skillMap / tagNet project and tagNet vision

I checked with Stephan and he says its ok to post the following description on the project we're currently working on: We're developing a technology that enables a community to jointly connect tags with each other with reference to their relation. In a playful graphical interface that is based on preFuse, users can draw lines between tags indicating how they're connected. In this way, a semantic structure of tags is created over time in a community-based bottom-up approach. We call this the tagNet. tagNets allow semantic search, mtching algorithms and similarity ratings for obejcts that have networked tags associated to them.

Sarah and me developed the tagNet vision based on her original vision of a knowledge management system that we call skillMap. It is a java applet that implemented the concept of networked skills in an application we call the skillMap. In the skillMap, there is two networks: a social network of people and a taxonomy of their skills. People tag their own skils and everyone in the community networks these skill into a loose semantic structure. The resulting data structure is a connection of a social network and a bottom-up skills folksonomy. The application of a similarity algorithm I am working on in my PhD thesis on this structure can answer questions like Who knows what, who knows who? Who knows somebody, who knows something about X? Who should talk to whom? Where are communities of practice?