Semantic web technologies pop up frequently in current computer science research, in particular in fields related to HCI. Although the semantic web itself has not yet been fully realized, the supporting technologies are mature enough to be used for other applications. The semantic web initiative centers around knowledge representation and automated reasoning about knowledge. This concept is general enough to find its use in many different fields (ambient intelligence, service oriented computing, etc.). I will give an overview of the basic concepts of the semantic web. Important semantic web standards such as RDF, RDFS and OWL will be covered as well. Presented during a HCI chit-chat session at our institute on September 8th, 2006.