Anarchitect

An invitation to pity ACM

anarchitect — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 20:37:32 +0000

Today i received again an email from ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) with the subject line “An Invitation to Join ACM”. Before this, i have received numerous of those as postal letters as well as emails. This is probably caused by attending an ACM conference last year. I managed to stop getting the paper versions, but it seems as if my plea for removing my email address from ACM’s database was unheard. I never ticked a checkbox somewhere asking for monthly “invitation” emails and letters. Why is there no easy way of stopping them?

This rather annoying member recruitment practice is only a small thing that makes me feel pity and at the same time slight disgust for the organization that represents so many computer science students and professionals. Academic values like advancing the field for the sake of humanity and sharing knowledge in an open fashion seem to be replaced by careerism and exclusive content — which is ironically only accessible via horrible interfaces such as the ACM digital library. Can you believe people being lured into becoming an ACM member with a flip-flop calculator? It just seems a bit surreal.

It’s not the yearly fee that keeps me from joining. It just doesn’t appeal to me becoming a member of a cheesy elite club, that has little to do with educational, egalitarian, or emancipatory values that i would rather see embraced in computer science and academia in general. ACM is a member-based organization and ultimately — if the members choose so — it can be transformed. I sure hope it does soon.

PS: while i pick here on ACM, the critique probably equally applies to the IEEE Computer Society and the many profit-driven publishers.

Comics for geeks, bicyclists, and indie rockers

anarchitect — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 12:02:26 +0000

Web comics are a great way to escape the dullness of work for a moment. If you’re just starting to read a comic that has been around for some time, it is actually possible to spend an afternoon enjoying the development of characters’ personalities and the comic artists’ drawing skills while clicking through hundreds of comic strips. For the geeks, bicycling aficionados, and hip indie rockers among my dear readership, i can heartily suggest taking a look at xkcd, Yehuda Moon, and Questionable Content. Take your time.

An evening out of town

anarchitect — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 14:34:05 +0000

Yesterday we took our bikes and left all concrete behind to have a picknick along the river of the city we inhabit. Although windy and cloudy at first, it turned into an enjoyable evening. The girls and social scientists teams won in Boule against the teams of the boys and engineers–if you permit fuzzy borders and some overlap. Thanks everybody for joining in. Uwe found it to be a paradise-like place and took some beautiful photos.

Towards a Better VIEW

anarchitect — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 06:47:03 +0000

It was rather silent here the last weeks, mainly because i have finished my diploma thesis recently and defended (successfully) shortly thereafter. The title of the thesis is Towards a Better VIEW: Visual Information Exploration on the Web. The core idea is the combination of multiple interactive visualization widgets or VisGets that are used to explore web content, for example, from RSS feeds. If you want to know more about it check out the thesis page, where i have put abstract, thesis, and defense slides.

Interactive Installations

anarchitect — Mon, 05 May 2008 16:10:45 +0000

I just stumbled upon these two interactive art installations by Uta Hinrichs and Holly Schmidt: memory [en]code and EMDialog. I think both projects showcase how interactive tabletops and large displays can be engaging and inviting in public settings. I am excited to see more of this. Check out the websites for photos and videos.

Snapshots or beauty in motion

anarchitect — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 19:03:27 +0000

I am kind of undecided about Flickr’s recent move to allow small video snippets. Quite a few members are at least not amused. Flickr sells the very short films as long photographs which seems kind of ridiculous at first. The video service Vimeo tries to focus on high-quality, original short movies. There i just went through some of Philip Bloom’s videos and they are amazing! Great perspectives, interesting people, wonderful colors, and good music. In particular, Autumn in Richmond, Piccadilly Furs, South Bank, and Kew Gardens. While only paying pro members can upload video on Flickr, i wonder if this approach towards video – videos are just photos that move up to 90 seconds – will attract such good videos, or better their makers. Right now the video group on Flickr is dominated by mostly snapshot videos.

Infographics disguised as flags

anarchitect — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 08:07:57 +0000

Icaro Doria came up with the great idea of using national flags to visualize social issues of different countries. The project Meet the World (larger images) was actually an advertising campaign for the Portuguese magazine Grande Reportagem.

see conference on visualization of information

anarchitect — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 07:46:57 +0000

This saturday the third see conference on visualization of information is happening in Wiesbaden. It features quite a speaker list including Ben Fry, Bruce Sterling, and Frank van Ham. I really wanted to go, so i got my tickets well in advance, but something came in my way and now i hope for good video streaming. By the way, i was promised to get the money back. Very nice.

