I suspect it uses DBPedia too. Me like :) This could really be something useful, personally Wolfram Alpha is way too noisy information-wise for me to use.
Could use another few iterations of the interface (I don't like the way the lists vanish right after they appear), but the concept and execution are first rate. I will be making regular use of this. Most semantic-web-like thing I've seen so far this year.
This site also summarizes what I hate in the current webdesign trends: broken back button and spurious event handlers attached to the not-quite-linky-links.
For almost all of my queries, this is just giving me the list of "categories" on the corresponding wikipedia page, leaving out the wiki-specific ones such as " Articles with Open Directory Project links", etc. Clicking the categories just opens the listings on the corresponding Wikipedia category page.
Quite possibly I don't understand what its doing or why, but I entered the word "stylus", meaning the needle on a turntable, and I got an opening suggestion of "writing implements", and the tree related only to that. So, unfortunately for me a bit of a fail. Like I say, perhaps I missed the point.
I assume it didn't have that meaning in whatever database it's using. Writing implements is a valid interpretation at least. It does seem to do disambiguation if you search for the classic 'pitch'.
It's just a fun way of walking from one concept to another, like browsing Wikipedia and ending up miles from where you started.
In fairness, the writing implement definition was around for a few thousand years before the invention of record players. Try 'vinyl stylus' - you're not restricted to single words.
with what i understand, the idea here is to basically start from somewhere, tread a path and get 'lost' somewhere else or into something. It's fun to walk through i guess.
What i liked is - now, i tried the word "stylus" like you did, but misspelled it as 'stylis'. it gave auto-correct suggestion - did you mean 'stylus'. good for a small site, i think.
Readit News
This is similar to the site Freebase (http://www.freebase.com/), which has a lot more data. Example node: India (http://www.freebase.com/m/03rk0).
http://orteil.dashnet.org/nested
It's just a fun way of walking from one concept to another, like browsing Wikipedia and ending up miles from where you started.
What i liked is - now, i tried the word "stylus" like you did, but misspelled it as 'stylis'. it gave auto-correct suggestion - did you mean 'stylus'. good for a small site, i think.