Link Types - are they worth it?

Are these extra header tags useful?

[netchicken1]

Just having a debate with a designer over the usefulness of the following types of header links
<link rel="start" title="Home Page, shortcut key=1" href="http://www.example.com/index.php?page=home" />
<link rel="next" title="Accommodation" href="#" />

Sure they are legitimate [w3.org...] but from the search engine side, are they actually worth using? Do the bots follow them or give any credence to them?

Or is it, as I think, just more header bloat, and there to impress the customer rather than practical.

[bill]

Those tags are more for site accessibility for your users, not the search engines.

[tedster]

I use the rel="next" attribute on one site when there are multiple page articles. When I started doing that, I noticed a higher percentage of people clicking through to the later pages.

[penders]

I was under the impression that FF (and other browsers?) would retrieve the rel="next" page in the background and thus speeding up web browsing should the user navigate to that page. Although I haven't actually tested this.

Opera can display all those Next / Prev / Home / Search links etc. as an additional 'Navigation' toolbar. (With shortcuts such as Ctrl+Shift+Right to go to the 'Next' page etc.)