hm, I just had another look at Magpie.

Being a Semantic Web hacker I had to download it and try it out.

Hm, looks like you have to download "all knowledge there is" (aka ontology) and then magpie uses the literals in this Ontology to find similiar strings in the document.

Have a look at the video, we all have to make videos for our projects. Inspirative.

What I also found out it that the "right click" menu on found items uses a webservice. Magpie opens then a website like this: magpie link.
If you look at the parameters of the URL, you will see that the onotolgy is identified as string value and the requested resource also.

- HM -

The idea is good and I think I can learn something here. Have to check out the publications though. Also the Internet Explorer integration is nifty. The user interface is fine. I think the architecture does not scale. Best part: it adapts to IE and does not need a whole haystack of applications :-)