Burningbird Semantics

Bb's Semantic Feed: Big Sw little sw: Why are all those states dark blue?

Shelley — 2008-11-11T23:10:58+00:00

Now this is damn clever: using Google searches to trend flu outbreaks. Google is aggregating flu-related searches into trending where flu outbreaks might be occurring, or about to occur.

So far, knock on wood, the flu trend graph shows low activity for Missouri.

Bb's Semantic Feed: Semantic Markup: RDFaification of Drupal 6

Shelley — 2008-11-11T16:58:07+00:00

You don't have to wait for Drupal 7 to RDFaificate your Drupal site. I spent yesterday tweaking my space, and if you access the site now with a tool, such as the Semantic Radar Firefox add-on, you'll see all sorts of semantic goodness. I used a combination of plug-ins and theme modifications to make my changes, and will probably add to the overall effect over time.

Read through for the gory details...

Bb's Semantic Feed: general: Incorporating RDFa, SIOC, FOAF

Shelley — 2008-11-10T14:37:21+00:00

Expect breakage...incorporating bunches of stuff...

Bb's Semantic Feed: RDF: RDFaification of Drupal

Shelley — 2008-11-09T01:39:25+00:00

Don't you love it when people take bits and pieces of different words, creating a new word that manages, somehow, to be understandable? A word like RDFaification?

But the RDFa beautification of Drupal is upon us, helped along by writings such as A Roadmap for RDFa in Drupal 7, based, in part, on this previous post and discussion, kicked off by Drupal's Dries Buytaert.

Years ago, we used to talk about the "ugly" serialization of RDF (RDF/XML at the time) and how the serialization technique really didn't matter, because one day, the metadata annotation of a site would be handled automatically via whatever content management tool people used.

Future, meet Drupal.

Bb's Semantic Feed: general: Blogher Women in Tech Series featuring...Me

Shelley — 2008-10-21T20:29:05+00:00

Virginia DeBolt did me the honor of interviewing me for her first Women in Technology series at Blogher. If you're curious about my early years, my views on the semantic web, women in technology and how to modify the computer tech curriculum in order to obtain greater diversity, whether I like animals more than people, as well as some of the tech folks I read on a daily basis, you might want to check it out.

Warning, though, it is all about me, me, me.

And you will be tested.

Bb's Semantic Feed: general: How NOT to Write about the Semantic Web

Shelley — 2008-10-13T23:34:34+00:00

How not to attract new semantic web readers, especially among the women. Write the following:

I just thought that this is a smart strategy to make video tutorials about the Semantic Web more appealing to female* or otherwise not so super-tech-savvy* audiences: Just put a Lolcat in it!

Though the author wrote that she matches the "stereotype", which I guess means women who aren't tech and like LOLcats, by the time I followed the asterisks, I'd already passed from astonishment to loathing. FYI, I wrote the first book on RDF, babes.

A reference to females was unnecessary. Surprising, too, from the same company featuring an interview with Corinna Bath, author of the thesis, "Towards a De-Gendered Design of Information Technologies".

Bb's Semantic Feed: general: This Week's Semantic Web, Burningbird style

Shelley — 2008-10-11T17:08:28+00:00

Last week, Danny Ayers made a request to the semantic web community at large: that we take turns publishing our own version of This Week's Semantic Web. I volunteered to start, and hope that others follow, though in comments to Danny's post, the suggestion about the Gem of the Week sounded better (and a lot less work).

However, I decided to add a slight twist to my own version of This Week's Semantic Web, focusing not only on the stories, but how I found them. After all, the real purpose of the semantic web technologies is to make information easier to find. How are we, in the semantic web community, doing in this regard?

To start, I subscribe to various feeds including Planet RDF, as a way to keep up with most of the semantic web news. This week, the stories from Planet RDF that caught my eye were the following:

Bb's Semantic Feed: Semantic Markup: On the Myths and Realities of XHTML

Shelley — 2008-10-07T17:55:51+00:00

Tina Holmboe from the XHTML WG has written a concise overview of XHTML titled XHTML—Myths and Realities. She's provided a nice overview of the markup, including the purpose behind the development of XHTML and the state of XHTML today. The only somewhat jarring note I found about the overview is it seems that Tina went a bit out of her way not to sell XHTML. Perhaps this seeming "you should really need it before using it" push is the reality part of the topic.

I use content negotiation for my sites, serving up XHTML for those browsers and agents that can process XHTML, and HTML for the rest. I'm looking into embedded RDFa into my text in a new iteration of yet another site design, but my main reason for using XHTML is that I like to keep open the possibility of using inline SVG. I also think that support for XHTML seems to be broader than is implied by Tina, but again that could be her trying to downplay any hyperbole about XHTML—there's hyperbole about XHTML?

Though I know this is outside of Tina's overview, I would have like to have more focus on the differences between the HTML5/WhatWG stuff and XHTML 2.0. It's confusing that we have one group working supposedly on an "XHTML 5.0", and another on XHTML 2.0. Especially when one of the main issues to do with XHTML 2.0 was XForms, while a milestone reached with HTML5 recently was the incorporation of Web Forms 2.0—but don't let the "forms" that appears in both fool you into thinking we have any form of consensus or agreement.

Bb's Semantic Feed: Semantic Markup: Progressive Enhancement and Graceful Degradation

Shelley — 2008-10-07T13:59:33+00:00

A List Apart has a timely article titled Understanding Progressive Enhancement discussing the perceptual differences between graceful degradation and progressive enhancement. I enjoyed seeing Steve Champeon's idea given new light. Additionally, now is as good a time as any to have a go at these topics, with the many new enhancements being added to today's browsers, while antiques still cutter cyberspace. I could have done without the cloyingly cute M & M analogy in the article, but that's probably my inner Cranky Woman having a go this AM.

I've written about graceful degradation, previously. Graceful degradation means applying modern technology but ensuring the application doesn't negatively effect those viewing a web site with an Antique (remaining nameless). However, contrary to the ALA author's statement of Under this paradigm, older browsers are expected to have a poor, but passable experience, graceful degradation is just that: gracefully degrading, meaning that though the person using the Antique doesn't get all the bells or whistles, their experience at the site is more than "poor but passable".

Progressive enhancement, on the other hand, begins with the content, rather than the technology; ensuring that the markup used to organize the content is semantically correct and valid. Then, and only then, the web site developer progresses to the use of CSS and JavaScript, both to annotate and enhance the content. That's been the primary difference between the two approaches: graceful degradation tends to focus on technology, first, while progressive enhancement focuses on content, first.

Bb's Semantic Feed: general: Correlation

Shelley — 2008-10-02T14:45:28+00:00

I noticed a correlation between my last two posts on the lack of women at Ajax Experience and the seeming lack of RDF or semantic web applications. Both are based on perennial questions: Where are the women in technology? Where are the semantic web applications?

Next time I'm asked either, I think I'll answer that the women in technology are off building RDF-based semantic web applications. Yeah, that's the ticket.