March 2012
3 posts
2 tags
TextMate
Final post of the evening, and I may have to disconnect my tumblog from Facebook to stop annoying people with my explorations of P2PU and Web Making 101.
I have chosen TextMate as my editor of choice on the basis of using it daily to take notes (usually in markdown), compose blog posts, or badly destroy Python scripts. I like the simple interface and the tab-correct, and find the automatic...
4 tags
Writing HTML by Hand
As part of the Webcraft 101 set of tasks, I’ve written my first HTML file by hand. I should clarify, that this is the first bit of html I’ve ever written into a notebook (proof below), not the first bit of HTML I’ve ever written.
It’s an interesting task, as it made me think about what I was putting onto the paper, and also took ages because I’m not used to...
Webcraft 101
I’ve landed myself in it now, haven’t I? After spending 5 years on and in the web, I realise I’ve missed out on many of the building blocks of the web itself, and believe it might be time to go back to school.
I am also keen to explore the world of the Peer to Peer University project (P2PU), and have signed up to the Mozilla-backed School of Webcraft. This introductory post is...
December 2011
1 post
8 tags
Why not utilise use?
I know pedantry is unbecoming, but i would like to discuss a phrase or two and try to explain why I think they are usually bad choices.
utilise
leverage (verb)
action (verb)
I am not alone in finding these words annoying, and they seem to live with many others in the company of corporate jargon. They create a strong impression, and bring to mind ideas of competitive pretension, and impersonal...
October 2011
1 post
5 tags
First published script and repository →
I’ve been up very late, and have been fighting off a bug all week, so I thought it best to stay up and try out some coding. I have very little background in the grit of code-writing, and I’ve been finding it very interesting, and a bit addictive. It’s also been helpful to think more like my technical colleagues, though I’m beginning to feel the geekiness creeping up :)
...
August 2011
1 post
6 tags
Push that trolley past me
Buying relatively healthy food is difficult.
We’ve built up a framework to sell “what people want” as cheaply and quickly as possible, and in the process, began processing every ingredient until it seems to match nearly any recipe. Instantly-edible (if barely nutritious) food is abundant, surrounding an option which would more likely be good for us to eat. It’s cheaper to...
July 2011
3 posts
Society vs I
Reading this post is making me think quite a bit about cultural/social influence. I’m starting to think that individuals need the sense of responsibility, and an understanding of what works (i.e. via training and education), but there’s a strong social factor which needs challenging too.
I guess we’re not the sum of our parts as a big group, because the group dynamics influence...
The future of news: Back to the coffee house | The... →
(via Instapaper)
4 tags
a culture of things that make me like Berlin
shops
So many independent, and no feeling of corporate death-hold on expression
Plenty of variety, and far less pointless plate-glass repetition
Friendly people, both buying and selling in the shops
quiet curtesy
People give way on pavements
Cars give way and watch out for the crowds of cyclists
People speak in soft tones: it doesn’t feel repressed, just not boisterous
Simple...
June 2011
2 posts
5 tags
Swapping gaming for training
I’m excited about the trade I just made by selling the PS3 and ordering a cycle trainer. I’m not mended enough to get out on the roads yet (right-arm still meant to be alung and I’m prone to dizziness and fatigue), but cycling in the living room while listening to audiobooks sounds like a rather excellent way to move about a bit.
It’s one of these things:...
Kasabi has moved to Public Beta! W00t! →
Kasabi is the project I work on as Community Manager. At the start of June, we’ve moved from the weeks of private beta testing, to a public Beta project. So, have a poke round, find out what it does, and drop me a line if you have ideas or need help.
May 2011
1 post
4 tags
My fumsi article introducing Linked Data →
March 2011
1 post
Testing Audioboo for recording impromptu djembe...
Listen!
February 2011
2 posts
Where is the best place to walk dogs in...
Where is the best place to walk dogs in Northamptonshire? Write an answer on Quora Where is the best place to walk dogs in Northamptonshire?
How can I find out about developer networks, based...
