As machines learn to understand what the web means, what perspective will they understand it from? Who is teaching them? "Objective" descriptions of the world and the relationships in it can cause real problems, particularly for people with little power in those relationships. How will the emerging Semantic Web understand relationships and what will that mean for us as human users?

On Monday, Facebook released a sample site that demonstrates how Facebook Connect (previous coverage), their new authentication methodology for logging into third-party web sites, will work. On the demo site, instead of registering for an account, you're presented with an option to use Facebook Connect instead. The Facebook team built the site so developers interested in using this technology could see how it works. The source code was provided as well.

There has been a lot of talk lately about the changing face of the blogging landscape. Darren Rowse of ProBlogger asked if blogging has lost its relational focus; Scoble explained why tech blogging has failed you; and even though not everyone agreed with his every statement, there was a renewed commitment in the blogosphere to return to blogging about what excites instead of just writing about "Apple's newest gizmo or the peccadillos of tech personalities." However, we're wondering if people even need to blog anymore...at least in the traditional sense.

According to a rather speculative report by research firm ABI Research, location-based social networks like Brightkite, GyPSii, Pelago and Loopt could reach revenues as high as $3.3 billion by 2013. The report, however, also warns that the business models might differ from what most analysts are expecting today. According to ABI research, most of these networks will make their money from licensing and revenue-sharing with network providers or handset manufacturers.

Last night, the new search engine Cuil launched out of stealth-mode. As some had predicted, it seems Google's announcement about the size of its search index was a preemptive move to take some momentum away from one of Cuil's main features: the size of its index with 120 billion pages. As Cuil's team features quite a number of Google alumni, comparisons with Google's search are inevitable. In our tests, however, Cuil performed nowhere near as well as Google.

Much has been written lately about the rise of the API. Offering a programming interface to an online service is now standard practice amongst this generation of web companies. Through APIs, we get to enjoy a range of innovative Twitter clients, wide availability of maps and location information, custom search engines, and more. However, delivering superior user experience on major platforms should be as much of a priority as opening up via an API.

The future of software development is about good craftsmen. With infrastructure like Amazon Web Services and an abundance of basic libraries, it no longer takes a village to build a good piece of software. These days, a couple of engineers can deliver complete systems.

It may be all the rage, but are company-built social networks for customers to socialize in really smart?

You know what little startup companies need these days? They need to hire more people! It may be a frightening thought, but in an increasingly social world - being social is becoming an important full time job.

Moopz is a new web service created by the fabulous Mark Carey, the same developer responsible for RWW's innovative FriendFeed/comment integration. With Moopz, Carey brings us a conversation-tracking interface for FriendFeed that lets you keep tabs on what's hot, what's recent, as well as what's quiet (dare we saying "upcoming?"). The interface is very similar to FriendFeed - you can interact with the stories by liking and commenting, but the big difference between the two services is that Moopz helps organize and categorize the FriendFeed noise into an easy-to-read flow of news.