Here’s a demo of a cool semantic app from Adaptive Blue… it’s called Glue. The app lives on top of the browser as an add-on and intelligently recognizes whatever item you’re browsing on, whether it be a book, movie, song, restaurant, recipe, or wine, and lets you see what your friends thought of it to help you make a decision.

The most interesting part of the demo is at 0:58 where he asks who is involved in vertical/niche social networks for different things such as movies (Flixster) and virtually no one raises their hand. Facebook and Myspace have pretty much grabbed the whole social networking world as far as actual webpages that people visit to interact. Now where the innovation comes in is on top of the browser and on the phone. The only real websites that have a chance these days are dynamic marketplaces (Foodzie, Etsy).

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I’d like to introduce Richard Manning, the newest grapethinker to our bunch. Rich, Jake, and I have known each other for about a year now. We hooked up over a common interest in the semantic web, AI, neural networks, genetic algorithms, and a love for bad ass music. We’ve been talking about technology’s application to help optimize our world, mainly in industries where Rich as worked… he’s built neural networks and intelligent agent applications in insurance, banking, and utilities. We’re also really interested in optimizing logistics and inventory management for retailers. Rich worked for Sun Microsystems for a good part of his career and now has his own knowledge engineering consultancy called Siorcgorm. His contributions help us expand our reach as a technology company and we’re absolutely stoked to have him a part of our team!

Anybody that knows me, knows that I’m a huge supporter of Mozilla, especially Thunderbird. However, after 18 months of wishful thinking, I had to make a change this week; out with Mozilla (Thunderbird) and in with iGoogle and Gmail. I stuck with Thunderbird for a long time because of its unbelievable ease of use, consistency, and open source upgrades all driven by its non-profit culture. I also hoped that they would merge Firefox with Thunderbird and create the all in one application suite they’ve always talked about. Got so pumped up last year when they finally released the Lightning add-on for Thunderbird. However, waiting became too inefficient and switching to iGoogle/Gmail this week has been nothing short of a spiritual experience. Of course, I still use Firefox, but with the new Google setup, I don’t ever need to close the browser.

Here’s how my web worker life has transitioned:

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