Semantic Web The emerging Second-Generation Web that is an extension of the current, FIRST-GENERATION WEB. The concept of the Semantic Web was produced by Tim BERNERS-LEE, who has also coined the term. The main idea of the Semantic Web is to delegate many current human-specific Web activities to computers. This will be possible if Web data are expressed in a machine-readable format suitable for completely automate transactions. It can be achieved by adding several hierarchical levels of METADATA to Web data and using specialist technologies that can make use of these metadata. ’ [Vladimir Geroimenko. Dictionary of XML Technologies and the Semantic Web. New York, 2004]

A killer application (commonly shortened to killer app) is a computer program that is so useful that people will buy a particular computer hardware, gaming console, and/or an operating system simply to run that program… There have been a number of new uses of the term. For instance the usefulness of e-mail drew many people to use the Internet, while the Mosaic web browser is generally credited with the initial rapid popularity of the World Wide Web. The term has also been applied to video games that cause consumers to buy a particular video game console to play them. ’ [Wikipedia.org]

Working in pairs, students are required:

- to investigate the most interesting and promising directions in the development of the Second Generation Web (also known as the Semantic Web or the XML-based Web);

- to propose a possible scenario for the future of the Web that can lead to creating a killer application for the Semantic Web;

- to simulate or implement the scenario and/or the killer application in a multimedia form using Flash XML (or any other relevant technologies, such as Shockwave/Director, DHTML/JavaScript or Java).

Doesn’t sound too bad, XML applications and a Russian lecturer with a laser.