[microformats-discuss] FYI: two posting about the Semantic Web, the "SynWeb", scraping and microformats

[Ian Hickson]

On Tue, 25 Oct 2005, Danny Ayers wrote:
> 
> Take a train timetable. Would you prefer 1000 human-readable HTML
> pages detailing the journeys, or just a form with fields for start and
> destination, a machine to do the searching for you?

The former, with computers able to determine what that data means and make 
use of it.

Similar question:

Business addresses. Would you prefer 10,000,000 human-readable Web pages 
with business names, addresses, etc, or just a form with fields for 
company name and a machine to do the searching for you?

The former is what we have today. Google Local and other search providers 
have proved that you don't need anything more to get high-quality 
geographic data out of those 10,000,000 pages. (i.e. they can make the 
second from the first.)

(Disclaimer: All numbers above are arbitrary.)

-- 
Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
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Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'