Of curbs, cops, contusions and comics

anarchitect — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 19:49:01 +0000

Yesterday a lonely bicyclist had an unpleasant encounter with a slippery curb that didn’t want him to get onto the bicycle path. He fell and later felt severe pain in his knee. Now he can’t really bend it, but the doc said it aint broken – just a bit bruised. The irony is that just two minutes before the lonely bicycle commuter had his tragic fall, a police officer yelled out of the car and demanded that he used the [non-mandatory] bike path - which the bicyclist refused first knowing that it was not mandatory… Well, he is working diligently again on his diplom thesis, but once in a while he procrastinates away, e.g., by reading the first bike shop web comic that has all the necessary cyclist tragic, bike lane content, and car contempt.

The special role of urban planning

anarchitect — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 04:29:45 +0000

Today it occurred to me (again) that urban planning and city lifestyle weaves itself like a red thread through many contemporary issues. In the previously mentioned CBC radio programme it was discussed that among other factors, the location where one lives in the city and the fact whether certain services and shops are within walkable (or public transport) distance seem to have quite an impact on one’s health and happiness. Tonight the editor and founder of WorldChanging Alex Steffen gave an inspiring and motivating talk about interesting ideas for how to address global warming and the general disconnect between humankind and earth. Check out his TED talk on similar things. He talked about all kinds of ideas, products and services that make a contribution by contributing less waste or emissions and by using up less resources. Great examples are sharing of cars, tools, and even handbags. When asked what he considers the three major innovations, he responded with a list of interventions and named urban planning as the first one. While i am not sure whether it is interesting what some urban planners are doing, i certainly think that what they should be doing is worth taking a closer look.

Sick People or Sick Societies?

anarchitect — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 20:13:41 +0000

I just listened to a very interesting two-part podcast about the social gradient in health produced by the CBC. The issue is that many contemporary diseases such as diabetes or obesity can be determined by looking at social factors like income, social relations, education and others while health advocacy still focusses on the individual. Get the shows from the CBC Ideas podcast page or listen here (each is about 52 minutes long):

Sick People or Sick Societies? Part 1 (MP3):

Sick People or Sick Societies? Part 2 (MP3):

To learn more about social determinants of health check out the WHO’s special section.

Trackback disabled

anarchitect — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 16:13:15 +0000

Until further notice i have disabled trackback and pingback funtionality. I just don’t have the patience of going through long lists of spam these days. Once i find the time for a general maintenance update of the blog software, trackback will return. Thanks for your understanding.

Boycott closed-access publishers?

anarchitect — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 23:35:13 +0000

Somewhat in a similar vein as the last post: danah boyd calls for a boycott of closed (i.e., not open) access journals and venues to make academia a venue for free exchange of ideas and knowledge open to anybody. She seems kind of disgusted by publishers profitting from scientists’ work while locking down their contributions in repositories that are only accessible to those who have the privilege (i.e., money or position) to do so. Instead, scholars should turn to Open Access publishers that do away with those vomitous access restrictions while still providing the peer-reviewed process.

Peter Suber points to some more options for scholars beyond comepletely boycotting closed-access publishers. One of the major one is self-archiving online – which many publishers actually allow. Putting papers on one’s own personal or research group Website is usually accepted. There are also OA repositories that facilitate the self-archiving process. Through services like CiteSeer or Google Scholar it is then possible to make these contributions available in an OA fashion without actually submitting them to an OA venue. Good thinking. Take a look or two into Peter’s short and longer primers on Open Access to learn more around OA principles and practices.

By the way, i have ranted and chanted about Open Access before.

Copyright violations causing closed content

anarchitect — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 21:10:12 +0000

D’Arcy Norman makes an interesting observation how institutions take on exceptional efforts to keep content such as class slides and video recordings shut away from the public because the slides would violate some copyrights and not necessarily to keep ideas for themselves. I support him in pointing out that avoiding copyrighted material would open up so much content. Putting Creative Commons like licensing in place would prevent those cycles of closures.

Email address suspended

anarchitect — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 22:59:47 +0000

On my old email address (word at anarchitect dot org) i get a lot of spam these days. So i thought i discontinue it, as i don’t use it that often anymore anyway. I added this auto-reply so that my contacts that don’t have my new address are directed to the right location and nasty spammers would not just parse it from the auto-reply message:

I have suspended using this Email address.
Please, go to my contact page to get in touch with me.
Thanks for your understanding!

…………………………………………………..

