Saturdays at CPA Success are usually spent reviewing online tools that can help increase our productivity. Keep in mind that we do not endorse any of these services. We simply offer them up for your consideration. Do your own homework and find the service that best meets your needs.

We've been hearing about “the semantic Web” for a while. Now, it appears we're starting to see some practical applications to go along with the hype.

First, a quick definition: In the era of the semantic Web (a.k.a Web 3.0), computers analyze and define all data on the Internet via semantics, or the meanings of that data. It then connects that data to other data (or people, or places, or anything else) based on those semantics.

Think of it this way: Web 1.0 connects people to static information. Web 2.0 connects people to people. Web 3.0 will connect everything to everything.

I know … clear as mud, right? Just think of it as a much more robust way of being connected to the information that really matters to you.

And that's where Evri comes in. After seeing a demonstration of it at DigitalNow, I'm tempted to describe Evri as a semantic search engine, but that's a little too simplistic.

Let's try this: Evri uses your own content to drive people to the information they want.

VentureBeat's Dean Takahashi describes Evri as a tool that “uses natural language analysis to deliver full pages of results that describe what you’re looking at, the most relevant keywords that are connected with that subject, and other news results that are relevant to the site.”

Sarah Perez of ReadWriteWeb describes it this way:

Although still too raw to be your main search engine, Evri has a new 'Collections' feature that lets you follow topics (a.k.a. search queries) that are of interest to you. After returning a list of search results which include Wikipedia entries, news articles, videos, and images, you can click the star labeled “Follow this” to continue to track that topic. What's missing from this feature, though, is an alerting system which will inform you of updates via e-mail or RSS. However, the company says that's coming.

Perez is right: Evri is still in beta and a bit rough around the edges. But the idea is intriguing. Keep an eye on this tool. Chances are you'll be hearing more about it in the near future.

Update: Check out Evri's “post widget,” which analyzes blog posts and draws in the most relevant content, according to Evri's search engine. Does it work? What do you think?