The Web gets personal with Firefox Headup plugin

SEMANTIC WEB FIRM Semantinet today unveiled Headup, a plugin for Firefox which gives users access to personally-relevant content from across the interwibble, in the form of an extra layer on top of the page the user is already viewing.

By displaying a little yellow plus sign next to items on any given web page, Headup promises it can pull up person-specific useful or interesting information in real time, by contextually ‘understanding’ how all the data spread through the net is connected.

For example, if a user is looking at a particular CD on a site like Amazon, Headup would be able to tell him how many of his friends like that particular band, would be able to stream the music live from sites like Pandora, would be able to pull up band pictures from sites like Flickr and Picassa, find tickets to the band’s next concert in a city near where the user lives, and even all sorts of other information like good places to eat after the concert. The possibilities go on and on.

Semantinet, an Israeli firm with sales offices in San Francisco, is adamant that Headup is not just another search engine, or even a search engine at all for that matter. Instead, the site pulls in and cross-references tons and tons of data from social not-working sites like Flickr, Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, Friendfeed, etc, as well as sites like Amazon, Google, Youtube, Last.fm, Pandora, and brings the relevant bits to the user’s attention. If the user cares to click on the ‘plus’ to see it that is, if not, the information remains unobtrusively behind the yellow icon.

Headup uses Semantinet’s semantic web engine (patent-pending) and a unique query language to access unified data. The add on also uses Microsoft Silverlight 2.0 for rich graphical interface, .net support - allowing Headup to work cross browser - ability to execute data requests directly from the client side and to isolate storage. Adobe Flash, apparently, just couldn’t cut it.

The firm insists that “Spying is not our thing”, so Headup comes without spyware and claims it doesn’t give out personal information to anyone. To push the point, SemantnNet notes that all information is stored on the user’s own hard drive and not on company servers.

CEO of Semantinet, Tal Keinan, affectionately told the INQ “The add on is a beast!”. He also noted that despite the fun feel of Headup, “It’s a serious technology, very sophisticated and hard to build”.

Keinan explained that “While the product is still in an early beta stage, we really wanted to put it out there to allow people to get a glimpse of the technology first hand”.

Asked if he ever planned to monetise Headsup, Keinan said he had several financial models in mind for the more distant future, including affiliate marketing, monetising and selling the platform itself to firms and even data brokerage.

In the meanwhile, Keinan encouraged people to sign up for beta testing. Can’t say we didn’t give you all the heads up! µ

L'Inq
Demo Video