5. A method as claimed in claim 1 wherein detecting user interaction includes detecting any of: user selection of a semantic entity, user creation of a semantic entity, and user selection of a textual note identifying a semantic entity.
1. A computer implemented method of retrieving information comprising: in a user interface, representing a real world item by a semantic entity; detecting user interaction with the user interface, including detecting the user graphically interacting with the semantic entity as displayed in the user interface; throughout the detected user graphical interaction with the semantic entity as displayed in the user interface, obtaining semantic data of the displayed semantic entity, said obtaining semantic data including disambiguating references to the displayed semantic entity; using the obtained and disambiguated semantic data and searching one or more knowledge bases for information about the displayed semantic entity, resulting in search results having information directly concerning the displayed semantic entity instead of the search results having material that merely mentions a name of the real world item being represented by the display semantic entity, said search results being more relevant than that of text-based, non-semantic searches; and automatically displaying to a user the information about the displayed semantic entity from the search results, wherein the searching and displaying are free of user request and support collaborative reasoning about the real world item by supporting collection and organization of information directly concerning the displayed semantic entity.