Astrology Markup

Ftrain: Semantic Web - 45+ links & 3 subcategories (with descriptions) from Paul Ford.

System Checklist for app usability, a list of heuristics of good practice.

seeAlso : Jakob Nielsen's Ten Usability Heuristics

(found at ia/)

RFC: Really Simple Discoverability - "... is a way to help client software find the services needed to read, edit, or "work with" weblogging software."

hmm - YARSL

Science.gov - "...is a gateway to authoritative selected science information provided by U.S. Government agencies, including research and development results."

SOAP interoperability - Duncan Wilcox

The verdict:

• SOAP+WSDL is too complex


• XML-RPC is too simple but still restrictive


• REST is just right

(found via Joe Gregorio's discussion about a RESTful blog API, even though Duncan only lives just down the road in Florence )

PGP-signed comments in blogs (onfocus.com)

Chef Moz - part of the Open Directory Project. The main RDF file is about 100MB decompressed and contains nearly 400,000 restaurants.

(found at Internet Alchemy)

xSiteable - Topic Map backed CMS. It's "...a complete small-to-medium-size site development kit created in XSLT."

Froogle - Google shopfront. You can't actually buy a "Semantic Web", but Johan Hjelm's book is available. "RDF" would appear to be some kind of high-powered cleaning machine...

The Faceted Classification Discussion (FCD) mailing list

seeAlso: the moderator's sites - The Knowledge Management Connection (Phil Murray), Peter Van Dijck.

Ideagraph version 0.5 beta - an RDF-based Personal Knowledge Manager, (far from finished, web pages also under construction). Feedback sought. Completely fresh version available for download, Java-based so any platform.

Source will be available for non-commercial use in a couple of days.

PS. It's a priority for me to get the blogging/RSS facilities of it in place, so I can run this blog from it and don't have to keep messing with Perl scripts to keep the feed working...

spacenamespace
England - "...based on a 14000+ entry file of geographical data publically available from a .mil website, featuring all named settlements and a lot of landscape and historic features. that model is augmented with information from the knowhere collaborative guide site."

"there is a basic RESTful interface to mudengland on space.frot.org. for any given named place, e.g. Milton Keynes, request http://space.frot.org/a_place/Milton_Keynes. that url returns a page of RDF/XML-expressed metainformation about that place. also you can search for particular names, eg http://space.frot.org/find_place/?name=Hole."

Uses a DAML ontology.

El.pub Topic News - interesting tech newsheet.
(found in referrers - thanks folks)

Spread + Coyote => Tomcat Wackamole?
Smells like efficient, reliable (clustered) messaging.

Datatypes for XML Topic Maps (XTM), Murray Altheim (first draft - hot of the press).

Essentially PSIs for XSD types.

Example usage :
:

    <topic id="weight">
      <baseName>
        <scope>
          <topicRef xlink:href="http://kmi.open.ac.uk/psi/datatypes.xtm#float" />
          <topicRef xlink:href="http://kmi.open.ac.uk/psi/measures.xtm#kg" />
        </scope>
        <baseNameString>64.275</baseNameString>
      </baseName>
    </topic>

Got Namespaces ? An investigation into the current state of namespace awareness in RSS aggregators.

It concludes :
"If you're writing RSS aggregator apps that support RSS 1.0 or RSS 2.0, run, don't walk, and go read the XML Namespaces rec."

A model in the mind is quite experimental (but syntax is a geeks best friend). - Bill de h�ra comments on XFML, relating its adoption to that of RDF.

XPDL Version 1.0. XML Process Definition Language (Cover Pages)

(spotted at Bob's, who's landed an deal with Microsoft that is likely to have a significant impact on the future of development tools)

seeAlso: Big Picture of the XML Family of Specifications

Using Apache Axis version 1 to build Web Services - Java Boutique tutorial, nice & easy SOAP.

Visualizing Argumentation : Software Tools for Collaborative and Educational Sense-Making (accompanying site to book)

(found in the Hypertext Kitchen)

memigo - an online news agent. Uses your ratings and other weightings to personalise what it gives you.

we're on the way...

ps. it also has a peer system, so that you are alerted to things that your peers have rated highly. If anyone wants to try this my user name there is danja

Java Developer's Journal - Java Rules in J2EE

On-Line Digital Archive of Documents on Weaving and Related Topics

Webbing the Weave!

