Google Base Officially launched

Google Base has launched officially launched. It is basically a huge database of information but stuff that the public enters. For example, people add lots of stuff like jobs, recipes, etc which is then searchable for other people.

Check this picture out : -

It's a recipe for Chicken Tikka Masala which is something that has been added by a user. This opens up all sorts of possibilities for Google since now they dont have to get an AI to decide what is a recipe and what isn't. Instead their own users will do the work for them.

It is the next stage in the development process of the internet with programs such as Amazon's Mechanical Turk doing a similar thing with their Artificial Artificial Intelligence. Getting real people to enter information is far more useful since Google can start categorising info into a much richer level of categories. One of the problems with the web and AI is contextual awareness. The semantic web is meant to be able to get information out which is helpful to the user to understand the context. E.g. if 18 is printed on a page is it an age, or housenumber, etc. This system allows them to be able to get that context out of the information by getting users to enter information into specific boxes.

More info can be found here.