Archive for October, 2006

How Talk Digger fit in the second Web dimension: the Services-Web

Published October 29th, 2006 in Ping the Semantic Web, Talk Digger and Web. 0 Comments Print This Post Print This Post

 

    To know how Talk Digger fit into the Services-Web dimension, we have to know how user and systems can interact with Talk Digger functionalities. We have to remember that the Services-Web dimension is the Web of functionalities: how human and machines can play with the functionalities of a system?

 
Talk Digger web services

At the time I write this article, no web services are available for Talk Digger. There is only an interface users can use to play (add, modify and remove) their data in the system.

Talk Digger users doesn’t have the freedom of choice when come the time to manage the data they put in the system. They are bound to the existing user interface.

Right now, all the data created by a user is publicly available (if wanted by the user) in many ways: RDF documents supported by the use of ontologies like FOAF, SIOC etc., via RSS feeds and OPML files. However, all these things belong to the next Web: the Data-Web.

So, what about the Services-Web? When Talk Digger users will have the freedom to choose the user interface they wish to interact with the system?

Soon.

In a near future, web services will be available to developers to let them create other web services or software to interact with Talk Digger system. Such web services will let them:

 

  • Manage users profile (FOAF) hosted on Talk Digger
  • Retrieve tracking list with new in-bound links and new comments for each item
  • Add new tracks to users tracking list
  • Monitoring what a user’s friends are tracking and commenting in the system
  • Etc.

 

Then users will have the entire freedom to play with the data they create with the tools they want.

In the next article, we will see how Talk Digger will fit into the third dimension of the Web: the Data-Web.

 

Series of articles about ZitGist, Talk Digger, Ping the Semantic Web and the Semantic Web:

Article 1: Talk Digger and Ping the Semantic Web became ZitGist
Article 2: The first three dimensions of the Web: Interactive-Web, Service-Web and Data-Web
Article 3: How Talk Digger fit in the first Web dimension: the Interactive-Web

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How Talk Digger fit in the first Web dimension: the Interactive-Web

Published October 27th, 2006 in Ping the Semantic Web, Talk Digger, Web and Zitgist. 0 Comments Print This Post Print This Post

 

To know how Talk Digger fit into the Interactive-Web dimension, we have to know how users interact with the system. We have to remember that the Interactive-Web dimension is the Web of humans: document formatted for humans understanding (HTML, DOC, PDF etc.). So, how people are interacting Talk Digger? How people are using Talk Digger? How people are interpreting its information? Etc.

 


Talk Digger finds links between websites and create conversations according these relations.

So users will use this list of links to discover web pages (articles, blog posts, forum threads, etc.) that link (so that is talking) about a specific web page.

 



 

Then it lets people tracking the evolution of these conversations

Users will use this functionality to track a conversation evolving around a specific web page: so they track what are the new web pages that create link to that specific web page.

 



 

People can search for conversations tracked by Talk Digger

Users can search inside Talk Digger as they would in a normal search engine. If they search for «Windows », they will get results of web pages that talk about « Windows ».

 



 

It explicit relationship between conversations

Users have the possibility to see the relationship between web pages tracked (indexed) by Talk Digger. They will use this feature to find other web pages that are in relation with the current one. If we take a look at the image bellow, you will find that the results at the left are blogs that talk about Web 2.0 services. If you check at the right, you will see a list of Web 2.0 services. It is how Talk Digger can help users to find web pages that are in relations.

 



 

It aggregates people around Web conversations to create communities

The premise here is: people that are tracking the same conversation probably have personal interests in common. That said, Talk Digger users use this feature to find people which whom they could make in contact.

 



 

It lets people expressing their thoughts vis-à-vis a conversation

Users can express themselves and converse with other users in relation to a conversation.

 



 


It connects people

Users can explicit their relationship with other Talk Digger users, or with other people having a virtual profile on the Web. Social groups are shown and help users to get in contact with people of interest.

Talk Digger users can also create their online Web profile that could be use in Talk Digger to interact with other users or anywhere else on the Web (more information about that possibility in a future article of this series).

 



 

It lets users following the activity of their social network

Another way to discover new stuff is by following what your Talk Digger friends are tracking and what they have to say about some conversations.

 



 

It explicit relationship between people

 



 

This article explains how Talk Digger fit into the Interaction-Web dimension. It explains how users interact with the system and how they analyze the information that is presented to them. So, this is how Talk Digger fit into the Web of human.

