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Web 2.0 has brought many wonderful innovations and ideas to the Internet. We can no longer imagine the web without a social dimension, and we can no longer imagine an online world that is read-only - it is now a read/write web full of user-generated content. But there is another fairly recent innovation, which might have just as profound implications. We're speaking of the contextual user interface.

We are witnessing the rise of a new kind of web: contextual. You might not have heard or thought about it much yet, but you are already using it today. Search remains the killer app on the web, but context is quickly become a viable contender. Why? Because context is what happens instead of search.

The Semantic Web is necessary, but not sufficient to provide better technological support for online communities. Web services cannot be described independently of how they are used, because communities of practice use services in novel, unexpected ways. Although semantics are very important to create more 'intelligent' web services, what has been lacking so far is some formal notion of context of use. As Piers Young summarizes it, "that's where the problem of effectiveness starts getting addressed." Contextual elements like the community of use, its objectives and communicative interactions are thus important starting points for conceptualizing the pragmatic layer.

Integrate. Relate. Infer. Share. IRIS is a semantic desktop application framework that enables users to create a "personal map" across their office-related information objects. IRIS includes a machine-learning platform to help automate this process. It provides "dashboard" views, contextual navigation, and relationship-based structure across an extensible suite of office applications, including a calendar, web and file browser, e-mail client, and instant messaging client.

Welcome to unparalleled insight into news and current events! Get more from the stories of the day with Silobreaker's contextual and graphical search results.

Data portability is the ability for people to reuse their data across interoperable applications. The DataPortability Project works to advance this vision by identifying, contextualizing and promoting efforts in the space.

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