I was attending a semantic web conference on Crete a few weeks ago. Following projects might be interesting for the AltParty community as well, so I thought sharing them with you:

1. Linked Open Data. A collection of "free, open" and interlinked data which consists of over one billion data assertions (or "triplets" as they are called in RDF). The data has been collected from various sources, e.g. Wikipedia, CIA World Fact Book, BBC, Statistic authorities, and many more. One important goal in the project is to interlink content in such ways, that if the concepts (e.g. people, places, companies, things) in the data sources refer to the same logical thing, the content is combined.
   
   Perhaps Alternative Party could host one day a competition, where such huge amounts of data could be used and e.g. visualized or otherwise used for creating new applications?
    
2. Semantic Media Wiki is an extension to Media wiki -- the widely used wiki software that is used e.g. by Wikipedia -- where the relations between Wiki pages is described "semantically". This means, that instead of making plain old links between Wiki pages, also the relation between the Wiki pages is described. E.g., the relation between Helsinki and Finland could be "capital-of". This additional knowledge can be used for e.g. searching content and for creating automatically listings that have been authored manually before.
   
   If everything goes as planned, the English Wikipedia will be testing the Semantic Media Wiki in production use during this Summer. I will be following closely what the reactions of the Wikipedia user's are!
    
3. Sensor web -- the next thing after Web 2.0? Somewhat related to Alternative Party 2009's cyberpunk theme was a keynote speach given by Alan Smeaton (CLARITY, University of Dublin) who talked about sensors and how to process all kinds of environmental signals to create new kinds of applications.
   
   In future, all your life will be recorded (and optionally published on the Internet). The first steps of this are e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Flickr and other content most of us already seem to publish. The next step is to be able to publish automatically streams related to your life, e.g. audio, video, location, physical and emotional feelings. This is cyberpunk, isn't it? :)

What do you think? What is the future of the web? What will be the cool applications in year 2015? Will you publish your heart rates and brain waves on the Internet when it is supported by your mobile phone? :)