In the next article, we will see how Talk Digger will fit into the second dimension of the Web: the Services-Web.

Series of articles about ZitGist, Talk Digger, Ping the Semantic Web and the Semantic Web:

Article 1: Talk Digger and Ping the Semantic Web became ZitGist
Article 2: The first three dimensions of the Web: Interactive-Web, Service-Web and Data-Web

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The first three dimensions of the Web: Interactive-Web, Service-Web and Data-Web

Published October 24th, 2006 in Ping the Semantic Web, Semantic Web, Talk Digger, Web and Zitgist. 0 Comments Print This Post Print This Post

My colleague Kingsley introduced the concepts of a multi-dimensional Web (compared to the multi-dimensional universe). He described the first four dimensions as:

 

Dimension 1 = Interactive Web (Visual Web of HTML based Sites aka Web 1.0)

Dimension 2 = Services Web (Presence based Web of Services; a usage pattern commonly referred to as Web 2.0)

Dimension 3 = Data Web (Presence and Open Data Access based Web of Databases aka Semantic Web layer 1)

Dimension 4 = Ontology Web (Intelligent Agent palatable Web aka Semantic Web layer 2)

…

 

So, the Web as we know it today would have three dimensions:

  1. Interactive-Web
  2. Services-Web
  3. Data-Web

 

Personally I would define them as (without talking about Web 1.0 or Web 2.0 or Web X.0):

 

The Interactive-Web dimension is the Web of humans: document formatted for humans understanding (HTML, DOC, PDF etc.).

The Services-Web dimension is the Web of functionalities: how humans and machines can play with functionalities of a system.

The Data-Web dimension is the Web of data presence: availability of open and meaningful data. How machines can play with the data of a system.

 

The Interactive-Web

The Interactive-Web is the Web of humans: a Web where all documents (HTML, PDF, DOC, etc.) are formatted at the intention of the humans with visual markers (headers, footers, bold characters, bigger fonts etc.) to help them scanning and quickly finding the right information.

But the problem with the Interactive-Web is that it is only intended to humans, so machines (software agents for example) have real difficulty to analyze and interpret this type of documents.

 

The Services-Web

The Services-Web also exists in the current landscape of the Web: a Web where protocols exist to let people and machines (web services, software, etc) playing with the functionalities of a system.

With this Web, one can manipulate the information within a system (web service) without using the primary user interface developed for this purpose. That way, the power is gave back to the users letting them manipulating (in most cases) their data using the user interface they like.

The Services-Web dimension already exists and is extensively used to publish information on the Web. Fewer web services will use the Services-Web to let people adding, modifying and deleting data (their own) in the system.

 

The Data-Web

The Data-Web dimension also exist in the current Web, but it is much more marginal than the two firsts dimensions. This dimension belongs to the idea of the Semantic Web: developing standards to let machines (software) communicating together in a meaningful way. The idea here is to publish structured data at the intention of machines (and not human) to help them communicate (and the communication is assured by the use of standards).

 

A switch from Services-Web to the Data-Web

What I think that will happen is that the Services-Web dimension will not be used to publish information from a system to another as it is today. In fact, the Services-Web will only let users trigger functionalities of a system to add, modify and delete data in the system, and the Data-Web will publish (the communication of the data will be assured by the use of standards such as the one of the Semantic Web) data in a meaningful way from a system to another system.

So the way we use the Services-Web today is not the way we will use it tomorrow.

 

Final word

Yesterday I started to write a series of articles to explain the creation of ZitGist and to explain how Talk Digger and Ping the Semantic Web will evolve in the next months and years.

This article is the foundation of my explanation. This is the basic framework I’ll use to explain how Talk Digger and Ping the Semantic Web work and how they interact together and with the Web.

In the next few articles, I’ll explain how these two systems fit in this framework.

 

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Talk Digger and Ping the Semantic Web became ZitGist

Published October 23rd, 2006 in Ping the Semantic Web, Talk Digger and Zitgist. 2 Comments Print This Post Print This Post

I said that I would write about what is happening with Talk Digger and Ping the Semantic Web in the last month, so I am now taking some time to start to write the story.

In September Kingsley Idehen, CEO of OpenLink Software Inc., contacted me to talk about my projects, the database management system developed by OpenLink (called Virtuoso) and the Semantic Web.

Our talks leaded us in a direction that I unanticipated: we started to talk about creating a company that would develop both Talk Digger and Ping the Semantic Web projects. So far these two projects were prototypes I was developing to test my ideas, to help the adoption of the semantic web and to learn.

