[eserorg]

We implemented hierarchical tags for our oil and gas search engine, having been inspired by delicious: http://www.resourceplay.com

Hierarchical tagging has tremendous practical utility for sifting through large volumes of data.

[joshu]

interesting site.

the "see who else viewed this well" thing seems creepy though.

[eserorg]

ok. I removed that feature.

This is actually the second version of the same idea -- "an oil and gas search engine".

The first version was called "Hydrocarbon Search": http://hydrocarbon.search.eser.org/

By including delicious-like hierarchical tags, the second version became much more useful.

Problem was, there was no business model.

So, I'm working on the third version now -- its designed to run on the yet-to-be-released GPS-enabled iPad.

So, you can take it out into the field and have it tell you about nearby oil wells, seismic surveys, leaseholds, remote sensing data, surface linears, offshore oil and gas blocks (if you are on a boat, for example), etc...

It's going to be pretty sweet. The business model is to charge for each region seperately: north texas, west texas, east texas, colorado, offshore shallow gulf of mexico, offshore deep-water gulf of mexico, north sea, australia, etc...

And since the data changes daily, it will be a subscription service.

Hopefully, third time is a charm