Boxes and Arrows: Our Favorite Books: Recommendations from the Staff of Boxes and Arrows

Project Entropia - a new "massive multiplayer online role-playing games" (MMORPG). Includes an economy using errrm real money.

Streaming XPath - Uche summarises recent proposals.

If you want to get ahead, get a hat...

FOAFaMaticMark2 - Project Page - includes screenshots of the forthcomng GUI-based app. Leigh Dodds

Comments/suggestions requested.

Blue Oxen Associates (just launched) "...is a think tank devoted to studying and improving high-performance collaboration. We are particularly interested in studying knowledge processes -- how we share and acquire knowledge, and how we use tools to augment our abilities to inform, to learn, and to collaborate."

Blogger API 2.0 documentation (Pre-release, Dec 2 2002) - looks good.

Woo-hoo - the use of filters with getRecentPosts means that the getPostsSince(datetime) that I've been plugging for can now be done.

Fedora Project - "Developing An Open-Source Digital Repository Management System"

"The new system demonstrates how distributed digital library architecture can be deployed using web-based technologies, including XML and Web services and is designed to be a foundation upon which interoperable web-based digital libraries can be built."

At Cornell, already got a million-dollar grant to play with.

ISO Archiving Standards - Reference Model Papers
seeAlso:
8-page overview
OCLC newsletter pages 26-30
html slide set

(thanks Mick bass)

RDF Query by example, Libby Miller. Contains some great general tips, e.g.

Three principles for creating interoperable data:

• Use the RDF information model: nodes and arcs


• Use universal resource identifiers (URIs) where possible: URLs, mailtos


• Define the structure of information: write schemas

(spotted on Dave Beckett's blog)

yaledailynews.com - D-SWAP to centralize peer file exchanges - a "...centralized file exchange and archive for the digital music, art, video, and writing of Yale University students."
Napster-like sharing with easy retrieval using metadata submitted with the work.

Winter Wonderland (big version) - photo Caroline took this morning, about 10km up the road. Still no snow here.



Nothing whatsoever to do with the Semantic Web.

Internet Alchemy - exploring business type classification with WordNet.

seeAlso: WordNet in RDF

Google Press Center: 2002 Year-End Zeitgeist - Search patterns, trends, and surprises.

Top News Stories, 5. hoch wasser - what??? Even Google doesn't seem to give a straight answer.
PS. Got it now - flood - found it on the very nice timeline.

Top Destinations, 2. canada - ah, that'll be the Tim Bray factor...

Tim Bray - "...is the only Canadian in the inner circle of the World Wide Web Consortium." (Calgary Herald).

Jef Raskin - (Review) A Design Manifesto: Rethinking the User Interface - the Apple guy.

Ah, wondering why this page was at sourgeforge - there's some software: The Humane Environment (THE). It's perversely a little hard to find what's what, thanks to the apparent lack of screenshots, but this seems to be primarily a Python text editor...

Not to be confused with The The

A Taxonomy of See-Through Tools - one for the GUI builders.

Business Process Modeling Notation - BPMI.org, The Business Process Management Initiative have already done BPML there appears to be a BPQL around, now there's a graphical, flowchart-like notation to go with it.

"While ebXML provides a standard way to describe the Public Interface of e-Business processes, BPMI.org provides a standard way to describe their Private Implementation."
note that these are "...business processes that span multiple applications and business partners, behind the firewall and over the Internet."

(thanks Bob)

Popdex : the website popularity index - obviously comes out of the blogging environment, and refers to news, but it's not clear what its intended scope is, or how it compares with Googles offerings. One to watch anyway, if for no better reason that it's build on LAMP - Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP.

ArtandCulture - good content, but the site uses a few WebOjects to provide navigation along several semantic axes - eminently browsable.

We saw Autechre at Sankey's a few years back, not long after the 'Artificial Intelligence' album. They were great. Warp probably have the most inaccessible 404 too...

Motifs distinguish networks TRN 112702
"There are many types of networks in the world -- computer webs like the Internet, connections among components in electronics, relationships among friends and acquaintances, transportation grids, food relationships among animals, connections among neurons, and interactions among genes.

