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A Guide to The Contextual Web - ReadWriteWeb

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The contextual web experience is fundamentally different because there is an understanding of what the user is doing. The combination of the information on the page and the user's behavior creates the context. Once you understand the user's context, you can be more helpful. So, contextual technologies have the potential to bite into the pie that today belongs to search, because it is able to bypass search.

Highlighted by bluefour

Here are the key properties of the contextual web experience:

  • Relevancy: understanding the user's context better drives content relevancy.
  • Shortcuts: contextual shortcuts reduce the need for raw search.
  • Personalization: context is based on user intentions and history.
  • Remixing: relevant information from around the web is instantly available.

Highlighted by bluefour

The contextual web experience is fundamentally different because there is an understanding of what the user is doing. The combination of the information on the page and the user's behavior creates the context. Once you understand the user's context, you can be more helpful. So, contextual technologies have the potential to bite into the pie that today belongs to search, because it is able to bypass search.

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A Guide to The Contextual Web

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because slow-downs eventually bury the old and give birth to new evolutionary ways of doing things.

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Search remains the killer app on the web, but context is quickly become a viable contender. Why? Because context is what happens instead of search.

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Because context is what happens instead of search.

Highlighted by tellio

The contextual web experience is fundamentally different because there is an understanding of what the user is doing. The combination of the information on the page and the user's behavior creates the context. Once you understand the user's context, you can be more helpful. So, contextual technologies have the potential to bite into the pie that today belongs to search, because it is able to bypass search.

Highlighted by jwalzer

The combination of the information on the page and the user's behavior creates the context. Once you understand the user's context, you can be more helpful. So, contextual technologies have the potential to bite into the pie that today belongs to search, because it is able to bypass search.

Highlighted by swarnasras

Highlighted by joerg_rech

the browser could not infer your context

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The contextual web experience is fundamentally different because there is an understanding of what the user is doing. The combination of the information on the page and the user's behavior creates the context. Once you understand the user's context, you can be more helpful.

Highlighted by tellio

Once you understand the user's context, you can be more helpful.

Highlighted by joerg_rech

The Contextual web will happen when browsers and websites evolve to recognize what users are trying to do. It is the web with less choice and more meaning, where instead of Googling all the time, we Google once and then the rest of the information is available to us automatically, based on our current context.

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Here are the key properties of the contextual web experience:

Highlighted by jwalzer

Here are the key properties of the contextual web experience:

  • Relevancy: understanding the user's context better drives content relevancy.
  • Shortcuts: contextual shortcuts reduce the need for raw search.
  • Personalization: context is based on user intentions and history.
  • Remixing: relevant information from around the web is instantly available.

Highlighted by swarnasras

It is the web with less choice and more meaning

Highlighted by joerg_rech

Here are the key properties of the contextual web experience:

  • Relevancy: understanding the user's context better drives content relevancy.
  • Shortcuts: contextual shortcuts reduce the need for raw search.
  • Personalization: context is based on user intentions and history.
  • Remixing: relevant information from around the web is instantly available.

Highlighted by tellio

specific examples

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One of the keys to inferring user context is understanding the underlying information that the user is looking at. This is why the contextual web is related to -- and, to be more precise, is powered by -- semantic web. We have written a lot here on ReadWriteWeb about semantic technologies. Notably, we discussed the difference between the top-down and bottom-up approaches to semantic web, both of which are important for understanding the contextual web.

The bottom-up approach to context is about annotating pages.

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The bottom-up approach to context is about annotating pages.

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This happens because the browser looks for a tag in the head of the page, which declares type

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The fact that the page offers an RSS feed creates an obvious context: subscription.

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Another form of markup that has been discussed recently is microformats, which offer an XHTML-compliant way of embedding metadata about people, places, events, and reviews in existing web pages.

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Another form of markup that has been discussed recently is microformats, which offer an XHTML-compliant way of embedding metadata about people, places, events, and reviews in existing web pages.

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Another form of markup that has been discussed recently is microformats, which offer an XHTML-compliant way of embedding metadata about people, places, events, and reviews in existing web pages.

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Building on the hAtom microformat are Web Slices, introduced by Microsoft in Internet Explorer 8. Web Slices enable publishers to notify users when the information in their web pages changes.

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Building on the hAtom microformat are Web Slices, introduced by Microsoft in Internet Explorer 8. Web Slices enable publishers to notify users when the information in their web pages changes.

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There are other markup formats that help provide context. For example, popular add-on Cooliris offers a markup format for signaling that a site contains images. By placing a bit of XML code in their home directory, site owners enable users to experience their images using the stunning 3D visualization developed by Cooliris. Another markup format, developed by AdaptiveBlue [disclosure: this is the company I founded], is called ABMeta. This format allows publishers to annotate pages that contain information about books, music, movies, wine, restaurants, stocks, and other everyday things.

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This format allows publishers to annotate pages that contain information about books, music, movies, wine, restaurants, stocks, and other everyday things.

Highlighted by joerg_rech