I habe dieses Emailadresse eingestellt. Um mit mir in
Kontakt zu tretten, benutze bitte dieses Formular.
Vielen Dank für dein Verständnis!

…………………………………………………..

Terminé usar esa e-mail. Por favor, visite esta pagina
para poner en contacto conmigo.
Gracias por tu comprensión.

Only problem is that spammers use existing sender addresses they found on the Web. Hence, my auto-responder would automatically increase spam-caused traffic and annoyances for those whose email address was hijacked. Therefor i will just discontinue the mailbox silently and hope that people that want to reach me would remember my name and search for it and would somehow come to this page.

And by the way: this is, of course, proof of my capitulation to the state of email these days. It seems as if email is broken, yet, it still works well enough considering its importance and relevance in professional and personal communication. May somebody have mercy and fix it?

The Lakota people declare independence (Update)

anarchitect — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 05:00:37 +0000

As of today, the Lakota people declare independence of the United States of America. A group of leaders of seven Native American tribes situated mainly in North and South Dakota has cancelled all treaties with the US and created their own country. It is difficult to tell (for me) how well they represent all Lakota people, how they will organize their land and how “their” former federal government will react. It would also be interesting to see how they connect to the struggles of indigenous groups in whole America (read: North, Central and South America). When they brought the message to Washington they also visited multiple Latin American embassies and they declared that they “continue on their diplomatic mission and take it overseas in the coming weeks and months”. Read up on the Lakota and their progress

Lakota Freedom Delegation (official page of the Lakota)
Lakota Indian tribe declares secession from US (Wikinews)
Lakota (Wikipedia)

PS: While i write this post i am listening to Björk’s “Declare independence” that was dedicated to Greenland and the Faroe Islands…

UPDATE: A recent Wikinews report suggests that the activist group led by Russel Means does not represent the Lakota people and acts without the consent of the elders of the Lakota. Some tribes have openly rejected the actions and other are still considering supporting the activists’ proposal.

Heroes on two wheels

anarchitect — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 03:15:21 +0000

The British Cyclists’ Touring Club (CTC) is advertising the bicycle (high res version) as the suitable means for facing climate change for the rest of us: “You don’t have to be a superhero to save the planet”. More info on the campaign website.

via Rad-Spannerei blog: Zweiradheld

I don’t know what to do with myself anymore

anarchitect — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 16:37:48 +0000

The Uruguayan band Cuarteto de Nos published this über awesome music video for their song “Ya no sé que hacer conmigo”. The video was produced by Milagrito Films mixing beautiful typography with moving halftone characters (read: the band) and infographics:

via information aesthetics: typographical music video

Oh what fun it is to bike…

anarchitect — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 19:11:53 +0000

D’Arcy Norman writes about his bicycling experience in Calgary. Interesting observation among others that i’d like to second:

The likelihood of a vehicle displaying a yellow “support our troops” sticker/ribbon seems to be directly proportional to the size of the vehicle. I haven’t seen one on a Prius.

This is also a good occasion to point out that there is a monthly Critical Mass ride in Calgary every last Friday 5:30 pm at Eau Claire Plaza. I have attended the last one and met quite a few friendly people – on bikes.

Shared space

anarchitect — Sun, 28 Oct 2007 16:41:07 +0000

Instead of over-regulating urban traffic the Dutch concept “shared space” argues for giving the responsibility back to all traffic participants. Instead of scattering traffic signs, traffic lights, and marker lines all over, the design of the public space itself is considered to have the most influence on how car drivers, bicyclists and pedestrians behave. Basic tools are roundabouts, small bumps, and street contractions using water fountains or flower tubs (Wikipedia):

Safety, congestion, economic vitality and community severance can be effectively tackled in streets and other public spaces if they are designed and managed to allow traffic to be fully integrated with other human activity, not separated from it. A major characteristic of a street designed to this philosophy is the absence of traditional road markings, signs, traffic signals and the distinction between “road” and “pavement”. User behaviour becomes influenced and controlled by natural human interactions rather than by artificial regulation.

Also check out the examples from German towns Haslach and Wolfach. Very interesting i think …

via Rad-Spannerei blog: Diskussionsveranstaltung Shared Space

Changing nature of information

anarchitect — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 16:55:20 +0000

Michael Wesch, the maker of the video about hypertext and the web, created another video. This time he explains to us the changed ways of how information is organized, accessed, and published. I love how the message of these videos are typed and re-edited…

Information R/evolution by Michael Wesch on YouTube

via Valentin and information aesthetics

Mapping Calgary

anarchitect — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 01:12:29 +0000

Now that i have velocipede and shared flat in Calgary – where i am now until spring – i started biking around with my GPS logger on. When i arrive at the university i upload the tracks to OpenStreetMap, add the missing streets and bike tracks. The latter seem to be kind of under-represented probably due to the marginal role of bicycles in Calgary’s commute. So if you have a bike and plan on getting involved with GPS consider contributing to this great open data project, too.