Creating a company in partnership with OpenLink would give me the possibility to get the resources to develop these two projects in a professional way: giving me the time, the computer infrastructure and the human resources to develop, extend, refine and enhance these two services. All that for the benefit of my users: to enhance their experience with the systems.

After one month of discussion we created a company called ZitGist (pronounced: Zeitgist) that would own and develop both Talkdigger and Ping the Semantic Web. The legal entity is now created, but much work have do be done in the next weeks (releasing the website and logo, publishing the official press release, etc).

Both OpenLink Software Inc. and me are members of ZitGist. However , I didn’t closed the deal only to have financial resources to develop my projects. In fact, a big part of OpenLink’s investments in the project is their Virtuoso DBMS. This database system will replace the current one used in both projects (MySQL) and will increase their capabilities in many ways. I will write about the integration of Virtuoso in both systems later, but I can guarantee you that the decision goes in the mission I gave me more than one month ago:

This vision is drove by a personal goal: make the semantic web a reality. This is ambitious and probably arrogant: I know. “Who dares win” a SAS motto says. It is what I will do: dare.

Do I have a chance to reach my goal? I hope so, but I have no idea. The only thing I know is that it will be a reality only if everybody tries to do a little thing in that direction; there is the little things I will try do to:

  • Make Talk Digger results computer processable
  • Develop semantic web applications that will interact with the Talk Digger system
  • Write about the subject in such a way that any Internet users will understand
  • Educate people to this future reality through writings and oral presentations

This vision drove my last year and there is where I am. The implementation of Virtuoso in both Talk Digger and Ping the Semantic Web, the creation of ZitGist and my partnership with OpenLink have been took accordingly to that vision.

In the next days I’ll write more about ZitGist, the new vision of Talk Digger and Ping the Semantic Web, the deployment of Virtuoso and the new possibilities (features) it will enable.

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Design flaws with the new MacBook Pro Intel – My personal experience

Published October 21st, 2006 in Other. 35 Comments Print This Post Print This Post

 

    I received a MacBook Pro two weeks ago. Since then, I spent about 25 or 30 hours to configure, debug and repair it. The goal is to have a single production machine that have the possibility to run Mac OSX, Windows XP and Linux using Parallels, a Virtual Machine software that work under OSX (and that works pretty well!). However I had many, many troubles to get that production machine working and this blog post is the resume of what doesn’t work, for me, with that laptop computer.

Everybody says that Apple is a design company: you pay 2000 dollars for a beautiful, reliable and well-designed laptop computer. Yeah well, they are quite beautiful, but are they that well designed? Is the quality (you have to pay for quality at that price) that good? I have some doubts.

 

The flaws: what doesn’t work for me

In this blog post I will enumerate the things that goes wrong with my brand new MacBook Pro with an Intel processor.

 

Problems with the CD/DVD driver

 

The quality is questionable

What is the first thing you do when you receive a new laptop? Yeah, you install software! What if the CD/DVD driver doesn’t works? You call the AppleCare service to change it and wait 5 days.

The problem is not that my driver wasn’t working, it can happen. The problem is that the company who sent me the laptop, OpenLink (more information about them and my relation with them later this week), had the exact same problem with others MacPro they bought. So, where is the quality I am supposed to pay for? I have no idea.

 

What about small CDs?

After a couple of days, I bought an external hard drive to use as a backup drive. Then I checked to install some software that was coming with it. I was looking at the small size CD, wondering how I could put it in my laptop’s CD drive? I couldn’t without loosing it and calling the AppleCare service again.

 


(view of the CD/DVD drive)

 

The CD/DVD driver on the MacBook (same for the iBook) is really beautiful. But I think that it is a design flaw considering that you can’t put these little flashy CDs. What can I do? Nothing since the drivers where not accessible from the Internet, so I send back the hard drive to the shopping store.

 

What about the USB ports?

 

It only has 2 USB ports

There are only 2 USB ports on the MacPro. My goal was to use the laptop as my main computer. So I have to plug a mouse, a keyboard, a printer, an external hard drive and possibly my digital camera cable to it. How the hell should I do that? With a USB hub. It works fine now, but I had to use a plug-in.

 

The position of the ports

I am right handed and I always use mouse with my laptops. The biggest design flaw is that they put one of the two USB port exactly where I should put my mouse. Normally it should be at the top of the laptop, near the screen, but this one is right at the middle of the laptop, exactly where it shouldn’t.

