project ideas

Semantic Web project ideas number 4

Build an ontology and rules around a working taxonomy—and maybe make some money!

Can a taxonomy help you buy a lightbulb? I didn’t think so, but when Ron Daniel of Taxonomy Strategies told me how they helped a big box hardware store with the product taxonomy that drove their online store’s menus, I realized that taxonomies aren’t just for classifying content, as my publishing technology bias had led me to believe.

Semantic Web project ideas number 2

Managing relationships with customers.

In part one of this series I described how the Tapscott and Williams Wikinomics book mentioned a few things that gave me ideas for semantic web projects. One was the concept of open source Customer Relationship Management packages, which I hadn’t heard of before. The book didn’t mention any specific ones, but a Google search on “Open Source” CRM gets plenty of hits.

Semantic Web project ideas number 1

Hello, lazy semweb world.

When I spoke at a conference recently, the speaker’s gift was a copy of the book that keynote speaker Don Tapscott write with Anthony D. Williams: Wikinomics. The book is very biz-buzzwordy (from page 150: “consumer product companies can find ways to monetize customer-led ecosystems”—have these guys bookmarked the Web Economy Bullshit Generator?), and they feel compelled to coin their own buzzwords, from the book’s title to terms like N-gen, B-web, ideagora, and prosumer.…