The beauty of dual-core

anarchitect — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 21:35:23 +0000

Swedish chansons make me cry

anarchitect — Mon, 03 Sep 2007 20:09:19 +0000

Over the last week or so i have been listening to beautiful melancholic pop coming from Sweden. Taken By Trees is especially noteworthy with its tender voice about to weep coupled with minimalistic acoustics. Check out some music videos and live recordings on YouTube and/or the Taken By Trees MySpace page where all songs can be listened to.

It’s all oh so geo

anarchitect — Sun, 22 Jul 2007 13:03:24 +0000

Since i was in Banff at the WWW2007, where i did a GPS contest (as a tester) and heard about the OpenStreetMap project and other geo-related matters, i slowly yet steadily developed a strong interest for geospatial/geographic issues. I have started subscribing to a number of relevant blogs, began listening to A Very Spatial Podcast, ordered a GPS logger, and bought an over-priced book about the geoweb. It truly fascinates me to think previously-visited realms more thoroughly in relation to the geospatial dimension, such as the semantic web, social software, conflict, and environmental issues. Expect more on all kinds of things related to geography, GPS, and mapping – in the meantime i continue to prepare myself for the oral exam on visualization.

Strandbeests by Theo Jansen

anarchitect — Sat, 07 Jul 2007 14:58:00 +0000

The Dutch kinetic artist Theo Jansen builds animal-like skeletons called strandbeests that move using wind energy. He said the wonderful sentence “The walls between art and engineering exist only in our minds” – unfortunately in a BMW-commercial. Check out his website, where you can find photos and videos of his works, and YouTube, of course, also has some videos.

via Wooster Collective: Shit We’re Diggin’: The Kinetic Sculptures Of Theo Jansen

Mashing up Coldplay with Buena Vista Social Club

anarchitect — Sat, 30 Jun 2007 08:58:16 +0000

Two days ago this strangely different version of Clocks was played in Projekt 7 at the FGSE party and i find the corresponding video quite appealing. It addresses some environmental issues and in my eyes shows that talking about climate change is not meant to spread fear but hope. The idea is to spread the will to make a difference where there has been mostly denial and ignorance. But i guess this is just my wishful interpration of the video. The song is part of the remix sampler Rhythms del Mundo.

May the tape be with you

anarchitect — Fri, 29 Jun 2007 18:28:35 +0000

Joe just mentioned the usefulness of tape reminding me of what John Miller said about duct tape to motivate us volunteers at the WWW conference taping cables on carpets:

Duct tape is like the force in Star Wars. It has a bright and a dark side and it holds the universe together.

Class division in social network sites

anarchitect — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 09:10:06 +0000

danah boyd wrote a passionate essay (blog entry) about socio-economic divisions in online communities and its relation to society. Summarized a bit bluntly: the jocks and preps use Facebook, while the punks and underdogs use MySpace. Instead of labelling those two groups “good” and “bad” boyd suggests (admittedly still problematic) “hegemonic” and “subaltern”. Especially interesting are the sections about military, shootings, and the overall state of society. A very interesting read.

via bubi in my chat window

Open Access and Open Data

anarchitect — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 20:00:33 +0000

Peter Murray-Rust who participated on the panel about Open Data at WWW2007 has just been interviewed by Paul Miller for the podcast Talking with Talis talking about publishing in academic contexts and how it evolves especially in the light of what i would like to abbreviate as the {open, linked, web of} data. Anybody involved in academia or interested in the future of knowledge should read listen up on his thoughts. Also check out the elaborate list of links in the shownotes.

Render pages in IE without IE

anarchitect — Wed, 23 May 2007 20:58:59 +0000

If you are involved in Web development in any way there is usually a point in the timeline of a project where you want to see what our dear Internet Explorer is doing with the pages that have worked just fine in your browser of choice and even for the W3C’s validators. Well, if you happen to be using a non-Windows platform chances are that you don’t have an IE at hand – let alone different versions.

