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I’m happy to announce that version 0.8 of sparta, a simple API for RDF, is now available. As always, feedback and suggestions are appreciated. When I worked in the financial industry, I quickly noticed that Excel spreadsheets contain the bulk of the data in the enterprise. It may make IT execs tear their hair out, but having the data nearby and ready for analysis is sloppy, but oh-so-effective. The challenge is to make the data reusable elsewhere. The Australian Bureau of Statistics has announced that as of today, their online publications and tables are now free to download, instead of requiring an account and a per-download charge, as before. Today’s release of Tiger includes a new but little-discussed framework for developers, CoreData. RDF has a simple, usable, universal model; everything’s nodes and arcs, so it avoids the problems of the Infoset, which IMO are brought by its complexity and special cases.
Years of disquiet about attributes by portions of the XML cognoscenti support this view unintentionally, I think. As always, feedback and suggestions are appreciated. I’ve been talking with a few people about my previous assertion that the Infoset is a bad abstraction for data modelling, and my subsequent post about the informational properties of the Infoset. This is why heuristics aren’t such a hot idea. I spent a little time on the plane the other day reading the latest WD of the RDF Primer. I didn’t attempt to review the entire document set, as reading a 71 page primer is quite enough! Jo Walsh has created a Semantic Web system that appeals quite strongly - a means of using RDF to map to the real world in “gonzo geographical data collection”. Before, I was wondering about the intersection of Wikis and the Semantic Web. I’ve since done some noodling and prototyping, and the idea came together on the train home tonight. Wiki as Semantic Web?
Have you ever wanted to try out a new personality? Since we're stuck with ourselves, day-in and day-out, our own personalities might sometimes feel a little tired from time to time. So what can we do about this? There are, of course, costumes, which are probably the reason so many people look forward to Halloween -- they can be their favorite superhero for a night and revel in a little creativity. But not all of us are willing to play dress up throughout the calendar year, mainly because doing so violates generally held social norms. After all, most Web sites that offer some kind of online community allow their users to create avatars, an electronic image that represents the person controlling it. Generally, members can be as creative as they like with their avatar, either fashioning it as close to their appearance and personality as possible or creating an entirely different personality.
One of these social networking services is Zwinky, a service launched in 2006 and owned by InterActiveCorp (IAC). Zwinky lets its members create their own cartoonish, large-headed and big-eyed avatars, which they can use in several different ways. One thing to keep in mind: Zwinky is open to anyone age 13 and older. If you're younger than 13, you won't be allowed to make your own account, not even with parental permission. Zwinky profiles can also be set to "private" if you're 18 or older, but profiles of Zwinky users younger than 18 are automatically set to private. So how does Zwinky work? What can someone with a Zwinky avatar do? And what kind of place is Zwinktopia, anyway? This may be a slightly unfamiliar approach for members of other social networking sites -- most simply request that you create a username and password and fill in some personal information, including e-mail addresses and phone numbers.
Zwinky, however, requires you to download a Zwinky icon onto your Web browser, which users click on to access the program's interface. When you've successfully installed the Zwinky program and opened up the program window, it's time to customize your Zwinky character. Every Zwinky has a personal wardrobe, which users can access by clicking on the "Open Wardrobe" button near the bottom of the screen. You can manipulate a Zwinky's appearance to make it look however you want, and users choose traits including gender, skin tone, hair style and color, and more. To move a Zwinky from one place to the next in a specific area, members simply use the mouse to point and click. You can make new friends or see a list of the ones you already have by clicking on the "View/Add Friends" button at the bottom of the interface. This button allows you to either send an e-mail to a fellow Zwinky requesting friendship or to see where in Zwinky's world your friends are.
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