David Galbraith and Ian Davis have a good start on the idea we talked about int class:
BIO: A vocabulary for biographical information
This is a practical extension of ideas from XML/RDF that could be used to all manner of content identification and expert finding (see Ackerman's work). Integrated with blog postings would form a powerful way for understanding the context of a blog posting.
One of the more useful online KM pubs, KM World, has their 2003 List of Companies that matter (they hope). Many of these would be good candidates for the KM Systems Analysis assignment.
I find it interesting that Google has purchased Blogger's parent company Pyra, since I wonder what opportunity Google sees in the company. It obviously has a large user base, and Google's newer products like the news front end and image search seem to be about improving access to information (or knowledge, I guess), but I really don't see the connection. Of course, I really don't see the use in the Google Viewer, either. Pyra was trying to move into selling Blogger as a tool for enterprise deployments, sort of like the Googlebox, I guess.
I wonder if Google will develop blog analysis tools like Blogdex and Technorati. Former Pyra employee Meg Hourihan says she's working on a similar project to develop a more robust blog analysis product.
The fact that Movable Type is not Free Software has been a constant refrain among its critics, and this is perhaps the reason why. The Trotts' company, Six Apart, announced yesterday a pay version of MT, Movable Type Pro. The release says pricing and features won't be released unti the summer, but a few of the planned features include workflow management, mobile communication interfaces, and an integrated traffic and statistics system.
The site suggests MT Pro is professional grade "nano-publishing," which makes me wonder if this is for doing small news sites or KM in small businesses, rather for individual blogs. I can't imagine there would be enough demand for a pay version of MT, unless they really start crippling the non-pay version. Blogger Pro is certainly more robust and feature-rich than Blogger (but that's not saying much) driving people to upgrade, if only out of desperation. I tend to think that on the consumer end, hosted and pre-installed Blog Management Systems or BMs (pun intended) are a better business proposition than charging consumers for a bunch of scripts they have to fool around with and cuss at. Maybe they'll make the software available at no charge and charge for decent documentation
They also released MT 2.6, an updated version of the no-cost product, yesterday. I suppose they'll continue to upgrade this version as well.
XML makes its mark - Tech News - CNET.com
You have to wonder what XML can't do, from this article. The concept of XML coming across to most people is still its greatest victory.
What gaps do you see here?
This looks like a good hub for Semantic Web links. Check out the list of topics that the site's authors make relative to the Semantic Web. Almost everything seems semantic...