Freebase, as in Free + Database

Freebase might just be another one of these over hyped alpha startups but I actually looks VERY interesting. Dare I say Web 3.0? ugh

John Markoff writes:

“The idea of a centralized database storing all of the world’s digital information is a fundamental shift away from today’s World Wide Web, which is akin to a library of linked digital documents stored separately on millions of computers where search engines serve as the equivalent of a card catalog.

In contrast, Mr. Hillis envisions a centralized repository that is more like a digital almanac. The new system can be extended freely by those wishing to share their information widely.”

Tim O’Reilly writes:

“… a wikipedia like system for building the semantic web. But unlike the W3C approach to the semantic web, which starts with controlled ontologies,* Metaweb adopts a folksonomy approach, in which people can add new categories (much like tags), in a messy sprawl of potentially overlapping assertions.

Now, the really powerful thing about this is that all these categories, these data types and the web of fields that define them, provide new hooks for applications that will be able to extract meaning from the data. That’s what makes Metaweb a kind of semantic web application.”

(* I think Tim is a little misguided on the semantic web and it’s ‘controlled ontologies.’ Nobody is saying the semantic web will come from some kind of master lexicon…)