Daniel’s Blog

Wow! The UK Government have gone all BBC Backstage on us!

I’ve just read the article on the BBC News Website entitled “Government launches data mash-up“. In the spirit of competition, I thought I would share this information with you all.

The campaign/competition is about generating good ideas which can be done with new Government data, this is called “Show us a better way“… and involves information from various sectors including Neighbourhood Statistics, NHS Hospital Information, other Healthcare Information, Schooling Information and information from London Gazette.

Unfortunately, all this information doesn’t seem to be have some kind of common access and they it all seems to be in different formats (there’s even an Excel file!). So a warning in advance is that you’ll have to do some transformations on the data before you can start using the data together.

This is where the difference between Mash-ups and Mesh-ups come!

Mash-ups

When you do a Mash-up, you generally have to bodge two or more data sources together (using data transformations). Then you have to use a lot of hard work stick it into a graphical user interface of some kind.

Mesh-ups

When you do a Mesh-up, two or more data sources are meshed together smoothly and a graphical user interface can be laid on top with little-to-no work. This is done because the data is in an agnostic format, but uses the same modelling framework. This is what RDF offers, as it is not a format it is a modelling language… it doesn’t matter what the format is (it could be RDF/XML, RDF/N3, XHTML+RDFa, (X)HTML+Microformats) it will be understandable as RDF. Coupled with the rules of Linked Data, it also offers a common access using well established web practices and protocols!!!

Summary

I am very glad that the UK Government is putting this competition on… but it would be better if all their services followed a standardised modelling framework (and therefore become a Mesh-Up rather than an early naughties Mash-Up). I may enter the competition… but it’s quite the wrong time for me at the moment.

Anyways,

Bye for now.

Daniel

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Just a quick note to all the Americans… Happy Independence Day!

Don’t just celebrate, but also think about some of the wonderful people who contributed to the independence:

• George Washington
• Benjamin Franklin 
• Joseph Hewes
• William Ellery
• and the many others…

Have a good day.

From Daniel

(in Bristol, part of England)

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Computer Weekly Blog Awards Nominations are over, and I have now been shortlisted!!!! (You may have noticed that I now have a different badge on my blog site (on the right hand sidebar)).

You can now vote for me to win!

How to vote for me:

Click on the link in the badge on my blog page, or click on the following link: “Computer Weekly IT Blog Awards 08”

Scroll down to the bottom of the page that loads up, and you will see some drop down menus. Where you see the “Programming and Technical blogs” category and select “Daniel’s Blog by Daniel Lewis“from the drop down menu.

Vote in any other category for whoever, and then click “SUBMIT”, and your vote will be counted.

Thank you ever so much for voting. If someone else wins in the category then well done to them.

Voting is open from the 30th June 2008 until the 31st July 2008. Winners will be announced in August (2008) on the Computer Weekly Website and in an August edition of Computer Weekly.

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Today has been one of those days where you just want to get things done. Particularly this afternoon when I’ve felt like a hermit trying to make the esoteric become exoteric and I’ve just needed to focus without any distractions in order to get the right formula to turn base metals into gold.

Like Alchemy… the Semantic Web / Linked Data can be a bit esoteric at times, but really it is more arcane than esoteric and so therefore my work is more about turning the arcane/esoteric into the exoteric. The “right formula” I mention above is the words I use to describe things, and it is really important to get those right words. Unlike turning base-metals into gold, it is possible to get the right formula for turning the Esoteric Semantic Web into the Exoteric Linked Data.

This is in relation to a document which I am currently writing, and I am really wanting to get this exactly right in order to make it the most understandable that it can be, but still express everything that I (and others) want it to express. With a little Wisdom, Strength and Beauty this document and my future documents will shine.

The strange thing is, is that Linked Data actually gives a huge helping hand when it comes to documentation and tutorial writing as it allows you to express exactly what you mean and clears up any misunderstandings before they are created.

(I apologise for the rather arcane blog post… it has been an incredibly bizarre day!)

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Web 2.0 was all about making the web more socially aware, however, was it really a good idea to start a versioning system for the Web?

When Web 2.0 was coined, I got quite excited about it, it was “Yes! this is a new way of thinking, this makes the web more personal”… but I did not thoroughly think through the versioning of the web. Applying 2.0 to the end of the term Web, meant that this is somehow new, somehow better and somehow a superset of what we had before… but it wasn’t, it just clumped pre-existing technologies together under one buzzword which businesses could use.

I fear that this is now happening with the term Web 3.0, which is seen as a swing towards the data. Unfortunately, the term Web 3.0 is being applied as a buzzword already (see the recent post by Paul Krill at InfoWorld titled “Salesforce touts Web 3.0 as platform as a service“, and the post by Simon Wardley titled “3 is the new 2…“).

I say that the Web is the Web, and it will always be the Web… whether it is a Document Web, a Social Web, a Data Web, a Platform Web or an Intelligent Agent Web. When it comes down to it, it will still be the Web, and documents will never be fully replaced by data objects, data objects will never be fully replaced by documents, the social apps won’t replace documents, and intelligent agents won’t replace search engines… things might change slightly, or become slightly more efficient… but essentially it is still the same.

