Image by Zach_Beauvais via Flickr

For me, one of the things which makes the idea Semantic Web so fascinating is the idea that “stuff” online is treated as real. What I mean is that the things we like online, are very often the the things we like offline: people, books, wine, gadgets are obvious examples. When I ogle the new Macbook range, I’m not thinking about the page about the Macbook, but the Lapple itself. My mates on social networking sites, or from their own blogs, are more than the sum of their profile boxes!

I’ve been playing with glue, for a few weeks, and it was officially launched the other day (which means I’m finally allowed to talk about it!) I wrote a piece about it over on my blog, so I won’t be long-winded here, or explain exactly how it works beyond a brief introduction (as the developers, AdaptiveBlue has a better description of how it works, and we’re big on reuse here). Glue is a firefox plugin which allows you to begin to interact with the “stuff” online.

One more thing I will mention, however, is that the “stuff” can actually be non site-specific with Glue. So, if I rate a book on Amazon, the book is actually marked on other sites which carry it! It’s the first time I’ve ever seen this kind of interaction, and I think it ties in heavily with visualisation, interaction, and even development of the Semantic Web.