1. A method for developing a computerized virtual personal assistant (VPA) application for a domain of interest, the VPA application comprising an executable VPA engine and a re-usable VPA component accessible by the VPA engine to enable the VPA application to determine a likely intended goal of a computing device user based on conversational natural language input of the computing device user relating to the domain of interest, execute a task on behalf of the user, and/or generate a likely appropriate system response to the conversational natural language input, the method comprising, with a computing system: analyzing content displayed on an Internet web page that supports electronic interactions with computing device users relating to the domain of interest; identify domain-specific content displayed on the Internet web page; determining a characteristic that the identified domain-specific content has in common with a computerized ontology that defines a structure for representing knowledge relating to a plurality of domains, wherein each domain refers to a category of information and/or activities in relation to which the VPA application may engage in a conversational natural language dialog with the computing device user; establishing a data relationship between the identified domain-specific content and the ontology based on the common characteristic; and adapting the re-usable VPA component to the domain of interest by applying at least a portion of the identified domain-specific content to the re-usable VPA component based on the data relationship between the content and the ontology.
1. A method for developing a computerized virtual personal assistant (VPA) application for a domain of interest, the VPA application comprising an executable VPA engine and a re-usable VPA component accessible by the VPA engine to enable the VPA application to determine a likely intended goal of a computing device user based on conversational natural language input of the computing device user relating to the domain of interest, execute a task on behalf of the user, and/or generate a likely appropriate system response to the conversational natural language input, the method comprising, with a computing system: analyzing content displayed on an Internet web page that supports electronic interactions with computing device users relating to the domain of interest; identify domain-specific content displayed on the Internet web page; determining a characteristic that the identified domain-specific content has in common with a computerized ontology that defines a structure for representing knowledge relating to a plurality of domains, wherein each domain refers to a category of information and/or activities in relation to which the VPA application may engage in a conversational natural language dialog with the computing device user; establishing a data relationship between the identified domain-specific content and the ontology based on the common characteristic; and adapting the re-usable VPA component to the domain of interest by applying at least a portion of the identified domain-specific content to the re-usable VPA component based on the data relationship between the content and the ontology. 2. The method of claim 1 , wherein the re-usable VPA component is linked with at least a portion of the ontology and the method comprises selecting the re-usable VPA component based on the link between the re-usable VPA component and the ontology and the data relationship between the content and the ontology.