How can I find out about developer networks, based around particular topics? Write an answer on Quora Developers build many different kinds of application, service, site and tool and they are often focused on particular topic areas or technologies. Are there good ways to get in touch with them? Edit How can I find out about developer networks, based around particular topics?
December 2010
1 post
3 tags
Open Data Musing
http://m.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2010/dec/03/national-rail-enquiries-data-charging-developer-protests?cat=technology&type=article
So the line between public and private—or should that be “owned”—data is not straightforward. In a complicated democracy, the responsibility and ownership of information is likewise complicated.
It is vital continuously to test the...
October 2010
1 post
4 tags
How is America perceived?
This is a very rough and un-formed note I sent on Facebook to an American friend who asked how America is viewed from a foreign perspective:
I think that’s an extremely complex question to answer, and it’s also far from straightforward. I only really understand the perception from the UK, and even that isn’t simple.
Previous foreign affairs have been viewed with extreme...
September 2010
1 post
3 tags
Resonance
For the past seven or eight years, I’ve not listened to much music; and I have no idea why. Music is so much a part of the way I exist—it’s a way to express and experience raw, abstract thought; passion; and sublime, simple joy. And it’s been sparse for years.
I’m not sure what happened, exactly, but it’s as if I subconsciously put the part of me that resonates on...
August 2010
3 posts
3 tags
Science Silos
NB: This Tumblog is for rough thoughts. It’s not polished, and is incomplete. For slightly more polished thoughts, see my blog.
I think I’m beginning to have a problem with science. It’s not because I disbelieve anything particularly, or have a difficult time understanding the scientific method. I don’t equate published papers in academic and scientific journals with the...
3 tags
ebooks notes
Ebooks are doing rather well, with Amazon announcing them outselling their print counterparts in bestsellers lists. I’ve enjoyed using the Kindle app for various reasons including:
Instant purchase/download (even Amazon Prime can take too long!)
One device, not many books
Reading in the dark (on the iPad, any way)
Searching and smart(ish) bookmarking
Now I’d love to see various...
Loss of Service
My broadband supplier is cancelling my service due to a breech of the “fair and acceptable usage policy.” Specifically: for using too much broadband.
I have unlimited broadband access. There is no limit to the amount of data I download, or so I thought. Looking at their “fair and acceptable usage policy,” it seems that the limit is arbitrary. There is no published amount,...
July 2010
1 post
A comment left on GigaOm about Facebook and the...
I read a post on GigaOm about the Social Graph being broken into many graphs…and that Facebook wants to control all of them. This seems somewhat unsatisfactory to me, so I left the following brief comment outlining my thoughts. I’ll need to explore this further…
#
I’m not sure I completely see the splintering of the social graph as a useful concept. All the subgraphs...
June 2010
18 posts
4 tags
Biomedical ontologies 3
New presenter: Mark something…
National Centre for Biomedical Ontology NCBO
libraries of biomed onts and terminologies… Yeah, I’m going to have RSI keeping up with this one… He’s fast.
BioPortal
dissemination of terms
Integration of online content
Collaboration.
Everything in bioportal is REST accessible.
Around 200 ontologies
Links to ontologies via a...
Biomedical ontologies 2
So, there are quite a few semantic taskforces working on biomed data. They’re mapping existing knowledge to machine-readable versions. Also, turning traditional medical knowledge resources into usable ontologies, like SNOMED in SKOS.
A lot of the main applications are in joining up existing knowledge, combining multiple sources, and providing efficient knowledge retrieval.
One area being...
“You can create powerful knowledge resources from ontologies with OWL 2.”
– M. Scott Marshall at SemTech 2010
5 tags
Biomedical ontologies 1
M.Scott Marshall
Motivation: science is based on knowledge.
Semantic web allows for reasoning across medical knowledge.
Where is this knowledge?
all over the place, mostly non-machine readable. It’s in people’s heads, and on pages, and in paper pages etc.
He’s going through the slides faster than I can type on this silly iPad screen…
Examples:
search, index...
5 tags
Profitable Linked Data
@jaymyers’ talk from Best Buy
Product attributes are valuable data, and it’s the secret behind the passion of Linked Data that Jay is presenting on.
The goal (personal) is to “provide more visibility to products, services, and locations to humans and to machines.”
