Brilliant Thinking

The Mashable article below is interesting in that in these days of visual browsers, graphical interfaces, visual layouts and all the bells and whistles, a company is experimenting with a command line interface for the web.

As Mashable suggests “the concept is far more interesting than the execution…”

Although Kwyno is looking to offer a command line to the web, it still is tied to the way information is presented at present. The brief outline from Mashable suggests that you are essentially configuring your account to set up your own preferred sources - e.g. CNN for news, etc - and then issuing short commands (i.e. text messages) to the service to return information packaged for your device.

Until the semantic web truly takes hold, a command line for the web will be one of those early-adopter technologies. Once key parts of the Web become semantic (the tipping point) then tools such as Kwyno will come into their own. They will allow us to access information anywhere - from old tech mobile phones who can only send SMS messages, through to fully enabled mobile devices such as the iPhone. These applications will no longer need to rely on a pre-defined configuration set by the account holder, but can tap into true relevancy engines, pull semantic data and wrap it for the user.

We are seeing shifts towards a different information age, and while the Web as a whole may take a while to catch up, we are in the transition to the next phase of the Web. First came the text-based web page, then came the graphical browser, now we are building innovative web applications (the Web 2.0 era), and next is the socio-semantic web. Are you ready?

WANTED: A Command Line for the Web