Scientists from the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel and Spring Harbor Laboratory have shown that it is possible to categorize networks by looking at certain recurring circuits, or motifs, within the networks."

(thanks Graham Klyne)

SWAD-Europe project: Framework for Security and Trust Standards
Abstract : This memo examines some current standards for data exchange formats and protocols related to security, authorization policy and trust management. The goal of this memo is to explore the interaction between various security- and trust-related mechanisms, and to identify enough of the purpose and content of these existing standards to indicate how they might be integrated in a Semantic Web trust and policy management framework.

JungleScan.com - this tracks the sales ranking of items at Amazon.
Bookmarking here because I can never remember its name.

JavaIndex.org: Open-Source Java - conveniently categorized.

Idea-X.Net: - seems to be a slashdot thing focussing on ideas.

Found indirectly through Burningbird's somewhat entertaining Social Software Summit thread. If ever you needed evidence that developers (self included) need to get a life...

TIA Systems - Total Information Awareness, the page at DARPA. Sounds a fine system, as long as it doesn't fall into the hands of criminals. Oops.

afroginthevalley - French language web development blog, some nice stuff I think. Found in referrers.

RSSiCal - online RSS to iCal converter, source available (appears to be php, but you'll need a stuffit extractor to get at it)

ayf! - a disposable foaf harvester (Perl/Ruby).
See also who are these people?

Eastgate Systems, the hypertext guys, were founded twenty years ago this week. Happy Birthday!

if only I had a Mac!

Googlefight - yet another toy, this one compares the number of results returned from two different queries.

Intro - Farming, Not Mining - interesting approach to data warehousing : "Web mining is like harvesting a fully-grown crop in the field, gathering wild berries in the forest, or finding gold nuggets in a mine. The implication is that valuable information exists somewhere on the Web, just waiting to be found and used.

Web farming requires considerable effort to use the natural resources of the Web, which in the raw can be quite ugly. The emphasis is on the hard work of preparing the field, seeding the crops, cultivating the soil, and then finally harvesting the crop."

Amazon blushes over sex link snafu "Amazon's automated results for Christian televangelist Pat Roberts 'Six Steps to Spiritual Revival' included a second title by Robertson as well as a book about anal sex for men."
"The linking casts a spotlight on potential pitfalls of technology that flags online shopping behaviour..."

It's also rather amusing.

Ben Hammersley.com: On Taxonomy, and my back garden
While researching, Ben finds out Linnaeus did some of his work in Ben's own garden. "Slightly mindblowing" says Ben ;-)

SWAD-Europe: Developer Workshop Report 2 - Semantic Web Calendaring

"Calendaring is an interesting application of RDF because it is such an important part of people's day-to-day lives, and because it also encompasses difficult philosophical and modelling problems, and social, trust and privacy questions. It straddles all levels of the Semantic Web from simple queries to find out who is at a conference, to complex scheduling problems involving logic."

KnownSpace - an older version of the docs - "...a smart, visual, autonomous information manager that adaptively deduces its user's interests, analyzes its pages, displays them spatially, and automatically searches for new, relevant page."

(Newer stuff is around the Hydrogen project)

Fascinating material (some of it remarkably close to what I have in mind for Ideagraph), but despite nodding in the general direction, it does seem a little pre-web.

Your search - site:hydrogen.knownspace.org uri - did not match any documents.

Don't forget when your domain name registration expires! Take a look at O'Reilly's onjava.com site. Or rather, the name that used to be O'Reilly's until very recently, according to a quicksearch.

Same arseholes that got my isacat.net domain. Beware!!!

Update - just checked the whois record and it still seems to be in O'Reilly's hands. Looks like these folks are more than just unethical...

Update 2 - OnJava works ok, so was it my DNS playing up all along ???

The Sans Serif History, found linked from Understanding web typography: Part one: increase accessibility and readability by making informed font choices.

"It should be noted that the general rule that serif fonts are easier to read cannot be relied upon when designing for the Web. The usability expert Jakob Neilson, notes that, particularly for small sizes, sans-serif fonts are more readable on low resolution screens. "

Charting blog world, Dave Bryson - nice pic of links between blogs using the ever-popular .