A pair of German researchers have created an experimental kiosk that lets you easily use semantic Web capabilities -- even if you have no idea what they are. All that is needed is an iPhone and a finger with which to drag icons around on the kiosk's touch screen.
The kiosk takes advantage of the fact that MP3 files are "things" that have already been described in ways that machines can understand. That's because they have ID3 tags, which supply information on the artist and album.
Place the iPhone on the kiosk's surface and a circle appears around it. Next to that automatically appears a list of songs arranged by artist, title or genre.
Nearby on the screen are various "spotlets," intelligent agents that can perform different actions with the objects. One spotlet, for instance, plays MP3s that are dragged on top of it. There's also a YouTube spotlet.
Suppose you want to find videos related to Coldplay. Place your finger on the band's icon next to your phone and simply drag it on top of that spotlet. Instantly, icons for the first five videos from the YouTube search results appear around the spotlet.
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