Science software may set future of search

Searching for information online could become easier with the help of science software in the years to come, according to one researcher.

Nikolaos Konstantinou at Athens Information Technology worked with a team from the National Technical University of Athens to determine what path Web 3.0 is likely to take.

The researchers explain that the initial incarnation of the internet saw it used to provide discrete items of information, while Web 2.0 introduced a more interlinked approach through social networking platforms.

For Web 3.0, science software could begin to automatically detect what information a user requires and search for it faster than a human could manually do so.

The concept is an extension of the use of metadata to provide non-display information about rich media and non-text files including sounds, images and videos.

Google is among the companies spear-heading such a trend, allowing webmasters to specify details using the Resource Description Framework for certain files or types of text that they use on their websites.