 



(Right USB port)

 

Where the problems came from?

I think the problem came from their screen since they can’t put any ports at the back of the laptop so this is why they put them on the sides.

 



(front view of the screen)

 



(back view of the screen)

 

The Intel Processor

“Is the bug coming from the new Intel Processor or it is something else?” This is a frequent question you ask yourself when you buy a Mac Intel. There is no way to know. I spent most of my time trying to figure out what was the problem with the software I was installing on my laptop. Are the bugs were because the software wasn’t compatible with the new Intel processor or it was something else? It depends on the software.

For example, I bought a Microsoft Natural Keyboard because it was working on both Windows and OSX and because I like its feeling. I installed the configuration software on OSX, I restarted OSX, and a message was displayed: not working with this type of instance. So, it wasn’t working for the Intel processor.

I spent a couple of hours to find the new drivers for the keyboard.

This is an example of the current problem (since it will be fixed over time): each time you buy something for the Mac Intel, you have to check if it has been only tested on the PowePC Mac, or the Intel too.

This is really frustrating since you never know.

Would you like to make a fried egg on your laptop? It is now possible!

What I like is checking the news on my couch and reading my Bloglines with my laptop on my knees. This is really hard to do with the MacBook Pro since it become really, really hot. I have a small 12” iBook, and it doesn’t have this problem.

It seems that you can change some settings you fix the problem, so I’ll have to try it.

 

The famous magnetic power cable plug

It was supposed to be a great feature, but in the end, it is a big flaw for me. It is great if you are in an Internet coffee and that someone kick your wire with his legs but for the same reason the one about the heat problem: I spend a great time with my laptop on my knees. The problem here is that the little magnetic plug always unplug: on my couch, in the bus from Quebec to Montreal, etc, etc.

The idea is great, but it is too easy to unplug it, so it makes it more frustrating than useful.

 



 

Try to open your laptop

One last design flaw I can note: the open button is quite too small and seems cheap (doesn’t always work smoothly). I am 6’5” and I have big hands. So when I try to open my laptop, I have to take the time to push the open button well enough to open the laptop. It can seem stupid, but what it would cost to make it s little bit bigger?

 



(front button to open the laptop)

 

Conclusion

Don’t miss understand me here: I didn’t wrote this little blog post to kick Apple with their new laptop model; but only to explain what was not working for me with it and to make people aware of the possible problems they can encounter.

Once I spent 25 hours to install, debug and repair (CD/DVD driver) my workstation, it becomes a real good productivity laptop with a full of advantages (the workflow between OSX and Windows XP via Parallels is really great and work quite fine).

Now I can say that I like my new workstation, but I had to tame it and it frustrated me to have to spend that much time to make it works well enough to work with.

 

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Talk Digger and Internet Explorer 7.0

Published October 20th, 2006 in Talk Digger. 0 Comments Print This Post Print This Post

Yesterday I installed the new version of Internet Explorer (7.0) and started to test it. I found some user interface bugs in Talk Digger. They were probably caused by all the changes they have made in the way they manipulate DOM documents, JavaScripts, etc.

It is always the same thing when a new version of a browser is released: you have to check if everything always work fine on your Web site, if it is not, you have to fix it and in the worse case, developing custom code that will handle this special case for this specific web browser.

If you find any other problems, errors or glitches, please send a bug report via the Bug Report page.

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First impressions with Internet Explorer 7.0 and FireFox 2.0

Published October 19th, 2006 in Web. 3 Comments Print This Post Print This Post

I just downloaded and Installed Internet Explorer 7.0 along with FireFox 2.0

First impression: Wow!

I didn’t have the time to have a deep look at them but I am really impressed. I am not impressed by their new interface (even if I find IE’s new interface quite nice), their new features (like embedded RSS reader, etc.) Nah, I am impressed by what make a Web browser a good one: rendering speed and standards complying.

My primary Web browser is Opera. Why? Speed, standards complying, multi-platforms, best tabs handling, the faster DOM manipulation, etc.

The first thing that stroke me when I both used IE and FireFox was their increase in speed. Web sites that were extensively modifying DOM document, on-the-fly, were much more faster (the speed difference between IE 6 and IE 7 with Talk Digger is awesome).

Users have a much better experience using these browsers now. Not for their new goodies or their new user interface features. Users have a much better experience using these browsers because they are much faster, they are much smoother so they are much natural.

