Twine
Twine = interest groups + social bookmarking + collaborative filtering + THE SEMANTIC WEB!
(+ Terms of Use which kill any chance of another machine using the content)
A bit of a late discovery, but Twine launched publicly some time last week. The service lets you follow various interest groups (each group has its own feed). In these groups, called twines, you can bookmark items of interest or generate content by way of generating triples.
Once in an interest group (or 100), you can access their feeds through the web or through a feed reader. I assume they use some sort of collaborative filtering to suggest interesting items to look at, and interesting new twines to join.
They appear to be crazy for RDF, and are true to the semantic web vision – as long as you don’t actually want to USE their content for anything. While you can access any of the content pieces in a human-digestible format, or as RDF for your machine-readable pleasure, your ability to use the content is limited.
From their Terms of Use:
You are granted a limited, non-sublicensable license to access and use the Site and electronically copy, (except where prohibited without a license) and print to hard copy portions of the Site Materials for your informational, non-commercial and personal use only Such license is subject to these Site Terms and does not include: (a) any resale or commercial use of the Site or the Site Materials therein; (b) the collection and use of any product listings, pictures or descriptions; (c) the distribution, public performance or public display of any Site Materials, (d) modifying or otherwise making any derivative uses of the Site and the Site Materials, or any portion thereof; (e) use of any data mining, robots or similar data gathering or extraction methods; (f) downloading (other than the page caching) of any portion of the Site, the Site Materials or any information contained therein, except as expressly permitted on the Site; or (g) any use of the Site or the Site Materials other than for its intended purpose. Any use of the Site or the Site Materials other than as specifically authorized herein, without the prior written permission of Radar Networks, is strictly prohibited and will terminate the license granted herein.
More hilarity from the Terms of Use:
You are granted a limited, non-exclusive right to create a text hyperlink to the Site for noncommercial purposes, provided such link does not portray Radar Networks or any of its products and services in a false, misleading, derogatory or otherwise defamatory manner and provided further that the linking site does not contain any adult or illegal material or any material that is offensive, harassing or otherwise objectionable
Glad to see they’re ready for web 3.0…
Twine has gotten a lot of really good press for their tool, and I think it can add value to people’s lives. Fixing the way people can use the content they generate (read: fixing their content licensing scheme) would help with a different goal: being true to the semantic web community that they hopefully aim to support.