Blogs and bloggers are influencing Canadian traditional Medias

Frederick Giasson

Since some months, I ear mainstream media in Quebec and Canada talking about blogs (especially since the Gomery Commission). It was the first sign of the influence of blogs on Canadian traditional Medias; how they could possibly change the way Canadians get information, how Canadian laws are applied (always think about the Gomery Commission and American blogs), etc.

Today I just take a look at a new political program on RDI (the national news broadcast channel in French (CBC in English)) called “Les coulisses du pouvoir” (Power’s backstage). Then I saw a screen appearing with the topic of the next chronicle: “Les Bloggueurs” (The Bloggers). Then Bruno Guglielminetti started to talk about what Canadians and Quebecois bloggers had to say related to the last week’s main political events.

Now, how can we say that Bloggers do not have an influence on main stream Media when the national news channel of Canada retrieve and analyze information that came from local bloggers?

Technorati: | | | | | |

Semantic-Web-Of-Trust

Frederick Giasson

The current problem of the Web

The current problem of the Web is that most (virtually all) documents it holds are formatted for humans. By example, HTML is a markup language that is used to present information to humans, to make documents easily understandable by them.

You wonder why I say that it is the current problem of the web? The problem resides in the fact that these human-oriented documents are not easily processable by computers. The information is not formatted for them. They can’t easily understand what a document is about, his subject, his meaning, his semantic, etc.

A possible solution to that problem

A solution we could use to try to solve this problem is annotating these human-processable documents with computer-processable metadata. This is the exact purpose of new sort of file formats like RDF or OWL. The primary and only purpose of these new file formats is to make digital documents (file, photo, video, anything that is digital) computer-processable.

Such document would describe the meaning and the semantic of a digital document that could be easily understood by computers. That way, software agents could easily read these documents, understand them and even infer new facts and knowledge from them. This is the idea behind the Semantic Web.

The possible problems with such annotated metadata

Remember the first time of the Web when people were using metadata in their HTML header files? Remember the time when search bots were using this information to return relevant data to users? Remember the time when search bots stop using them because people were only using them to tricks the search bots to bring people to their web pages even if their search queries where really not relevant with the content of the returned web page results? It is exactly why people lose faith in metadata. And it is exactly why I have doubts in social tagging (but this is another story).

The problem with the early principles of annotating metadata to documents is that people were able to annotate their web documents with any metadata information, related or not with the content of these documents. At the end, web publishers were not annotating their documents with relevant information in relation with their content, but only with information that would bring traffic to their web sites.

You are probably thinking something like this: “Fred, you said that the semantic web formats: RDF, OWL, or any other, are simply sort of metadata files that could be annotated to current web documents to describe them, their meaning and semantic. So, don’t you think that the result would be the same as the HTML headers’ metadata? That people would try to tricks the semantic web search engines, crawlers and software agents?”

The solution: Semantic-Web-Of-Trust

Bellow is a short description of the Web of Trust saw by Tim Berners-Lee, the father of the Web and the Semantic Web, wrote in 1997.

“In cases in which a high level of trust is needed for metadata, digitally signed metadata will allow the Web to include a “Web of trust”. The Web of trust will be a set of documents on the Web that are digitally signed with certain keys and contain statements about those keys and bout other documents. Like the Web itself, the Web of trust will not need to have a specific structure, such as a tree or a matrix. Statements of trust can be added in such a way as to reflect actual trust exactly. People learn to trust through experience and though recommendation. We change our minds about who we trust and for what purposes. The Web of trust must allow us to express this.”

At that time, Mr. Berners-Lee saw digital signatures as a way to ensure who the author of a metadata annotation is to add trust in that metadata. Some people could also think about PGP’s [PKI] Web of trust system.

Other people, like Shelley Powers, thought about annotating RDF content to links (by example, annotating descriptive information about a link to a local hardware store), and using reification principles to infer trust in the relation: I trust him, you trust me, so you trust him.

Many studies are done to try to find what is the best way to add trust to the Web and in a near future, the Semantic Web. Some techniques, like PGP’s are tested and effective. However, could they be applied for the Semantic Web? What is the best system we can use for the Semantic Web? Is the system already created? Is it to be created?

One thing is sure is that such a system will have to be present in the Semantic Web if we want it to succeed.

tags technorati :

Thinkers, doers, taking risks and creating your future

Frederick Giasson

Once opun a time, a young boy sent a letter to Peter F. Drucker to ask him a simple question:

“Mr. Drucker, how can I create something that will change the world?”

The answer of Mr. Drucker was as simple:

“Young boy: by thinking about something that would help people; and by doing it.”

There are thinkers, and there are doers. Thinking is great, many people have great ideas to change the, or their, world; but what these ideas worth if nobody is doing them?

If you have an idea to change the World, or an idea to change your world, the only person that can make it happen is yourself. You have to do it to make it happen: this is the only way. People can help you, sure, but the only person that can archive it is the idea’s originator, the person that has it and believes in it.

Doing something also bring risks. All actions have his lot of risks. Any action you undertake can lead to a success or a failure. The risks that you take are that the actions undertook failed.

Personally I see failure as an essential part of learning. I fail therefore I learn. It is probably why I take risks and that I can live with my failures: because I know that I learned from taking these risks, doing these actions, and failing in some way.

However, is because you do not take risks that you do not fail?

“People who don’t take risks generally make about two big mistakes a year. People who do take risks generally make about two big mistakes a year.
– Peter F. Drucker

Taking risks, doing actions, succeeding or failing, will inevitably change your future. However, what this future will be? What it could be? Will it be better or worse than your current situation? Will you be happier or not?