Therefore, I don’t think it is clear when people start versioning the Web… which is why I have started categorising sub-webs, like I have done above. So these Sub-Webs are:

• Document Web: A Web of Documents with hyperlinks between. This Sub-Web provides a subjective view of information from the context perspective of the author.
• Social Web: A Web of Socially Aware Applications. This is done in either, or both Document and Linked Data forms. This Sub-Web provides a subjective view of information from the context perspective of the user or group profiled.
• Linked Data Web: A Web of Data Objects with relationship links between to enhance meaning. This Sub-Web provides an Objective View of information, ready for a contextual perspective of the user.
• Platform Web: A Web of Services in which you can run Web Applications on - and/or - against. This Sub-Web does not provide a view of information, but is an attempt to provide a distributed network of services capable of providing multiple subjective and objective perspectives.
• Intelligent Agent Web: A Web of Intelligent Software Agents. It is a Sub-Web because software agents will talk to each other in order to find out information. This Sub-Web communicates internally objectivity and subjectivity depending on the subjective desires of the user.

The important thing is that each of these Sub-Webs does not replace any other kind of Sub-Web. They can be used all together on the Web. No versioning required or desired.

However, this doesn’t mean that new technologies shouldn’t be looked into and implemented. They definitely should be looked into!  I am just stating that I don’t believe versioning is the best way of labeling technologies, as it is pretty meaningless when something is not better or improved.

Any thoughts?…

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Good news for the Semantic Annotator tribe: RDFa is now a candidate recommendation of the W3C “RDFa in XHTML: Syntax and Processing“… which means that RDFa is ready for the mainstream… and actually… RDFa is already being used

Some examples:

• The London Gazette
• Digg
• Various blogs and wikis

If you haven’t checked out RDFa then please do, I was involved with some of the early conversations about RDFa when I was doing my undergraduate project on semantic tagging and annotation.

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Recently, various people keep telling me:

Listen to your body

The general idea is: If I need to sleep then I should sleep If I need to eat then I should eat. If I need to go for a walk then I should go for a walk. This kind of saying is also taught in Reiki, Taoism, Buddhism and all kinds of other spiritual paths, and we have the (UK) government telling us to eat at least 5 pieces of fruit per day ( the 5 a day campaign ), keep warm ( keep warm campaign ), keep clean, don’t drink too much ( drinkaware campaign ), don’t gamble ( gambleaware campaign )

It is incredibly hard to do this in a modern age full of demands from all over the place… but it is incredibly important to achieve some kind of balance between being a “servant of humanity” (e.g. loving kindness to other people, hard working for organisations) and being a “servant of ones own body” (e.g. get enough relaxation, sleep, food, drink, spirituality, learning and exercise).

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The nice guys at True Knowledge Ltd (who are based in Cambridge, UK) have given me some beta invites to give out. So if you are interested in beta testing trueknowledge.com then please send me an email or comment in this blog and I’ll send you your invite.

True Knowledge Ltd is a company founded by AI sage William Tunstall-Pedoe, and their product (in beta stage at the time of writing) is a search engine which answers questions. It answers questions using natural language processing (NLP) and a highly-structured wikipedia-style question and answer system.

Unfortunately the True Knowledge system is not yet exposing Linked Data, but I am sure that they see a benefit in that area once the engine is released fully and publicly.

I haven’t got many invites, so be sure to let me know if you want one soon. It will be on a first come first serve basis.

Thanks,

Daniel

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Some of you already know, but for those who don’t know.. I am now back from my holiday in Edinburgh.

It was a very nice holiday, we had a very relaxing time and acted quite touristy.

Places we went to see:

• St Mary’s Episcopal Cathedral (A Scottish Episcopal Cathedral)
• Rosslyn Chapel (A Scottish Episcopal Parish Church, but better known globally for its supposed links to masonry popularised by books such as Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code)
• St Johns Church (A Scottish Episcopal Church in the centre of Edinburgh, it has really really lovely stained glass windows)
• St Giles Cathedral (A Church of Scotland Cathedral. The café sells good lunch for good prices)
• Freemasons’ Hall (Grand Lodge of Scotland)
• Royal Mile (from Castle to the Holyrood Abbey)

We did, of course, see Edinburgh Castle… except we didn’t go in because we didn’t see the point in paying about £25 in total to have a look inside. We really didn’t mind, we looked around the Castle Shop instead.

We didn’t take many photos, but I am sure we’ll upload them soon.

Back to home and work

During my time in Edinburgh, I didn’t check any of my emails or web feeds. This was because I just wanted to get away from it all… and I succeeded. Anyways, I checked it all this morning. 188 non-auto-archived non-spam emails (of which about 30 had some kind of interest) and 278 spam emails in my personal email box… and about 38 in my work email box (a couple of which were spam). I’ve also been trawling through the various web, semantic web, social web, artificial intelligence and other web feeds that I subscribe to. Theres a lot of stuff to catch up on, but I’m getting through it!

A note on Rosslyn Chapel

Thank’s to the trip to Edinburgh I have a *signed* copy of Robert Cooper’s “The Rosslyn Hoax?“. It is an awesome book, written to bust all the myths about Scottish Freemasonry, Knights Templar and their (often suggested) relationship with Rosslyn Chapel, the Kirkwall Scroll and the Sinclair family. I highly recommend the book to anyone interested in the subject!

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Beki and I will be going on holiday to Edinburgh from late tomorrow (10th June 2008) evening until the 18th June 2008. Which means that we’ll both be a bit “out of the (information and communication) loop” over the next week.

It will be nice to have a proper bit of time off… Moving from one city to another has been quite stressful, but very much worth it. Plus I’ve had to work since day one of moving in. Although, I did have a week off last month, but even that week involved a lot of packing up of my stuff and a lot of sorting out of my old place. So it really will be nice to have a holiday where Beki and I can just relax and enjoy the sites available in and around Edinburgh without having to worry about any work or home issues.

We’ll be visiting various places, hopefully we’ll get a chance to visit Rosslyn Chapel and St Mary’s Episcopal Cathedral. If anyone has suggestions about where we should definitely visit while in Edinburgh, then theres a comment box on the blog post page

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