As I write this note in December 2006, there are a couple of snappy phrases that loom large in describing what we expect from the use of data on the World Wide Web:

• The Semantic Web vision looks for a “web of data” that is deeper and richer in connections between facts than the established web of documents.
• The Web 2.0 concept sees the Web as a platform for personal data, layered services, and participatory social use of information.

This blog is for technology-oriented people who want to dive in and help these trends along in useful ways.
I’ll be driving my analyses, reviews, how-to pieces, and occasional heretical manifestos from some concrete data-centric problems that we all probably share:

• organizing our digital music and other media,
• synchronizing personal contact and calendar information among multiple devices,
• avoiding data loss,
• sharing information with others.

I expect to delve into many data formats and lots of software, sites, and services as we go along.

I’ll try to keep the entries in the main feed short, with summaries and pointers to the longer pieces. I doubt I’ll have any breaking news, and I’ll try to consolidate single-link posts into a week-in-review item.

My personal site, danrabin.com, is about me; I hope that Applied Rotation will be about us.