Jon Phipps' NSDL Weblog

ZZ/OSS Information Networking, Content Management, Knowledge Management, CMS, KMS, eLearning, Intranet, Extranet, P2P, Peer-to-Peer, Content Network System, CNS, Distributed Environments, Digital Libraries

Sun, 22 Jun 2003 12:36:59 GMT

"The Java Specification Request 170 [1], which defines a uniform application programming interface (API) for access to content repositories, might be a way to go for Open Source Content Management interoperability [2]? Some analysts say that "June 2003 will see a reshuffling in the content management industry with final adoption of the Java Specification Request 170 (JSR 170) standard" because it addresses the main problem of CMS..."

History of RSS date formats [dive into mark]

Sat, 21 Jun 2003 09:06:52 GMT

Mark Pilgrim dives into the RSS date flap...

"It’s FUD. It’s crap. Cut it out.

To recap: in 1982, RFC 822 defined a date format. In 1997, Dave Winer respected prior art by using that date format for the date elements in his syndication format. He could have chosen a different date format, but he didn't, and his choice made good sense at the time. In 1999, Netscape respected prior art by taking elements from Dave's scriptingNews format and not changing the date format. In 2000, Dave Winer continued the RSS 0.9x line and respected his own and Netscape's prior art by not changing the date format. In 2002, Dave Winer respected this entire line of prior art by adding item-level pubDate, with the same date format.

Now, none of this is to suggest that namespaces are bad. That's just ridiculous. Namespaces were the biggest new feature in RSS 2.0; they are the very reason RSS 2.0 is called 2.0 and not 0.94. Yes, using pubDate also respects prior art. But using Dublin Core also respects prior art, just a different lineage of prior art. Using either in RSS 2.0 is absolutely legitimate, and every news aggregator I know of, that cares about dates, supports both.

Furthermore, Dublin Core and ISO 8601 have won in the larger worldwide marketplace. Outside of the Internet, virtually no one uses the RFC (2)822 date format. If I were creating a brand new format today, any kind of format, for any reason, I would absolutely use the ISO 8601 date format. If I were creating an RDF-based format, or an XML-based format for namespace-aware consumers, I would absolutely use Dublin Core, straight up. It's here, it works, it's its own ISO standard. But RSS's pubDate wasn't invented today; it was invented in 1997. It still works, and you can still use it in your RSS if you want. I use Dublin Core."

YusASP.com - Advanced Content Editor

Wed, 11 Jun 2003 00:49:07 GMT

"Advanced Content Editor is an extremely powerful Web-based WYSIWYG Content Authoring & Editing tool that allows you to create online HTML editing application for real time web content publishing."

Technology > Visual Search

Tue, 03 Jun 2003 22:47:34 GMT

"piXlogic has the unique ability to automatically segment an image such that individual objects within the image are uniquely identified. The piXlogic software automatically "vectorizes" the objects, creating metadata containing detailed information about each item in a picture. This gives a user unprecedented capability to find images that contain the same or similar objects regardless of relative size, location, or orientation within the image. In addition, the user can interact with the software and visually select individual objects within a picture, or multiple pictures, to formulate a precise search query. "

Wikis and the comm portal

Sat, 31 May 2003 13:33:29 GMT

Doing some reading about Wikis lately and there's a pretty good essay on Microdoc News that points out that "Blogs Turn People into WebPages" and "Wikis Turn Communities into WebPages". I also spent some time rooting around in Wikipedia. This provoked some thoughts about the comm portal:

The developers are currently using wikis for much of the system documentation. Some aspects of this are good: It's easy to update and maintain pages and links, it's collaborative, it lowers the barriers to getting things documented (for most of us anyway). Some are not so good: It encourages a certain amount of chaos, some things like linking requirements to planning docs to code are more difficult. But I think it's mostly a good thing.

Anyway, my half-formed thoughts are:

Wikis are a good idea for the comm portal
If we're going to use Wikis, let's use one that's a little more cooked and a little better documented than UseModWiki. The Wikipedia Wiki for instance. Using this one would enable us to just link to the Wikipedia docs and style guides.
Reduce some of the chaos by having good docs and style guides
We need better software for managing project documents or we need to more fully embrace a low-documentation development methodology like XP
Sourceforge doesn't cut it, at least not the way we're using it.

Quickiwiki, Swiki, Twiki, Zwiki and the Plone Wars

Fri, 30 May 2003 10:04:37 GMT

"Quickiwiki, Swiki, Twiki, Zwiki and the Plone Wars Wiki as a PIM and Collaborative Content Tool"

pMachine | Publish Your Universe

Fri, 30 May 2003 09:41:07 GMT

"pMachine is online publishing's most flexible and creative software. With pMachine, you can publish virtually any kind of web content - from a basic weblog, to an advanced interactive magazine. pMachine gives you complete control over the presentation and the interactivity of your site. "

RaptorBook: Main

Thu, 29 May 2003 22:05:49 GMT

"The RaptorBook Engine is an open source project dedicated to bringing public domain etexts and ebooks into the mainstream. This site was originally launched as a proof of concept for the engine behind it. Currently, the site is a test bed for engine development. We plan to release the full source code for the engine in the summer (2003) when we complete the second version. More about the project."

Invisible-Web.net - About the site

Thu, 29 May 2003 16:08:11 GMT

"This site is a companion to The Invisible Web: Finding Hidden Internet Resources Search Engines Can't See by Chris Sherman and Gary Price. It includes a directory of some of the best resources the Invisible Web has to offer. The directory includes resources that are informative, of high quality, and contain worthy information from reliable information providers that are not visible to general-purpose search engines. We give precedence to resources that are freely available to anyone with Web access. However, we do include a few select resources that are either free to search but have resulting fee-based content (such as News Library), or charge a small fee to search and a fee to access full-records. Some sites may be free to search and access full records, but require the user to register at no charge before granting access. "

Web search: how the Web has changed information retrieval

Thu, 29 May 2003 14:27:46 GMT

"Topical metadata have been used to indicate the subject of Web pages. They have been simultaneously hailed as building blocks of the semantic Web and derogated as spam. At this time major Web browsers avoid harvesting topical metadata. This paper suggests that the significance of the topical metadata controversy depends on the technological appropriateness of adding them to Web pages. This paper surveys Web technology with an eye on assessing the appropriateness of Web pages as hosts for topical metadata. The survey reveals Web pages to be both transient and volatile: poor hosts of topical metadata. The closed Web is considered to be a more supportive environment for the use of topical metadata. The closed Web is built on communities of trust where the structure and meaning of Web pages can be anticipated. The vast majority of Web pages, however, exist in the open Web, an environment that challenges the application of legacy information retrieval concepts and methods. "

Invisible-Web.net - About the site

Thu, 29 May 2003 13:56:27 GMT

The Deep Web: Surfacing Hidden Value

Thu, 29 May 2003 13:41:24 GMT

"by MICHAEL K. BERGMAN This modified version of "The deep Web: Surfacing Hidden Value" appeared in The Journal of Electronic Publishing from the University of Michigan ( http://www.press.umich.edu/jep/07-01/bergman.html ), July 2001."

JEP: The Deep Web

Thu, 29 May 2003 13:40:39 GMT

"This White Paper is a version of the one on the BrightPlanet site. Although it is designed as a marketing tool for a program "for existing Web portals that need to provide targeted, comprehensive information to their site visitors," its insight into the structure of the Web makes it worthwhile reading for all those involved in e-publishing. "