Kevin Berton wrote about this dilemma sooner this week: more features or better performance (so better features)? In that case, better performance, so better features was the answer to the question (in my humble opinion).

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Ping the Semantic Web now support N3/Tutle serialization

Published October 16th, 2006 in Ping the Semantic Web, Semantic Web and Web. 2 Comments Print This Post Print This Post

 

    I am pleased to announce that I finally put online a new version of the crawler (1.2) that crawls RDF documents for Ping the Semantic Web. Now the web service is able to detect and index RDF files serialized in N3/Turtle. It means that much more RDF documents will be visible via Ping the Semantic Web since many RDF documents are serialized using N3 (and I think that more and more RDF documents will be serialized that way in the future).

Also, I entirely re-wrote the crawler. It is now (supposed to be) much more tolerant to the different way people could write their RDF documents. It is also much faster.

I also changed the exporting file format for the version 1.2. I changed the “topic” attribute for a “serialization” attribute. Why did I removed the topic attribute? Because it will be replaced by something else in the next month or so. The new “serialization” attribute can have one of these two values: “xml” or “n3”. It explicit the serialization format the crawler should expect by crawling this document.

In the mean time, if you find any documents that are not processed well by Ping the Semantic Web please leave a message in my mail box with the URL to that document so that I’ll be able to debug what is wrong.

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I’ll give a talk at the Webcom Montreal Conference tomorrow: the Web of tomorrow: the Semantic Web

Published October 10th, 2006 in Other, Semantic Web and Web. 2 Comments Print This Post Print This Post

 

    Tomorrow I’ll answer to the question: “What is the Internet of tomorrow for you?” with 3 other people at the Webcom Montreal Conference.

Guest what is my vision of the Internet of tomorrow? Yeah, you are right, it is the semantic web. Bellow is the layout of my talk where I try to answer to the question in the simplest way, with terms that even my mom could understand. The more technical terms used will be: semantic web, web services, data and search engine. The hardest challenge is to express the vision of the semantic web I have with the simplest terms. In fact, all the “simple” terms I enumerated above have a deep implication and have complexes meaning. However, I hope that I’ll be able to communicate my vision well to all the non technical people that will listen at me tomorrow.

 

Today’s Internet is the one of the men:

  • The structure of the current Web: Tables, paragraphs, headers and footers, citations, bold characters, etc.
  • All these structures exist to help people to understand the meaning of a document.

 

Tomorrow’s Internet is the one of the machine:

  • The structure of tomorrow’s Web: Same documents and same data. A structure that explicit the context and the semantic, the link between the data. Usage of a grammar and a vocabulary to express and communicate the data.

 

How the documents of the semantic web will be used?

  • By web services
  • By applications like:
    • Electronic agend,
    • Calendar
    • Knowledge management systems
    • Etc.
  • By search engines
  • By any application that use Web data

 

What are the advantages of the semantic web?

  • Save time processing data (search time, information management, etc)
  • More pertinent search engine results
  • Better communication between web services
  • Targeted publicity depending on the context
  • Easier and faster web service developments (thanks to standards). The result is the development of more complex systems

 

What are the inconvenient of the semantic web?

  • More work for the software programmer to generate and publish its data for the semantic web.
  • The effects on privacy are unknown

 

What are the advantage of the semantic web vis-à-vis other already existing solutions?

  • The creation of standards assuring the good communication of information between applications that use the data.

 

Is the semantic web already existing?

  • Presentation of the SIOC ontology and its prototype applications.
  • Presentation of Piggy Bank.

 

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Ping the Semantic Web.com service now support RDFs and OWL documents

Published October 6th, 2006 in Ping the Semantic Web, Semantic Web and Web. 0 Comments Print This Post Print This Post

 

    I didn’t have the time to work on PingtheSemanticWeb.com web service in the last few weeks, so I took a couple of days to fix some issues with the detection of RDF/XML documents (some use cases were not handled well by the detection module).

I also make PTSW recognize and archive RDFs and OWL documents as well. That way, people will be able to track the evolution of ontologies.

What is next? By the end of the next week, PingtheSemanticWeb should not only detect RDF/XML documents, but also N3 and N3/Turtle documents.

I’ll also have to update the export module to let people getting these new RDFs, OWL and N3 documents.

So, if you have any ideas on how to upgrade/enhance this web service, or if you find any bugs (by example if the system doesn’t recognize your RDF documents, etc), please contact me by email.

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This blog is a regularly updated collection of my thoughts, tips, tricks and ideas about my semantic Web researches.


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