A big focus of AdaptiveBlue is solving this problem. It’s a big problem so we’re taking a pragmatic approach to it and trying to solve the easy challenges first.

We’re lucky that many of the easy challenges are also things that matter a great deal to consumers (which is critical at this point as it’s the business that can be built which fueled our funding).

Right now Glue (www.getglue.com) recognizes objects across popular consumer verticals.

A (slightly hidden) feature is the ACTIONS menu that is accessible on pages about everyday things (books, movies, music, etc).

The product is able to identify the NOUN on the page and then the consumer can access a list of VERBS that are relevant for the noun via the ACTIONS menu.

For example, when looking at a movie on IMDB the user can select “Add to Netflix Queue” and the movie will be automatically added to their queue, without leaving the page. In this case the noun is the specific movie and the verb is ‘rent.’

As linked data becomes more available these types of actions will be more easily surfaced. THIS is going to create great benefit for everyone online.

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Most big ticket sites ask you where you live unless you login – so you would need a shared login (OpenID perhaps) and their support of that.

Then you would be able to know what city you live in. Saving it as a cookie works too.

Checking your Google Calendar should be possible if it was done with OpenID but even if not, if you make your schedule public, finding it via an RSS read is fairly simple.

The bigger issue with tickets though would be “what level do you want”,”how much do you want to pay” etc – I find I have to re-ask the system several times before I get my perfect tickets.

That said, if they purchased them and allowed me to change where they were within a 24 hour period, I’d be in for that.

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(not so much the Beck ticket experience – that should be possible by pure cookies and a good e-ticket seller).

But the idea of placing a microformat tag on Flickr that says “More info” or “Buy here” or something that would then allow you to go to that site and purchase that item.

What that does require though is for EVERYONE to get on the same band-wagon. but once again, here is where microformats can definitely help.

http://microformats.org/