Doing the Zurich Test

Is the semantic web now becoming a reality. Sir Tim Berners-Lee has said all the tools are in place, it just needs people to collate the data and make the applications. As mentioned yesterday we have been trialling one of the recent tools developed by Reauters called Calais.

The techno language bit is a bit baffling to a non-techie like me but I have understood enough to run a few queries on what I call challenging texts. Would it be able to distiguish between company names, places and people? The image above is an extract from the output and I must admit I am pretty impressed. Although it failed a few times yesterday, on this extract from the FT it was able to distingussh between Zurich the financial services company and the Swiss town - pretty good!