NetRenderer to the rescue! The German company GEOTEK offers a service that renders Web pages on the fly in IE 5.5, 6 or 7 as PNGs. So there is almost no need for VirtualPC/Parallels/etc anymore. While you will only see the upper 740 pixels of the page in question and are not able to interact with it you can still check if positioning and basic styles work out fine. Very handy i must say. Something i have looked for for quite some time.

You can make it even more handy if you are using things like Sogudi for Safari or Firefox’s Quick Search. Typing “ie http://www.anarchitect.org” into the addressbar would then show the page at NetRenderer as rendered by IE.

Menu tabs for PmWiki

anarchitect — Mon, 21 May 2007 10:09:49 +0000

As some of you may have noticed: i like website layouts with menu tabs. On the basis of the InnoVis webpage that i have revamped and wikified lately i have published a PmWiki skin called SimpleTab allowing simple menu tabs for PmWiki while hiding its wiki look.

WWW2007 Wrap-up at iLab

anarchitect — Wed, 16 May 2007 20:23:19 +0000

Today Tim Au Yeung and i have given an overview talk at the Interactions Lab of the University of Calgary, about the things we found most interesting at the WWW2007 conference. Here are the slides (PDF).

The background photo is by Paul Miller licensed under Creative Commons BY-SA license.

Wrapping up WWW2007

anarchitect — Mon, 14 May 2007 02:29:30 +0000

The 16th International World Wide Web conference is over and i am still in the phase of sorting out and getting my mind around the ideas and concepts i learned about. It was my first academic conference and it was really cool. Mez is asking on the IW3C2 blog what kind of hot trends participants have spotted during WWW2007. While i have blogged already a bit about the conference i try to do a quick personal recapitulation of the ideas and approaches i found the most fascinating.

To me the most prevalent theme was the Semantic Web – also called the Web of Data or Linked Data these days. The idea (still) is to markup and publish data in a more structured way so that it would become better accessible to computers and thus also more easily remixable for humans. While the Semantic Web might not be counted as something new anymore, it still is quite hot. It seems to me as if Semantic Web, tagging, and conventional metadata converge allowing easier and at the same time richer ways of annotating and linking resources.

A related concept is Open Data that i understood as a logical extension of Open Access and Open Source towards the realm of data, e.g. maps, scientific data, bibliographic data, going hand in hand with open/free licensing, e.g. Creative Commons. Consider a “socialized” map service that is fed by GPS enthusiasts and mashed up with other free information repositories. Think about publicly funded institutions publishing their generated data in standardized formats so that it can be reused (read: mashupped). The Semantic Web technologies are in place and more than appropriate to relate resources with each other (RDF), formulate ontologies (OWL), and query the semantic repositories (SPARQL).

At the VIP reception on Friday night i talked shortly to Tim Berners-Lee about whether Web 2.0 communities – e.g. Flickr, Delicious, Lastfm – could be decentralized using Semantic Web technologies and how community features could be implemented in this way. He said that links and backlinks (using referrer logs and/or trackback) could allow to create a social network in a decentralized way. RDF can add meaning to the links and RDF crawlers/trackers could enable search and discovery.

The four keynotes mostly focused on the increasingly interdisciplinary nature of Web research and practice. While the Web becomes an essential part of our lives its social, economic, and political aspects need to be acknowledged, studied, and understood.

After all it was awesome to be part of such a conference. I got to meet quite a few interesting and nice people. I even met with some former colleagues from Santiago from the time i did my internship last summer down in Chile.

Several other people blogged about the WWW2007 conference, e.g. Justin Thorp, Brian Kelly, Ivan Herman, Yuan Niu, Peter Murray-Rust.

Linked Data tutorial at WWW2007

anarchitect — Fri, 11 May 2007 16:56:32 +0000

Further sketchy notes with all the spelling error goodness from WWW2007: this time from the Linked Data tutorial as part of the developer track. Check other of my posts on Open Data that are related to this.

