen off the web and others are gaining from it. Well, then don’t post it on the web if you don’t want others to use it. The web needs to be a source for collaboration, to be open, and free to share and be shared. People should be happy that their content is found and that someone else likes it enough to use it for something else.
So, if you’re a developer and a consultant approaches you to develop applications that track the movement of content, please ask them what their end goal is. And if that end goal has anything to do with getting paid because someone uses something they found online to do another thing with it, then Just Say No.
