Web 3.0 Opportunities

It is no secret that the Web is evolving at a rapid pace. It is also common knowledge that the vision of the 'Web 3.0' is based on the representation of data, and often referred to as The Semantic Web. Now if you are currently a web 2.0 developer without much or any knowledge about the semantic web and the technologies recommended to power it, I suggest reading up on a few of the W3C recommendations for RDF and OWL.

Basically, these and other specifications, based entirely on XML, provide information about information (data about data, i.e. metadata). Web Documents can/should be represented in XML styled with XSL and meaning represented by RDFs. This provides the ability for systems to become intelligent towards content, opening up immense opportunities.

Organizations no longer need custom applications to publish their data. Why not simply publish XML documents with detailed RDFs and let already developed applications based on these specifications provide presentation? Now of course this is not a new idea. Company A has products, company B provides services to display these products on the Web. The only difference is now it standardizes and makes the design process for all web publications homogeneous. This loosely coupled Data and Presentation idea makes powerful tools and ideas like mashups insanely easy.

The ability to consolidate tools and presentation libraries must appeal to anyone with half a brain (as long as it isn't devoted towards securing niche markets and complicating the world to make full service sales that make event the Gates wince).

Adding meaning to Web Data and keeping the presentation layer separate open up so many possibilities and will inspire even more explosion of the services and usage of the Internet. More intelligent systems will become available and computing will continue to evolve to become more useful and automated.

I would love to hear opinions on the Semantic Web ideals and also about possibilities it creates. (Please criticize as well!)