The Semantic Web is all about Linked Data, primarily made up of machine-readable links, aka machine tags. Search optimized urls are machine-readable in this sense, though primarily for search engines. Microformats, Microdata, and rdfa are all examples of machine tags that search engines have adopted. The html a element, when used in conjunction with href="" attribute provide the connectivity that has enabled the web of hypertext. As amazing as the hypertext web is, it has its limitations, including only having local scope(s), and primarily only linking to data embedded in html documents. While data embedded in html documents are accessible on the web, it is not in the web.
The Semantic Web marks a shift from this method of thinking, from human readable to machine readable. You can make your data machine readable by adhering to Linked Data Expectations of Behavior to make the data interconnected. The more connected the data is, the more opportunities it has for unexpected reuse.
It is the unexpected re-use of information which is the value added by the web.
Tim Berners-Lee
To promote Linked Data, the lidrc Laboratory has published Linked Open Data Star Examples and Linked Open Data Star Badges. Use the former to define your data and the latter to promote your data. I have put them all together into a sprite to help promote Linked Open Data.
In the process of doing so, I noticed that some of the badges had different heights, as well as all of them not having transparent corners, so I went ahead and took out the backgrounds of each and made them uniform. I would love to see them implemented in css, but that will be for another post. The Linked Open Data Badges Kit (available here) consists of uniform badges (88 x 32), original sizes and .psds.
