"The Armonk, N.Y. technology giant has teamed with Atomica of Burlingame, Calif. to distribute an application called Answer Delivery, which can be used to turn every word on a Web site or in a Windows-based application into a Web link. Users can then click on a word while holding down the "Alt" key and access related data from a corporate database or Atomica's own database of general information."

"Unlike [Microsoft's] Smart Tags, which offers access to predefined Web sites and pieces of data, Atomica's software can be customized to access data from a corporate database or from Atomica's library of information. Called the Topic Warehouse, Atomica's database includes data ranging from profiles of public companies to definitions from the American Heritage Dictionary.

Accessing content objectively is what sets Answer Delivery apart from the controversy behind Smart Tags, according to Peter O'Kelly, an analyst with Boston-based Patricia Seybold Group.

"Atomica is totally user-directed," O'Kelly said. "It's not doing anything on your behalf unless you tell it to.""

A List Apart Much Ado about Smart Tags

"Microsoft seems genuinely astonished by the reaction to smart tags. As group product manager for Microsoft's Windows Client Shawn Sanford told NewsBytes, "Everybody tends to focus on the negative side of this like we're going to expose (users) to a lot of bad content ... I think we're going to expose people to a lot of good content."

They've missed the point entirely. It's not Microsoft's job to expose users to content while they're on our sites. It's our job as authors, designers and developers. We don't want Microsoft 'saving users from underlinked sites' as one representative told Mossberg. If users feel our sites are 'underlinked,' then it is our job to correct it, not Microsoft's."

W3C Annotation Discussion List Backlash vs. Third-Party Annotations from MS Smart Tags

"There has been a lot of backlash against this idea in the media, including from the Wall Street Journal and others. While some of this is merely that people tend to dislike ANYTHING Microsoft does, a lot of the sentiments seem to be actually directed at the concept of third-party metadata annotations and links.

A lot of people -- primarily web designers or web content authors -- seem to be incensed over the idea that a third party could provide information "on a page" (as displayed by a user agent) which was not placed there by the original author. To those people, Annotea is just as evil and wrong as Smart Tags.

Anyone have any thoughts on this, and what effects this type of reaction will have upon the eventual widespread adoption of the Semantic Web?"

MIT Technology Review A Standard for e-Comments

"Got a few choice thoughts about what you see on the Web? Enter Annotea, a new technology that lets you annotate existing Web documents with commentary of your own."

"With Annotea, users can get analyses and commentaries that go beyond a library computer search. It provides a tool for third parties to ascribe value to Web content."