Tim Berners-Lee (W3C): Tabulator: A Semantic Web Browser (slides)
- basics about Semantic Web (RDF, …)
- Tabulator allows getting data from different sources together
- while RDF is a graph, can be outputted as tables
- allows instant mashups, e.g. using maps, timeline
- if XSLT transformation is provided any XML dialect can be integrated
- allows easy browsing of linked data

Christian Bizer (FU Berlin): Querying Wikipedia Like a Database
- DBpedia applies concept of LD to WP
- turn structured information of WP into RDF w/ open license
- and interlink with other data sources
- structured info: categorization, info boxes, inter{wiki,language}links, …
- leading to 1.6 mio concepts represented as 93 mio triples
- includes multilingual short and long abstracts
- access as SPARQL, Linked Data Interface, RDF dumps
- enabling advanced queries
- all concepts are identified as URIs
- searching of WP gets improved
- embedding WP information on webpage is easy and uptodate
- interlinking-hub for emerging web of data
- W3C SWEO Linking Open Data Project
- the Open Data movement is getting big fast

Tom Heath (KMi, The Open University): How to Combine the Best of Web2.0 and a Semantic Web: Examples from Revyu.com
- the linked data web is here
- a Web 2.0 and SW peace and love message
- integrating different soc’ networks
- open APIs? even better exposing data using SW technologies
- Web 2.0 to the rescue to make writing RDF/SW easier
- free data from walled data gardens

Semantic multimedia panel at WWW2007

anarchitect — Thu, 10 May 2007 21:55:02 +0000

More rough notes from the WWW2007: this time i am listening to the panel on The Role of Multimedia Metadata Standards in a (Semantic) Web 3.0 moderated and organized by Raphael Troncy and Susanne Bol.

Raphael Troncy: Introduction
- jungle of metadata formats for MM: MPEG7, IPTC, XMP
- but also tagging: Youtube, Flickr, Lastfm
- and semantic web: OWL, RDF, FOAF+SKOS
- yet, there are interconnections

Lynda Hardman: Is the Message in the Media?
- we want tags with meaning
- video segments as building blocks in the process of
- images of penal speakers are very heterogeneous
- finding images should bring images in a common representation
- video segments: speakers are in different contexts
- continuity and consistency (light, sound, movement)

Sean Bechhofer (U of Manchester): Semantic Web for MM
- SW is about annotation, integration, and inference
- using existing infrastructures to have migration paths
- MPEG7 lacks inference, but does ann’ and int’

John Smith (IBM): Real problem of Bridging the MM “Semantic Gap”
- multimedia/video is big in terms of traffic and storage
- what is the problem? focus on search
- video requires metadata (as opposed to text)
- beyond content chaos, now: metadata chaos
- different approaches along the long tail:
- manual cataloging by pros for popular items
- automated tagging for deep/raw footage
- social tagging by users: personal content
- “semantic gap” has been seen as a machine learning problem
- better: leverage digital masses/crowd

Mor Naaman (Yahoo): Developers are people, too
- people are strange, don’t care about semantics
- but people tag: simple (Rashmi Sinha), powerful, motivated
- generate semantics from tags, e.g. Flickr clusters
- metadata helps, too: geocoding
- “Extracting Tag Semantics”, SIGIR2007
- req for dev app: simple, powerful, tied to motivations
- so far: (GEO-)RSS, KML, GPX, EXIF (read only)
- and Flickr machine tags: subject-predicate-object
- … simple and powerful
- problem: namespace and semantics not defined
- this is up to researchers
- welcome to the emerging semantics web

Discussion
- media object including metadata (W3C Web API WG)
- a designated microformat could do this
- SW is more than a triple in a free form field
- tags of YouTube and Flickr describe resources better
than any format / standard would have done
- most work of feature analysis focuses on sunsets
- is Flickr’s machine tag a new microformat for RDF?
- RDF might not be fashionable, but it’s “bloody simple”
- RDF enables mashing-up (see open/linked data)
- Flickr’s machine tags can be mapped to RDF (flickcurl)
- get rid of feature analyis?
- query by example seems not to be centrally popular
- “Future of the Web” by Nat Torkington

Open Data panel at WWW2007

anarchitect — Thu, 10 May 2007 16:53:50 +0000

Here are some quick notes i have taken at the panel called Building a Semantic Web in Which Our Data Can Participate moderated by Paul Miller, who is also involved with the Talking with Talis podcast:

Peter Murray-Rust (U of Cambridge): campaign for Open Data
- his links and notes
- Open Access really demands Open Data
- publisher: “Open Access equals socialized science”

Steve Coast (Open Street Map)
- GPS traces of couriers can be used to create maps
- not quite much data as Google Maps, but e.g. Bagdad
- opening up maps for participation - it is fun
- comparison: as Linux improves, Windows gets cheaper

Rob Styles (Talis): Licensing and Open Data
- licensing to secure OD and encourage use of it
- content, data, metadata (see my former post)
- Talis Community License (TCL), a GPL or CC for databases

Jamie Taylor (Metaweb): freebase
- you can’t have OD if you don’t have data
- Geoffrey A Moore: Core vs Context
- freebase data as an open repository

