XML.com: WWW2004 Semantic Web Roundup [May. 26, 2004] by Paul Ford
second article. I referenced the first here
The Semantic Web focus was not without its critics. Elliotte Rusty Harold posted the following to his site after listening to one of the many Semantic Web-related presentations at the conference:I feel like I'm a mechanical engineer in 1904 listening to a bunch of other engineers talks about airplanes, but nobody's willing to show me how they actually expect to get their flying machines into the air. Maybe they can do it, but I won't believe it until I see a plane in the air, and even then I really want to take the machine apart before I believe it isn't a disguised hot air balloon. A lot of what I'm hearing this morning sounds like it could float a few balloons.Both Berners-Lee and Harold are asking the same question from different vantages: where are the applications? There is a framework, not yet fully proven, for a massively distributed, world-wide database, glued together by ontologies -- and now what? If the answer to "what can I do with the WWW?" was Mosaic 1.0, the question "what can I do with the Semantic Web" has no corresponding killer app. Indeed, Berners-Lee asked the assembled group to forget about killer apps totally
However, it does seem as if the Semantic Web has left its childhood and entered its adolescence...As with any adolescent, it is difficult to know exactly what sort of adult it will become: a set of interlinked desktop tools? A component on the server side? A tool for scientists, or one for publishing TV schedules? While the destiny of the Semantic Web is impossible to predict, one thing was made clear at WWW2004: the next 12 months will be the Semantic Web's chance to stand up and prove itself, if it is going to do so.
Bibster does indeed look promising.