Richard. Any application that publishes data through an API *can* be "connected" to the Semantic Web by means of a simple adapter. This is what the folks at OpenLink, at my company, and at various other places have been working on lately. Can you say Microsoft Word is not web friendly? Yes you can, but as soon as you put an HTTP server in front and serve a .DOC file, it is *on the Web*. Same thing here: given the proper access to an API you can put the data in any system on the Semantic Web. Just pointing out that being RDF-based or even RDF-oriented is probably not a requirement to being part of the Semantic Web. Forget about the "semantic" label for a while. There's nothing too semantic about the semantic web, layer 1. It's all about data and URLs ;) And this is not just wishful thinking.! New datasets get published and added on a weekly basis to the Linking Open Data cloud. - Aldo Bucchi from FriendFeed MT Plugin

Felix, I guess Tim Berners-Lee has yet to be convinced by Clay Shirky's argument. Aldo, thanks for the info, good to know. - Richard from FriendFeed MT Plugin

@Felix >the Semantic-Web-with-capital-letters is a (poor) solution in search of a problem You might be right there... Data integration is not a problem. It is just a crazy idea that costs billions to the enterprise, and probably the oldest recurrent theme in IT. > anyone can understand, Yeah, we should learn a lesson or two from EJBs or Web Services about simplicity. Heh. But I do give you a point there. The learning curve is a bit steep. But maybe for a good reason. Just wait 400 days. - Aldo Bucchi from FriendFeed MT Plugin

I've written about this a lot on my blog--I really believe that the semantic/linked data Web will take off when there are compelling consumer applications out there that offer up their data as linkable RDF. Once that's out there people will start to be able to link their own data out to the rest of the Web. Right now it's almost an academic exercise because the linkable data that's available isn't personal. Applications which offer their data as RDF will start to be seen once applications start being built on RDF. Applications will start being built on RDF when developers realize the tremendous value of building on RDF. For developers, here's the golden egg RDF lays: it frees you from the constraints of relational schemas. When you change and evolve your app, you no longer have to revise your schema, you simply add to it. That's an extremely simple explanation, but if you're a developer you realize just how powerful it is. My suspicion is that the first RDF-based applications that see wide adoption - Jason Kolb from FriendFeed MT Plugin

There are some outstanding comments here, thanks all. karl, thanks for the link to Ivan's slides - there are some interesting apps in there. Bill, I'm going to check out Swirrl - it sounds very interesting! - Richard from FriendFeed MT Plugin

It's worth mentioning and applauding OpenLink for making an open source edition of the Virtuoso server: http://virtuoso.openlinksw.com/wiki... I haven't had any experience with it yet, but this will be one option for me to consider when evaluating the thankfully growing variety of RDF applications. - Mike Chelen from FriendFeed MT Plugin

Re: #30 " There are a few standout apps that do provide comfortable interfaces, such as Semantic MediaWiki and Drupal with RDF module. If you like give SMW a try on Referata, a free host: http://referata.com/ - Mike Chelen from FriendFeed MT Plugin