The vision of the semantic web was that of Tim Berners-Lee’s - to ensure it was a universal medium for data, information and knowledge.

A noble idea, I’m just not sure this is going to be a realistic goal due to human nature’s tendency to try and exploit technologies for their own ends.

Certainly if this goal is achievable now is the right time for it to take off. There is a buzz online with regard to various technologies that can be used to achieve it (including microformats) with many proponents to semantic web cause.

The issue is that all these methods rely on correct and honest use online. In it’s simplest form the semantic web attempted to use meta tags in years go by. These became a well known method for black hat search engine optimisers to try and shoe horn inappropriate keywords into pages to try and fool the search engines. The result? Search engines generally ignore meta tags because of this easy abuse.

So is this also going to be the case for the new drive for a universal information medium? Not currently maybe. As it stands the uptake isn’t large enough so there doesn’t seem to be any advantage in trying to provide inaccurate data. But just wait until the tipping point is reached I’m sure that search engines will try to lean on this extra layer to improve results. Some people will be waiting to exploit it.

The only thing we can hope is that the lessons constantly being learnt from the constant battle against the black hats can be applied against them again to ensure this new semantic vision isn’t muddied. I also feel that social media is going to become even more of a watchdog for content quality - those millions of eyes put to good use. The advantages of the semantic web can’t be ignored - machines understanding human content opens so many doors.

As usual though the main issue here is getting people to use the technologies. From a business perspective people aren’t going to adopt this without it providing some kind of return on investment. Implementation is simple in most cases so I can perhaps see people dipping their toes in the water and this gradual adoption may start the tide. I for one will be looking at the hCalendar, hCard and XFN formats as a starting point.

One thing that my colleagues and I encounter on occasion is IT departments being unhelpful or damn right obstructive to anything we might be trying to implement online for their company. Certainly there are exceptions to the rule but for the most part IT don’t want any web development companies moving into what they think is their domain.

For a lot of IT departments there can be serious divisions with outside operators or even other departments in a company. Over more recent years the marketing department has strayed into the IT space and by some it is met with horror.

I’m not totally blaming those in IT having this reaction. Being in IT can be one of the most thankless tasks - no one knows you are there until something goes wrong! When things are going great you are just invisible!

So why do IT departments seem so threatened by an online team working on the company projects?

I think the first reason is ownership. IT departments have felt they ”own” anything related to technology - the website and online presence fall under this. Therefore they should be the only people to touch it - there seems to be a fear that anyone else will break it! Also to certain extent the website is an extension of the IT department that does get noticed by people so losing this might also lose them some of the credit they receive.

There also seems to be a fear that someone else treading into their usual haunts might show them up in some way and therefore count negatively against them.

Finally I think there is a certain arrogance of some members of IT that they can turn their hand to anything technical whether that is setting up a new server or writing a new e-commerce website - it’s only software after all?

So what’s my answer to this? Well from a professional perspective it’s more annoying than anything else. We’re both trying to provide a service and no matter what the IT department does I’m not going away - being obstructive will just waste both of our time. It’s never the intention of a web company to show up anyone internally - the two disciplines are closely related and complement each other. IT departments that have been open to this change have found that we can work together closely and can help each other out significantly.

My second point is that web development is no longer just the domain of programmers and designers - if you want a website to work hard you’ve got to see it as a marketing tool. In addition there are a great deal of other disciplines in play here other than the HTML. IT need to realise this is a specialism that crosses over to other areas than their department.

IT departments are essential so no matter what the online bods do they are safe. Just let us work together and both our lives would be a lot easier.

It seems that Yahoo! has been able to avoid the attempts of Microsoft to buy them up. Certainly it makes Microsoft look the major loser in all of this however is Yahoo! really the victor?

Share prices of both Yahoo! and Microsoft are likely to drop because of this and I wouldn’t be surprised to see Google prices rise.

Yahoo! gets to keep it’s independence but the question is for how long? Their market share has been dropping steady and with Google’s dominance of the search market it’s not easy for either Yahoo! or Microsoft to get a foothold against the search leader.

I actually think the failure of this potential merger is in the long term going to be damaging for both Microsoft and Yahoo! We can only hope that individually they can make up some ground against Google otherwise the monopoly Google could exercise could be very dangerous for online community in general.

Comments on a post about this on BBC News dot.life shows I’m not the only one with this belief. I’ve got to say I’m a little disappointed as I was very interested to see how the two different cultures of Microsoft and Yahoo! would combine - what kind of company would Microhoo! have been?

It would seem that Google’s plan to make a little more money out of Adwords might be about to backfire, in the UK at least. It all stems from the fact that Google is now allowing other companies to bid on competitor’s company names in Adwords. Effectively this means Tesco could bid for the term Asda.

One small problem with this - it’s flying very close to Trademark law in the UK. Part of which means that a company must take steps to protect their Trademark. The first into the breach is Lastminute.com who look like they are going after Google in the courts. I can understand why Lastminute would do this as the holiday market is extremely competitive online and they need to protect the position they’ve built up.

The one issue is that commentators seem unsure if Google is the one that is breaking the law or if it is the companies bidding on their competitor’s terms. It’s a risk for Google but in the short term I think these terms could be extremely profitable for them as people try to protect their name online.