“The only thing we know about the future is that it will be different.”
– Peter F. Drucker

Personally I believe in something: if I take risks, if I make decisions, if I do actions, and if I succeed or I fail, I do it for one thing: to try to predict the future to make me liking my life.

“The best way to predict the future is to create it.”
– Peter F. Drucker

“When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: “If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right.” It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” And whenever the answer has been “No” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.”
– Steve Jobs

Finally, you have to do it for yourself; you have to get rid of the social pressure that could urge you to do what everybody else does. Live your own life, not the one of your society, your neighborhood, your friends, your family or parents wants you to have.

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary. ”
– Steve Jobs

Technorati: | | | | | | |

History and Future of Talk Digger

Frederick Giasson

Talk Digger is now 3 months old and many things changed since I had the idea to create the service and today.

I developed Talk Digger because I wanted to interrogate many search engines at once to know who was linking back to my blog. I wanted to create that application to save time and being able to quickly know who was talking about my writings and being able to contact them as soon as possible.

Then I choose to put the service publicly available to anyone, like me, that could benefit by using it. The answer has been instant: thousands of people used it less then a week after it have been publicly available. Some people even talked about a buzz.

This inflow of new users, with their comments, suggestions and questions, helped me to find new ways to use and implement Talk Digger. Then the concept of Talk Digger as a tool that help people to search for a conversation that is evolving around a specific URL is born. New ways to use Talk Digger have been developed such the bookmarklet, the creation of RSS web feeds populated with Talk Digger search results, and finally the creation of a link that a blogger or a webmaster can put on his web page to redirect their users to Talk Digger with a specific URL they predefined. Some usability features have also been developed during that time.

All these things have been developed, implemented and debugged during the first online month of Talk Digger. However, what happened during the last two months? Some people probably noticed that nothing really changed since two months, and they are right: nothing really changed; I only fixed bugs.

So, what is happening? Is Talk Digger service development stopped? On ice? Or even dead?

Definitely not!

Right, the development of Talk Digger in the last two months have been marginal, however it growth exponentially. In the last two months a worked with a client to implement Talk Digger in one of their product that permit them to use all the power of Talk Digger into their software. I will talk about it further when the new version of that software will be available, in the next week or two. This contract took most of my time in the last two months.

Then, why the development of Talk Digger growth exponentially? Because since the beginning of Talk Digger I am thinking about how I could develop the basic idea behind Talk Digger: “a social tool that helps people to find and follow conversations that evolve around a specific URL” even further. Since then, many ideas poped-up in my mind, most of them have been investigated, and some of them are on the way to be developed and implemented in Talk Digger.

The future of Talk Digger, for the next months, is simple: making the basic idea evolving in such a way that Talk Digger will be a social tool of choice to find, follow and analyze conversations evolving on the Internet.

People are talking about Web 2.0; personally I am talking about the Semantic Web. I am talking about a way to see and broadcast information in such a way that any application or software agent would easily be able to analyze and use that information. I already talk about the fact that I was orienting my professional career in that way. This said, the only way to go in that direction is by trying to implement the principles into a real application that anybody could use, knowing or not what the terms semantic web, blogs, information overload, or any other technical terms, mean.

Great, but what is the next step? The next step is to upgrade the basic framework of Talk Digger. The idea I have behind the next generation of Talk Digger only want one thing: information. So the next step is to gather even more information. There are the two next things I will develop in the next couple of weeks to make it happens:

  • Returning the last 10 results of each search engines instead of the last 3.
  • Supporting even more search engines.

I hope I answered to some questions you could have with that little article on the history and future of Talk Digger. A thing is sure: Talk Digger evolved in the last two months and many things are coming for the next months.

However, this service would not be what he is right now without you, Talk Digger users, and your feedbacks, questions and suggestions. This is probably the think I like the most: discussing of Talk Digger with people that use it, and to see how they use it or how they would like to use it. So do not hesitate to contact me if you would like to talk about it or to talk about anything else, it is always a pleasure to received, read and answer your emails!

tags technorati :

Go big, vision, and actions: Change the World

Frederick Giasson

If everything goes fine, everybody have between 60 to 100 years to spend on this planet. What people will do with that time will depends on their personality, their goals, their environment, etc. A fact persist, we will all do something with it (even if you sit on a chair during 100 years you are doing something: sitting).

From school to business startup, from the poorer to the richer neighborhood, everybody can have the same attitude: Go Big, Have a Vision, Take Actions, and try to Change your world or even The World.

Why thinking small when we can think big? I mean, this is just thinking, everybody can think, this is a question of mind-shift and focus. If we have the biggest vision and the biggest goal to drive our life, we will also try to do the actions to reach these goals. Our vision will drive our actions to reach our goals.

It is sure that it is not easy to live like that, but why don’t we try? Why everybody is not trying? It is sure that a really, really small percentage of people will reach their Big Goal, but I think that everybody that try the experience will earn something by doing it.

Chris Sacca had done a good speech at the Startup School, some weeks ago, at Harvard. He discussed of Google, how the company works, what is the life at Google, etc. However, a good part of his speech focused on how Larry Page and Sergey Brin started Google (from a couple of borrowed computers at Stanford to a multi-billionaire business).

They had a Vision: Go Big!
They had a Goal: Organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.
They Take Actions: spend many sleepless night to create the first prototype of Google in a dusty sleeping room.

They think Big:

[World’s best engineer]–[Biggest infrastructure]–[Big problems to solve]

These guys where probably saw as geeks, hackers, and psychologically unbalanced by their entourage (it’s a guest, I have no idea if it is true). They thought big, they tried to solve the biggest problem that afflict the information world they tried to do something, and they success.

Finally, why don’t we try that tactic too?

tags technorati :