i360. Semantics in everything

Tony Sukiennik (Tony Sukiennik) believes in people's advantage over the power of the algorithm when it comes to the development of semantic technologies. His company, infoGenome, is an unknown startup that has been in the shadow for 4.5 years and decided to show its potential by making the semantics available through innovative drag-and-drop capabilities. The software they created - i360 is in reality the application “Mahalo of semantic apps,” which is based on the user's ability to add semantic tags (metadata) to the information that we use daily. With i360 you can add semantics anywhere.

User semantics

When you search for information on the Internet, you immediately understand which data is relevant and which is not. The developers of the i360 program call this understanding the “moment of information awareness.” In seconds you determine the usefulness of a particular information. But the problem lies in the huge number of ways to save the data - you can place tags, bookmark, save data as a file, send by e-mail, post to a blog, share with others, etc. Despite the huge choice, busy people often try to just memorize information, which inevitably leads to subsequent forgetting. In our information world, the human brain is already overloaded with information, therefore, it cannot be a reliable repository of the data obtained.
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It means that the software should take care of this for us and remember everything that is necessary. I360 comes to the rescue. In itself, this application is just a prototype of a conceptual idea that, according to Tony, may be interested in Google or Microsoft. (Tony plans to offer his ideas to both companies).

The i360 application allows you to quickly add a markup and semantic meaning to the data you are working with - be it a link to an Internet resource, e-mail, file, or something else. This process is easily accomplished by dragging and dropping into the application.

This is not to say that this application uses semantics in the technical sense of the word; information is not converted into machine-readable formats for use in the semantic web. The i360 simply adds semantics to everything by assigning the values ​​of e-mail, PDF, link, note, spreadsheet, etc. The meaning is clear only to you, not to a computer or algorithm. This application does not rely on the semantic network, it is focused on your own database, consisting not only of links to web pages, but also files, contacts, email, keywords, and i360 “knows” how they are related.

Although Tony believes that developers should not forget about the algorithm - in any case, research in this area should be continued - he is confident that his application allows users to combine and assign data to a specific value, which computers cannot.

How it works?

If you are not working directly with the i360, then it will be difficult to understand how it works. For ease of understanding, let's start the explanation from the end, that is, from getting the results of using the i360.

Imagine that you are using Google Desktop Search or Google Enterprise Search, and instead of simply following links that correspond to keywords, you get the following:


Reasoned Search Results

With this software, you can combine people, documents, notes into the original file. The process of such a union is carried out through the method of searching and dragging. See a useful link? Drag to i360. Select the text and transfer it as a description. Click on the button and the screenshot will be automatically added. Then you can link this link with the person, the person with the Word document, the document with the search and e-mail and so on, you can continue indefinitely.


Save Web Page

The i360 technology can be used in companies to work with applications like SharePoint from Microsoft or any other application whose code base you have access to.

Using a 100-line code, information from these applications can be transferred to the i360, and how any other information is associated with a person, a file, and so on.

This application may have something else. For example, the search itself can be started in a more structured format - limiting itself only to what you need to find (an example is shown below). Any item you are looking for is available by one click on the block of text (it is located on the side of the main text of the document), without saving to del.icio.us.


Directed search

The results of your search can be converted to a new file with links (example below), keeping the structure of your own titles and list items, then you can send this file by email or publish a page on the Internet. If you find new information on a topic, be it a new link or file, you just need to drag the new item to i360 to instantly update the results.


Formatted results can be shared with others.

Suppose if a certain project group of a certain company would use this application, combining people, e-mail and searches to create a database about a project, then a year later, an employee of another department could find all the information about this project and its participants, even if all employees have already changed jobs. Now all the information about this or that project will not be in the head of this or that person, but will be available to all employees. Employees may be dismissed, but all the information they find and related data will be saved.

Are improvements needed?

The concept of the semantics of “dragging” is excellent in itself, although in practice it is not fully implemented. By installing the i360 application, you will not immediately understand what is happening, you will have to learn how to use this program. Given the abundance of web applications, the main thing that attracts users is their simplicity and accessibility. The trend of Enterprise 2.0 involves the ease of use of consumer applications and the transfer of available applications to the business world. But, unfortunately, this application does not meet these requirements.

The user interface itself is confusing. The developers acted somewhat strangely - for example, the address bar is located at the bottom of the page; buttons labeled with an “E +” icon - a link to the name of the part of the software being used, which will confuse an inexperienced user. Graphics and fonts used in the application look obsolete.


User interface

Conclusion

Notwithstanding the foregoing, about the user interface, yet this idea of ​​semantics itself is relevant, provided it is finalized. It is safe to say that this technology is the future.