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Metaweb

Google buys Metaweb and its sprawling database

Google on Friday announced that it acquired Metaweb, a company founded in 2005 that has assembled a database of all sorts of things in the world, their properties, and their relationships.

Metaweb has some affinities with Google--facing the challenge that, for example, people can use dozens of different terms to describe the same entity or that the same name can refer to different entities. Metaweb's database, open to contributions by others through a mechanism called Freebase, keeps track of the properties of 12 million such entities.

Google can handle a lot of search queries, but Metaweb's information will … Read more

Radar Networks readies new release of Twine

In March, Radar Networks launched Twine, an application that organizes information and connects people, places, companies, products, Web pages, videos, and photos. Along with Metaweb's Freebase, Powerset (sold to Microsoft), Hakia, Reuters' Calias, AdaptiveBlue and a few other start-ups, Radar Networks is trying to crack the code on building a piece of the semantic Web.

In a Times Online article, Web creator Tim Berners-Lee gave an example of how the semantic Web would work:

"Imagine if two completely separate things--your bank statements and your calendar--spoke the same language and could share information with one another. You could drag … Read more

On the road to the Semantic Web

The Semantic Web has been just around the corner for a few years. It turns out that bringing a semantic layer of metadata to the Internet is like climbing a mountain in flip-flops.

Tuesday night, Semantic Web mountain climbers Powerset, Radar Networks, and Metaweb participated in a salon at Powerset's San Francisco office, where I talked with them about their product plans.

Powerset gives wings to Wikipedia I got a preview of Powerset's search engine, which is due to go into beta in the coming weeks, according to co-founder and CTO Barney Pell and as reported by TechCrunch. … Read more

Stirr wrap-up: Yes, Freebase really is that cool

It's a little late, but I want to wrap up the Stirr event I emceed last week. As with all other Stirr gatherings I've been to, this event included four carefully chosen presenters pitching their new Web companies. These were the companies we heard from last week:

MetaWeb, makers of Freebase, had the most popular presentation, judging by the silence of the audience during the pitch and the applause meter at the end of it. The MetaWeb database platform underpins the Freebase application and is designed to be a shared repository of structured knowledge. The blogosphere loves it, … Read more