Discussion questions and remarks
- who pays for OD? Market or state?
- impact factor of Open Access journals lower
- but OA papers get cited more often
- OA journal in biology has highest impact factor in the field
- architecture designs are political statements
- trust of community additions, e.g. map data in Bagdad
- too positive mindset about the honesty of people?
- but also state authorities/agencies are not always trustworthy
- attribution and versioning is key for participation and trust
- questioning validity should be done with every source
- how effective would CC or OD licenses be?
- how to go from here? evangelize!
- CC copyright owners have to enforce the license

Wheatpasting stop motion

anarchitect — Wed, 09 May 2007 16:22:22 +0000

Beyond clay, people, and drawings stop motion also works in a street art setting employing wheatpasting. In fact, in a really cool way. See for your self:

via Uwe: via Wooster Collective: “Flâneur” by Gould, Berlin 2007

Selected topics at WWW2007

anarchitect — Tue, 08 May 2007 16:42:24 +0000

As i am a volunteer here at the World Wide Web conference i also get to see some presentations. The conference is just starting up and there are quite a few (read: too many) interesting talks, papers, and panels coming up. I will jot down my highlights here, as i might not make it to all of them. If you are here you can also subscribe to my partially overlapping WWW2007 schedule (ICAL). Also, if you are not here, most papers are available as PDFs.

Social and Collaborative Construction of Structured Knowledge (Workshop)
Tagging and Metadata for Social Information Organization (Workshop)
Tim Berners-Lee: The Two Magics of Web Science (Plenary talk)
Communication in Developing Regions (Paper track)
Semantic Digital Libraries (Tutorial)
The Future of the Web Page (W3C Track)
Prabhakar Raghavan: Web N.0: What sciences will it take? (Plenary talk)
Open Data - Building a Semantic Web in Which Our Data Can Participate (Panel)
Model Driven Semantic Web Engineering (Tutorial)
The Role of Multimedia Metadata Standards in a (Semantic) Web 3.0 (Panel)
Bill Buxton: Design for the World Narrow Web (Plenary talk)
Linked Data (Developer track)
Dick Hardt: An Identity Story (Plenary talk)
Web Data (Developer track)
The Two Cultures: Mashing Up Web 2.0 and the Semantic Web (Paper)

Colors helping backup your HD-DVDs

anarchitect — Mon, 07 May 2007 20:14:02 +0000

The makers of the DRM mechanism for HD-DVDs really had a sense for how colors work in combination. The hexadecimal string of numbers that is used to decrypt a copy-protected HD-DVD can be turned into a very appealing set of colors. So if you are wondering what kind of colors you want to apply to your next website project, t-shirt design, or stencil you can turn to this code.

Note also the recent revolt at Digg.com some days ago around the issue of publishing the code or not.

via information aesthetics: HD-DVD hex color themes

Open Metadata

anarchitect — Sun, 06 May 2007 14:49:04 +0000

During my flight to Calgary i listened to some episodes of Talking with Talis about open data in the realm of libraries. The general idea – how i understand it – is that data is often collected in locked-up repositories without really being able to unleash its full potential, but instead data should be made accessible employing open APIs and free licenses. Consider bibliographic entries of library catalogs that could be accessed and mashed-up in ways librarians (or readers) might not have imagined before. It could open up a world of new applications beyond the boundaries of the traditional library setting.

During the WWW2007 conference i am about to take part in as a volunteer there is a special panel devoted to open data and its potential implication for the Semantic Web. Rob Styles who will talk on that panel writes on his blog about the differentiation between the concepts of data, metadata, and content in terms of copyright law. Since most metadata would lead to the actual content, content providers are usually less interested in making money of just the metadata than of the actual content. In this sense metadata is less restricted in terms of copyright opening up interesting possibilities. Rob mentions several initiatives, e.g. Open Street Map, where metadata is made available by a community of people.

Calgary and Banff

anarchitect — Thu, 03 May 2007 21:50:22 +0000

I’m about to be on my way to Banff and Calgary to attend the World Wide Web conference and to transmit birthday wishes to the duck. On the Atomique blog you can read why i am quite happy to be able to attend this conference.

