There’s a lot of talk across the web these days about tags, tagging, tag clouds, tag services.  What exactly is a tag?  How would I explain it to my five year old daughter [who even though wicked smart, isn’t going to understand the semantic web lingo I would use to explain tags]?

At a crude level, I like to think of tags as a way for me to find stuff, then categorize it with a term I have a relationship with [the tag is part of my vocabulary]; thus creating a relationship between the term relationship and the stuff I find [did that make sense?].

Now what I have yet to see explode on the web is tags which cross spoken languages; which cross term [if you will] libraries.  This shouldn’t be confused with tag aggregation, which the big services [del.icio.us for example absorbs all tags – from my perspective – in bulk load appetites] do fairly well.  Could tagging be the perfect hybrid of translation and cross language search?  Imagine a scenario where one industry group could ‘talk’ to another industry group via tag crossing.     

There’s also tag authoring limitations; especially from a mobile device.  As good as the G folks are at simplifying mobile services, they completely miss the mark on features like tag management.  Is a cell phone number a semantic expression for the person who answers on the other end; therefore we should be able to tag the number to web-ify it?  Where is this feature [from the new open cellular platforms, and their great ambitions]?  More on all this later.       

Con paz,

frank