The good news, for retailors, is that the tools are already available!
RDF(a), Microformats,...
6 tags
Linked Data in Publishing 2
Case Study for Semantics in Online Publishing
Luca Scagliarini
“Is the Great American Newspaper dead?”
The existing business model is facing huge decline. Online advertising has now surpassed newspapers (I’m surprised this hadn’t happened a long time ago?)
But online versions of newspapers report an increase in readership. NYTimes tops the list of online newspapers...
6 tags
Linked Data in Publishing
Semantics becomes a buzzword, especially marketted and sold to publishers.
Using semantics to find, compile and curate pieces of information. The metadata needs to handle many different levels of granularity. So, if I wanted to compile a cookbook of Italian deserts, I’d need information on:
what’s a desert?
which are Italian?
is Sicilian also Italian?
are there images?
...
6 tags
Business Models for Linked Data 2
Ian Davis is talking about Recombination as a business model for Linked Data.
Taking existing data sources, and making a new view on them.
The example being something like film certification. So, I want to take my kids to see a film and they like a particular actor. I want to be able to find what’s on, with a PG rating (in the UK or the US, so some form of equivalency too), with that...
5 tags
3 tags
Business Models for Linked Data
Scott Brinkler is discussing 15 business models for publishers of Linked Data… all on one slide.
Looks like a bit of a layer-cake of business models.
Subsidised/PUblic Service (unpaid)
Licensing
Microtransactions
Subscriptions
Freemium
Paid inclusion
Sponsorships
Advertising
Marketplace
Affiliate Program
Affiliate Participation
Value-Add / Loss Leader
Traffic...
4 tags
Ontology 1
Features of Knowledge Representation languages:
Vocabulary
logical symbols
constants
variables
punctuation
Syntax (formation rules)
Semantics (a theory of reference, or a “theory of truth”)
Rules of inference
And she’s used the word “nonmonotonic.” Our CSO at Talis would approve.
“An ontology is a specification of a conceptualization.”
– Tom Gruber
6 tags
Ontology
This is the ontology 101 tutorial, I’m not sure I’ll have a huge amount to report here. It’ll be about building ontologies in OWL and possibly using a reasoner on the top.
If anyone has anything interesting they think I should include here, please ping me. You can use the form here somewhere (I’ve just started using Tumbler, sorry) or tweet me at @zbeauvais.
5 tags
Linked Enterprise Data Notes 3
There are many, many uses of Linked Data in the “Enterprise”. We’ve seen an hour or so of various case studies, with in-depth review of how they’re doing what they do, including which vocabularies are being used and some of the good/bad things done.
But the whole thing comes down to giving things URI’s and linking them out too.
Stop thinking in terms of databases,...
5 tags
Linked Enterprise Data Notes 2
OK, so much of the discussion around Linking Enterprise data is around the area of broad principles (link your data, publish your data, use RDF), and around the why. But what I think are missing are tools and frameworks. How much more cool would it be if these principles were interwoven within a huge CMS (Cough, cough… Drupal!). Many of the tools of the web: all the lessons we’ve learned, are...
4 tags
Linked Enterprise Data Notes 1
Main messages at Linked Enterprise Data seems to be to follow the general practices of Linked Data.
Follow the 4 principles of Linked Data
Link widely, your data must become part of the web of data
Use human-friendly formats where possible (even in the data, try Turtle or another human-readable format)
Expose data for search and reuse.
Reuse, don’t reinvent (i.e. Make use of existing...
4 tags
Linked Enterprise Data Notes
David Wood (Zepheria) talks about Linked Open and Linked Enterprise data use cases differing, but I’m not sure this is a great distinction to make. Some data is private, some open, but some enterprise data could be open. No one has ever said that all data should be public, certainly not the LOD community. I think more enterprises could learn more than just the “how to” from the...
4 tags
SemTech Notes
So, I’m in the Semantic Technology Conference in San Francisco. I thought I’d try out Tumblr again as a simple means of quick-blogging my thoughts as the days go by. This is my raw thought—my rough draft, so I don’t necessarily want it on my blog.