Second Life Liberation Army

anarchitect — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 09:27:00 +0000

Whether this is a culturejamming hoax or the beginning of a serious political struggle within Second Live i don’t know. It’s interesting anyways. (via)

Coda

anarchitect — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 18:44:10 +0000

I just want to note that i am really impressed by the new toy tool Panic software has just released today: Coda is an integrated web development suite without the bloat.. The only thing that drives me nuts is that my (purchased) TextMate copy already is a lean mean coding machine. While i still need separate windows/tools for FTP syncing, PHP function lookup, browser preview and maybe even a sophisticated CSS tool Coda already has it all built-in. But then again “all built-in” is relative: i would still switch between tabs or something, which i would otherwise do between distinct applications. I guess the next weeks will show which setup suits me best. Regardless of what my personal outcome will be, Coda really raises the bar.

A new type of cyclist

anarchitect — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 13:07:17 +0000

In the major Chilean newspaper La Nación Domingo Alejandro Kirk argues (machine translation) that a new type of cyclists arises choosing the bike as a principal way of getting around as a positive decision – instead of a sign of resignation before ill or too warily implemented transportation policies. A good friend of mine i got to know on a bicycle ralley in Santiago is mentioned as a model citizen of the “bicivilización” where the bicycle poses a way to improve health, autonomy, and self-esteem. The bicycle is described as an ingenious invention since you neither need to be an athlete nor a mechanic to ride it. And of course: you are much more beautiful on a bicycle.

Alternatives in Calgary

anarchitect — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 09:58:54 +0000

I am back in Magdeburg and i still want to mention some political, social, and cultural alternatives that can be found in Calgary that is situated in Alberta a rather conservative province of Canada. As i don’t find the time (read: patience in sunny spring) of dedicating proper reviews, just a quick list:

Skim your papers

anarchitect — Wed, 04 Apr 2007 01:11:28 +0000

Wow, that is just awesome. The makers of BibDesk, a wonderful open source bibliography manager, have just released Skim, an application that allows you to annotate, highlight, and evalue scientific papers that come as PDFs. The tagline of Skim is “stop printing and start skimming.” That is actually something i have looked for for a long time. Skim follows an interesting approach and takes reading papers to a new level. It has got some pretty neat features – read what one of the developers Michael O McCracken has to say about it in his blog. Also try it out if you have Mac OS X running. I can’t wait to include Skim into my reading/writing workflow. My internship thesis comes out in it really well ;)

via Brent Simmons: Announcing Skim

Le Grand Content

anarchitect — Fri, 30 Mar 2007 18:33:32 +0000

As i am in the iLab these days i am confronted with all kinds of visualization techniques and also applications. I just stumbled upon this nice vis video by Clemens Kogler covering the biggies of all questions: why, how, and what? It has been inspired by Jessica Hagy’s blog. Very cool.

So long, and thanks for all the honey

anarchitect — Mon, 19 Mar 2007 21:20:01 +0000

Will the bees leave us alone on this planet? The recent phenomenon called Colony Collapse Disorder suggests that bees are not necessarily here to stay. While the definite cause for the CCD has not been found exzessive employment of pesticides and genetically modified crops are counted as some possible causes.

Albert Einstein once said: “If honey bees become extinct, human society will follow in four years.” Apart from that sweet honey all those busy bees produce, they are essential for a lot of food we eat, as they undertake the job of pollination.

via Ente

How to know what’s happening in the city

anarchitect — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 22:48:32 +0000

I am already three weeks here in Calgary with the Ente and we have been to a concert in an alternative music pub, an independent short film festival, a ralley promoting Canada’s commitment to Kyoto, a self-organized cafe and book store … There are several ways to get to know what is happening in the city. This is a quick run down of a few approaches towards pastime fulfillment, which can be applied to any city.

Peers

At first, there are your immediate contemporaries in the contexts where you’re living and working. In our case, this constitutes the friendly iLab and Ente’s flatmates. This way you usually also have a crowd of potential people accompanying you to a place/event.

Local press/media

Then you can consult local news papers covering cultural events. Here in Calgary the most authoritative ones are FFW (standing for fast forward, be aware bad website) and BeatRoute. Furthermore there are those poster walls in special areas (e.g. Kensington and 17th Avenue) advertising concerts, theater plays, movie screenings and much more.

The interwebs

And of course you can also consult the Internet near you. There are several Web sites covering regular meetings (Meetup) and all sorts of events (Upcoming, Eventful). All these sites offer an RSS feed and an iCal link to subscribe future events either using a feed reader or a calendar application. Of course, the ideal way would be a decentralized* approach. Here comes the microformat hCalendar into play, which can than be accessed by a search engine (of your choice some day).

Got any other options, dear reader? Please add them as a comment.

* Did i mention that decentralization really rocks? Well, i think i did.