A Newbie's Guide to the Semantic Web

When I started learning about the semantic web, it was quite foreign territory and the practitioners all seemed to be talking over my head, so when I began to figure it out, I thought it would be valuable to write an introduction for those interested but a little put off. Well it's a whole bunch of things stitched together with many tools and different technologies and standards. Let's start with the problem that the semantic web is trying to solve. Microsoft explained it very well with its Bing commercials on search overload. Not that Bing solves it, but at least Microsoft is good at explaining the problem.