The MIT/Stanford Venture Lab (VLAB) hosted a forum yesterday evening titled, “Web 3.0 and New Opportunities on the Semantic Web.” First of all, the moderator, Paul Saffo, was outstanding and entertaining. He kept things lively and humorous.  The panelists (Paul Kedrosky, Alex Iskold, Nova Spivak, and Robert Cook) were also fantastic and represented some excellent startup companies. My takeaway from the event is that a good foundation has been laid for moving the semantic web forward to the next stage. Paul pointed out Flickr as the best early consumer app example of how people are using collective intelligence to make searching and finding the right content better. Alex’s company, Adaptive Blue, and Robert’s company, MetaWeb’s freebase, are prime examples of companies making strides with the semantic web. Alex has a written several great posts on the topic. Here is one in particular that I think is very insightful as to the direction that websites are headed with respect to ‘web 3.0.’ (View Post)

Nova’s startup company, Radar Networks, is certainly one to watch but evidently some of what they are doing is still under wraps. Nova did an exceptional speed-prezo in about 2 minutes and shared this most excellent slide with the audience that lays out where we currently are on the path to arriving at the semantic web. Here is a link to some of his posts on the subject as well. (View Post)

The semantic web is indeed on the cutting edge of transforming search, advertising, content distribution and commerce. Some of the companies that panelists mentioned that are doing interesting things and helping to push the semantic web forward included Powerset, Hakia, and MapLight. What is exciting about the semantic web is how down the road (okay we’re talking 2030 or so) literally all of the information and disparate databases on the web will interconnect and the computers will be far more intelligent in how thyey read, process and deliver information to people. At the end of the forum, Nova pointed out that no one in the audience or on the panel mentioned where there is likely an untapped opportunity with the semantic web, and it is the one that really drove people to the web — the sex industry. I certainly hope and expect that there will be far greater and more useful arenas that will propel the semantic web faster to it materializing.

New York Times Saul Hansel posted a provocative piece around the concept of Inbox 2.0, which has since set off quite a buzz happening in the blogosphere. We’re delighted to see a renewed interest in email. Most recently, the Wall Street Journal’s Kevin Delaney & Vauhini Vara wrote an excellent article titled, “Will Social Features Make Email Sexy Again?”

Several startups are also emerging that are each taking different approaches aimed at bringing relief to the ongoing email overload madness. The evolving landscape includes a wide array of options, ranging from spot solutions to content-based email solutions to comprehensive email management solutions.

Our client, Deva Hazarika, the founder & CEO of ClearContext, has a great blog focused around the subject of email. He posted an insightful piece titled, “Inbox 2.0: Email as a Social Networking Platform,” that highlights some interesting bloggers’ viewpoints that were part of today’s firestorm in the blogosphere. Summarizing some of Deva’s key points:
1) The real value of using the information within email lies not in the prioritization itself, but in doing interesting things with that information. Combining all of that data within the context of email, and paying attention to what people are actually DOING in the client, provides the ability do things with email that are a lot more intelligent than simply displaying a message or finding out who your most important contacts are.
2) Intelligently using that information to make the entire email experience more powerful and productive for people. And done right, it will also make people’s experience with any email/contact based site or application more powerful, because it will be driven from a set of rich profiles full of deep context, not just a list of names.

ClearContext aims to bring help to the endless deluge of inbound messages and interruptions consuming in-boxes is taxing employees’ resources and reducing time they can devote to priority work. Studies show that email overload causes people to work anywhere from one to two extra hours a day. Email overload coupled with multi-tasking, constant interruptions and ad-hoc projects are drastically impacting workers’ effectiveness and productivity loss to the tune of up to $1 billion (yes, with a ‘b”) dollars annually for knowledge-focused companies having 50,000 or more workers. ClearContext’s IMS 4.0 helps users save an hour or more a day (260 hours annually) with smart, automated features to gain a much better handle on their daily email management. For fans of GTD, IMS does everything that the “Getting Things Done (GTD) Outlook Add-on” can do and then a lot more.

Valleywag, one of our favorite reads here at Ignite, had an interesting post today titled, “Wired editor in Snit over unsolicited emails.” The post points to Chris Anderson’s “outing” of 329 PR people who took aim at the Editor-in-chief, pitching him on their clients’ products or services. Boy, did his own blog post set off a firestorm of great debate, as evidenced by the comments too numerous for yours truly to finish reading. (I feel bad for any non-PR person who got accidentally ensnared in this public flogging.)

Whenever I see the title ‘editor-in-chief’ or ‘publisher’ on ANY of our lists that we are building, I immediately cross them out and remind our staff that those titles should not be there. (period)!! (Actually, there are a few exceptions here but these are typically with smaller publications or newsletters that are usually focused in vertical market sectors.  In these cases, the editor-in-chief is indeed the go-to-guy or go-to-gal. ;-)  I, for one, would welcome PR folk applying the basics here. Among the two camps, I fall on the side of supporting Chris for getting fed up with the hundreds of PR people and PR firms that do not bother to do the basic quality control when it comes to promoting or trying to interest reporters. Herein, lays the key — the operative word being “reporter” not editor-in-chief. There is a big difference and if a PR person doesn’t know this, doesn’t get it, or doesn’t care, well then I guess they continue to face public lambasting.

Is it, as Chris is suggesting, laziness by lots of PR folks? I know that, like reporters, PR people are also typically under the gun but, quite frankly, it takes a minimal amount of time to prune out any odd titles (copy editor, publisher, and editor-in-chief). I can understand why, in this age of email overload, there is an even bigger backlash at this type of spamming practice. I guess this quality (and perhaps basic training) or lack thereof is essentially up to each agency to either put in place or disregard.

The NYT’s weighs in on this today as well.