Start-Up Aims for Database to Automate Web Searching

“like a system for building the synapses for the global brain” Tim O’Reilly

[phranque]

from ny times [nytimes.com]:

A new company founded by a longtime technologist is setting out to create a vast public database intended to be read by computers rather than people, paving the way for a more automated Internet in which machines will routinely share information.

The company, Metaweb Technologies, is led by Danny Hillis, whose background includes a stint at Walt Disney Imagineering and who has long championed the idea of intelligent machines.

He says his latest effort, to be announced Friday, will help develop a realm frequently described as the “semantic Web” — a set of services that will give rise to software agents that automate many functions now performed manually in front of a Web browser.

...

(I)n the Metaweb database, to be named Freebase, information will be structured to make it possible for software programs to discern relationships and even meaning.

"weaving the web"?

[runarb]

Freebase isent necessary the best of names.

When used as a verb, it refers to smoking freebase cocaine, crack cocaine, or heroin.

- [en.wikipedia.org...]

[bakedjake]

Yeah, no kidding. :-) I should start a social networking site called orgy.