Monthly Archives: May 2007

Data Points on Tim Bray’s Keynote at CANHEIT 2007

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As advertized, Tim Bray gave a keynote presentation at CANHEIT 2007 earlier today (May 29, 2007). And even though I would not describe Bray as an overly dynamic speaker, he certainly did suceed in being entertaining, educating, engaging and thought provoking.

Hopefully, Bray’s presentation will be made available online.

Until it is, you may find the following data points of interest:

  • Bray spoke very highly of RAILS – RAILS in general, and Ruby on RAILS in particular. As a better way of doing things, he suggested that RAILS might even change the way you think about programming. To whet everyone’s appetite, Bray itemized two of RAILS’ principles:
    • Don’t repeat yourself
    • Emphasize convention over configuration

To substantiate his zeal for RAILS, he shared an example of a project that took four months to develop in J2EE; the same project was developed in five days with RAILS! The momentum behind RAILS is also quantified by book sales and attendance levels (in excess of 1,000) at a recent event.

  • Bray also spoke very highly of REST – Even as a Sun employee, Bray was compelled to state that REST may eclipse Java/J2EE in the not-too-distant future. Of course, like many, he suggested that the RESTful approach has already eclipsed Web services. He even shared an image of the WS-DeathStar (Source: Unknown).

  • Bray is contributing to the Atom Project – “Atom is a simple way to read and write information on the web, allowing you to easily keep track of more sites in less time, and to seamlessly share your words and ideas by publishing to the web.” Looks interesting!
  • Bray made use of Apple’s Keynote presentation software – After seeing how Bray and Al Gore made use of Keynote, I broker down and licensed a copy of the software. In both cases, I was struck by the elegant simplicity of their presentations. After all, the purpose of presentations is to communicate. More on Keynote some other time I expect …
  • Bray blogs at http://www.tbray.org/ongoing – Worth reading!

Annotation’s Two Solitudes

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Most fundamentally, and despite the fact that the term is frequently used, annotation has not been universally defined. Although annotation can be fairly consistently regarded as editorial metadata, or even information about data, there exists considerable latitude regarding the origin/destination scope of annotation. In the language-centric OWL context, annotations originate internal to the ontology and can annotate internally and to some extent externally. Anecdotally, this remains a common usage mode for annotation as evidenced in the online and off-line literature plus most-mature scientific projects. In contrast in the referencing-based case of XPointer, annotations originate external to the formal ontology, and can annotate the ontology itself or make external references. (The figure below attempts to clarify this not entirely subtle distinction.)

The two solitudes with respect to definitions is carried forward in terms of differences in annotation terminology. As a very concrete example, both the OWL and XPointer communities separately define and make use of the same annotation properties or types. There is clearly an opportunity for the W3C to better harmonize the efforts between these distinct communities, their efforts and common interests.

Annotation Location versus Outcome

Wanted: J2ME Version of Google Calendar

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The fine folks at Google recently announced:

You can now access your Google Calendar account from your mobile phone! Just visit mobile.google.com/calendar/ with your phone’s web browser and once you’re logged in, you’ll see your list of upcoming events with date and time information in an easy-to-browse format.

This is great!

However, what’d I’d really appreciate for my BlackBerry is a J2ME version of Google Calendar.

Since Google already delivers a J2ME version of GMail for my BlackBerry, I hope that the J2ME version of Google Calendar isn’t too far away …

Leveraging Your SOAP Toolkit via the Eclipse Web Tools Platform

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Just over three months ago, I wrote:

Because so much value is being driven through SOAP, you must choose your SOAP toolkit wisely. More specifically, toolkit choice will determine, for example, which [Second Generation Web Services] specifications are supported via implementations.

Ultimately, this lead me to suggest that:

Your choice of SOAP toolkit may be the most important decision you make in implementing a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) based on Web Services.

I still subscribe to this perspective.

Because it’s increasingly unlikely that developers will author SOAP and WSDL documents directly, however, your choice of Integrated Development Environment (IDE) is also increasingly important.

I’m coming to appreciate the value of a solid IDE as I dig into Web services more and more. Of late, I’ve been particularly impressed with the Eclipse Web Tool Platform (WTP).

Stay tuned.

Anticipating HPCS 2007

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Last year’s event took place at Memorial University in Newfoundland. And although the event was memorable from an academic perspective, it was also memorable from a cultural perspective. In my brief follow up to last year’s event, I alluded to humor as one of the cultural elements. Because it’s difficult to really capture the local humor, I suggest you simply watch it in action:

This year’s event is in Saskatoon. While I’m looking forward to an intellectually stimulating event, I doubt it could possibly be as culturally stimulating!

wikiyork: Academic Social Networking via a Wiki

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I spent two days earlier this week participating in the TEL(Technology Enhanced Learning)@York 2007 event.

This year, the conference theme was “Partnerships to Enhance Student Engagement“.

Arguably, Rene Suarez’ wikiyork contribution was the most-provocative demonstration of a partnership to enhance student engagement.

wikiyork is:

  • a place to share notes, reading summaries, exam reviews, tests, assignments, opinions, etc…
  • open-source, editable by anyone, viewable by anyone
  • student-controlled (not really…everyone has equal control; everyone is a student and a teacher)
  • free (non-profit and ad-free)

In discussing wikiyork as an enabling platform for peer collaboration in an undergraduate academic setting, one of the concerns raised was the unearned benefit of such ventures to social loafers. In addressing this concern, it may benefit the wikiyork team to reflect upon the basic elements of cooperative teams:

  • Positive interdependence
  • Individual accountability
  • Face-to-face promotive interaction
  • Interpersonal and small group skills
  • Group processing

By recontextualizing these elements for wikiyork, it may be possible to (over time) turn social loafers into social contributors.

I’m not sure if wikiyork is the first of its kind. Regardless, I applaud the efforts of Rene Suarez and his collaborators, as I believe they’re on to something potentially compelling with wikiyork.