Zipipop & The Pragmatic Web

At a Helsinki Opencoffee Meetup I was talking with Teemu Arina and he introduced me to the concept of the Pragmatic Web (prostelyzed by Stephen Downes); and it was a little revelation for me, as here was a theory that fitted perfectly with Zipipop's activities and our "making everyday easier" mantra.

Here is an extract taken for Stephen Downes's "Reflecting on 10 Future Web Trends":

1. The Pragmatic Web

"Forget about the Semantic Web. Whether or not it ever gets built, you can be sure that we will be complaining about it. Because while the Semantic Web gives us meaning, it doesn’t give us context. It will give us what we can get from an encyclopedia, but not what we can get from phoning up our best buddy.

The pragmatic web, by contrast, is all about context. Your tools know who you are, what you’re doing, who you’ve been talking to, what you know, where you want to go, where you are now, and what the weather is like outside. You don’t query them; they carry on an ongoing conversation with you. The pragmatic web is chock-full of information, but none of it is off-topic and none of it is beyond your understanding (and if you need to know more, it will teach you). The pragmatic web isn’t just a web you access, read to and write to, it’s a web that you use every day."

At Zipipop we are concepting a number of services that will put into practice many of the ideas related to the pragmatic web; however, I will now briefly discuss how Zipipop's own Intention Broadcasting and our current flagship service Zipiko fit into the picture.

Intention Broadcasting is tied into the concept of the pragmatic web in that it provides a system for making existing information more relevant to the everyday life of users. It provides a system of communicating intentions together with a feedback loop that directly affects the intentions.

Zipiko uses Intention Broadcasting to provide a service that takes contextual and personal information into account to facilitate and coordinate social interaction to produce consensus and commitments to meet up at a particular place and time in the 'real' world – in other words, it makes getting together with friends easier.

Once Zipiko is running super smoothly and the multitudes of users are contented, we will then set about implementing some of our other pragmatic web concepts. The common thread being that they all know about and facilitate your everyday life.

Eventually these services will be united in what we are calling the Social Submarine. But until then we will meet up with you in the social sea using Zipiko.

Zipiko – let's go see